"Will I, little Lisey?"

"No more punch, no more bug-juice, I promise. For now, just think of my car. Do you know the color? Are you sure you remember?"

"Cream." Amanda's lips thinned a little and her face took on its Just A Little Home Truth Whether You Like It Or Not expression. Lisey was absolutely delighted to see it. "I told you when you bought it that no color shows the dirt quicker, but you wouldn't listen."

"Do you remember the b.u.mper-sticker?"

"A joke about Jesus, I think. Sooner or later some p.i.s.sed-off Christian is going to key it off. And probably put a few scratches in your finish for good luck."

From above them came a man's voice, heavily disapproving: "If you need to talk. You should go. Somewhere else."

Lisey didn't even bother turning around, let alone shooting him the bird. "The sticker says JESUS LOVES ME, THIS I KNOW, THAT IS WHY I DON'T DRIVE SLOW. I want you to close your eyes now, Amanda, and see my car. See it from the back, so the b.u.mper-sticker's showing. See it in the shade of a tree. The shade's moving because it's breezy. Can you do that?"

"Ye-e-es...I think so..." Her eyes cut sideways, taking one final longing glance at the ship in the harbor. "I guess so, if it will keep someone from hurting you...although I don't see what it can have to do with Scott. He's been dead over two years now...although...I think he told me something about Good Ma's yellow afghan, and I think he wanted me to tell you. Of course I never did. I forgot so much about those times...on purpose, I suppose."

"What times? What times, Manda?"

Amanda looked at Lisey as though her baby sister were the stupidest thing going. "All the times I cut myself. After the last time-when I cut my belly-b.u.t.ton-we were here." Amanda put a finger to her cheek, creating a temporary dimple. "It was something about a story. Your story, Lisey's story. And the afghan. Only he called it the african. Did he say it was a boop? A beep? A boon? Maybe I only dreamed it."

This, coming so unexpectedly out of left field, jolted Lisey but did not derail her. If she was going to get Amanda out of here-and herself-it had to be now. "Never mind all that, Manda, just close your eyes and see my car. Every d.a.m.n detail you can manage. I'll do the rest."

I hope, she thought, and when she saw Amanda close her eyes, she did the same and gripped her sister's hands tightly. Now she knew why she'd needed to see her car so clearly: so they could return to the visitors' parking lot rather than to Amanda's room in what was your basic locked ward.

She saw her cream BMW (and Amanda was right, that color had been a disaster), then left that part to her sister. She concentrated on adding 5761RD to the license plate, and the piece de resistance: that Nordic Wolf beer bottle, standing on the asphalt just a bit to the left of the JESUS LOVES ME, THIS I KNOW b.u.mper-sticker. To Lisey it looked perfect, and yet there was no change in the uniquely perfumed air of this place, and she could still hear a faint rippling sound that she realized must be slack canvas in a slight breeze. There was still the feel of the cool stone bench beneath her, and she felt a touch of panic. What if this time I can't get back?

Then, from what seemed to be a great distance, she heard Amanda murmur in a tone of perfect exasperation: "Oh, booger. I forgot the f.u.c.king loon on the license plate."

A moment later, the rippling twack of canvas first merged with the blat of the power-mower, then disappeared. Only now the sound of the mower was distant, because- Lisey opened her eyes. She and Amanda were standing in the parking lot behind her BMW. Amanda was holding Lisey's hands and her eyes were tightly closed, her brow furrowed in a frown of deep concentration. She was still wearing the mint-green pajamas with the Velcro closures, but now her feet were bare, and Lisey understood that when the duty-nurse next visited the patio where she had left Amanda Debusher and her sister Lisa Landon, she would find two empty chairs, two Dixie cups of bug-juice, one pair of slippers, and one pair of sneakers with the socks still in them.

Then-and then wouldn't be long-the nurse would raise the alarm.

In the distance, back toward Castle Rock and New Hampshire beyond, thunder rumbled. A summer storm was coming.

"Amanda!" Lisey said, and here was a new fear: what if Amanda opened her eyes and there was nothing in them but those same empty oceans?

But Amanda's eyes were perfectly aware, if slightly wild. She looked at the parking lot, the BMW, her sister, then down at herself. "Stop holding my hands so tight, Lisey," she said. "They hurt like h.e.l.l. Also, I need some clothes. You can see right through these stupid pajamas, and I'm not wearing any underpants, let alone a bra."

"We'll get you some clothes," Lisey said, and then, in a kind of belated panic, she slapped at the right front pocket of her carpenter's pants and let out a sigh of relief. Her wallet was still there. Relief was short-lived, however. Her SmartKey, which she'd put in her left front pocket-she knew she had, she always did-was gone. It hadn't traveled. It was either lying on the patio outside Amanda's room with her sneakers and socks or- "Lisey!" Amanda cried, clutching her arm.

"What? What!" Lisey wheeled around, but so far as she could tell, they were still alone in the parking lot.

"I'm really awake again!" Amanda cried in a hoa.r.s.e voice. There were tears standing in her eyes.

"I know it," Lisey said. She couldn't help smiling, even with the missing key to worry about. "It's pretty smucking wonderful."

"I'll get my clothes," Amanda said, and started toward the building. Lisey barely grabbed her arm. For a woman who had been catatonic only minutes ago, big sissa Manda-Bunny was now just as lively as a trout at sundown.

"Never mind your clothes," Lisey said. "You go back in there now and I guarantee you you'll be spending the night. Is that what you want?"

"No!"

"Good, because I need you with me. Unfortunately, we may be reduced to taking the city bus."

Amanda nearly screamed: "You want me to get on a bus looking like a f.u.c.king pole-dancer?"

"Amanda, I no longer have my car key. It's either on your patio or one of those benches...do you remember the benches?"

Amanda nodded reluctantly, then said: "Didn't you used to keep a spare key in a magnetic thingamabobby under the back b.u.mper of your Lexus? Which, by the way, was a sane color for a northern climate?"

Lisey barely heard the gibe. Scott had given her the "magnetic thingamabobby" as a birthday present five or six years ago, and when she traded for the Beemer, she had transferred the Beemer's spare key to the little metal box almost without thinking about it. It should still be under the back b.u.mper. Unless it had fallen off. She dropped to one knee, felt around, and just when she was starting to despair, her fingers happened on it, riding as high and snug as ever.

"Amanda, I love you. You're a genius."

"Not at all," Amanda said with as much dignity as a barefoot woman in flimsy green pajamas could manage. "Just your older sister. Now could we get in the car? Because this pavement is very warm, even in the shade."

"You bet," Lisey said, unlocking the car with the spare key. "We have to get out of here, only jeez, I hate to-" She paused, gave a brief laugh, shook her head.

"What?" Amanda asked in that special tone that really demands What now?

"Nothing. Well...I was just remembering something Daddy told me after I got my license. I drove a bunch of kids back from White's Beach one day, and...you remember White's, don't you?" They were in the car now, and Lisey was backing out of the shady s.p.a.ce. So far this part of the world was still quiet, and that was the way she wanted to leave it.

Amanda snorted and buckled her seatbelt, doing it carefully because of her wounded hands. "White's! Huh! Nothing but an old gravel pit that happened to have a coldspring in the bottom!" Her look of scorn melted into an expression of longing. "Nothing at all like the sand at Southwind."

"Is that what you called it?" Lisey asked, curious in spite of herself. She stopped at the mouth of the parking lot and waited for a break in traffic so she could make a left onto Minot Avenue and start the journey back to Castle Rock. Traffic was heavy and she had to fight the impulse to make a right instead, just so she could get them away from here.

"Of course," Amanda said, sounding rather put-out with Lisey. "Southwind is where the Hollyhocks always came to pick up supplies. It's also where the pirate-girls got to see their boyfriends. Don't you remember?"

"Sort of," Lisey said, wondering if she would hear an alarm go off behind her when they discovered Amanda was gone. Probably not. Mustn't scare the patients. She saw a small break in traffic and scooted the BMW into it, earning herself a honk from some impatient driver who actually had to slow down five miles an hour to let her in.

Amanda flipped this motorist-almost certainly a man, probably wearing a baseball cap and needing a shave-a double bird, raising her fists to shoulder height and pumping the middle fingers briskly without looking around.

"Great technique," Lisey said. "Someday it'll get you raped and murdered."

Amanda rolled a sly eye in her sister's direction. "Big talk for someone in the soup." Then, with hardly a pause for breath: "What did Dandy tell you when you came back from White's that day? I bet it was foolish, whatever it was."

"He saw me get out of that old Pontiac with no sneakers or sandals on and said it was against the law to drive barefoot in the state of Maine." Lisey glanced briefly, guiltily, down at her toes on the accelerator as she finished saying this.

Amanda made a small, rusty sound. Lisey thought she might be crying, or trying to. Then she realized Amanda was giggling. Lisey began to smile herself, partly because just ahead she saw the Route 202 bypa.s.s that would take her around the worst of the city traffic.

"What a fool he was!" Amanda said, getting the words out around further bursts of giggles. "What a sweet old fool! Dandy Dave Debusher! Sugar for brains! Do you know what he once told me?"

"No, what?"

"Spit, if you want to know."

Lisey pushed the b.u.t.ton that lowered her window, spat, and wiped her still slightly swollen lower lip with the heel of her hand. "What, Manda?"

"Said if I kissed a boy with my mouth open, I'd get pregnant."

"Bulls.h.i.t, he never!"

"It's true, and I'll tell you something else."

"What?"

"I'm pretty sure he believed it!"

Then they were both laughing.

XIII. Lisey and Amanda

(The Sister Thing)

1.

Now that she had Amanda, Lisey wasn't exactly sure what to do with her. Right up to Greenlawn, all the steps had seemed clear, but as they drove toward Castle Rock and thethunderheads ma.s.sing over New Hampshire, nothing seemed clear. She had just kidnapped her supposedly catatonic sister from one of central Maine's finer nuthouses, for G.o.d's sweet sake.

Amanda, however, seemed far from nuts; any fears Lisey harbored of her slipping back into catatonia dissipated in a hurry. Amanda Debusher hadn't been this sharp in years. After listening to everything that had pa.s.sed between Lisey and Jim "Zack" Dooley, she said: "So. Scott's ma.n.u.scripts may have been the main thing when he turned up, but now he's after you, because he's your basic loony who gets hard hurting women. Like that weirdo Rader, out in Wichita."

Lisey nodded. He hadn't raped her, but he'd gotten hard, all right. What amazed her was Amanda's succinct re-statement of her situation, even down to the Rader comparison...whose name Lisey wouldn't have remembered. Manda had the advantage of a little distance, of course, yet her clarity of mind was still startling.

Up ahead was a sign reading CASTLE ROCK 15. As they pa.s.sed it, the sun sailed behind the building clouds. When Amanda next spoke her voice was quieter. "You mean to do it to him before he can do it to you, don't you? Kill him and get rid of the body in that other world." Up ahead of them, thunder rumbled. Lisey waited. Are we doing the sister thing? she thought. Is that what this is?

"Why, Lisey? Other than that I guess you can?"

"He hurt me. He f.u.c.ked with me." She didn't think she sounded like herself at all, but if truth was the sister thing-she thought it was-then this was it, sure. "And let me tell you, honey: the next time he f.u.c.ks with me is going to be the last time he f.u.c.ks with anybody."

Amanda sat looking straight ahead at the unrolling road with her arms folded under her scant bosom. At last she said, almost to herself, "You always were the steel in his spine."

Lisey looked at her, more than surprised. She was shocked. "Say what?"

"Scott. And he knew it." She lifted one of her arms and looked at the red scar there. Then she looked at Lisey. "Kill him," she said with chilling indifference. "I have no problem with that."

2.

Lisey swallowed and heard a click in her throat. "Look, Manda, I really don't have any clear idea what I'm doing. You have to know that up front. I'm pretty much flying blind here." "Oh, you know what, I don't believe that," Amanda said, almost playfully. "You left messages saying that you'd see him at eight o'clock in Scott's study-one on your answering machine, and one with that Pittsburgh professor, in case Dooley called there. You mean to kill him and that's fine. Hey, you gave the cops their shot, didn't you?" And before Lisey could reply: "Sure you did. And the guy waltzed right past them. Almost cut your t.i.t off with your own can opener."

Lisey came around a curve and found herself behind another waddling pulp-truck; it was like the day she and Darla had come back from admitting Amanda all over again. Lisey squeezed the brake, once more feeling guilty that she was driving barefoot. Old ideas died hard.

"Scott had plenty of spine," she said.

"Yep. And he used it all getting out of his childhood alive."

"What do you know about that?" Lisey asked.

"Nothing. He never said anything about what life was like when he was a kid. Didn't you think I noticed? Maybe Darla and Canty didn't, but I did, and he knew I did. We knew each other, Lisey-the way the only two people not drinking at a big booze-up know each other. I think that's why he cared about me. And I know something else."

"What?"

"You better pa.s.s this truck before I strangle on his exhaust."

"I can't see far enough."

"You can see plenty far enough. Besides, G.o.d hates a coward." A brief pause. "That's something else people like Scott and me know all about."

"Manda-"

"Pa.s.s him! I'm strangling here!"

"I really don't think I have enough-"

"Lisey's got a boyfriend! Lisey and Zeke, up in a tree, K-I-SS-I-"

"Beanpole, you're being a puke."

Amanda, laughing: "Kissy-kissy, facey-facey, little Lisey!"

"If something's coming the other way-"

"First comes love, then comes marritch, then comes Lisey with a-"

Without allowing herself to think about what she was doing, Lisey mashed the Beemer's accelerator with her bare foot and swung out. She was dead even with the pulp-truck's cab when another pulp-truck appeared over the brow of the next hill, traveling toward them.

"Oh s.h.i.t, somebody pa.s.s me the bong, we're f.u.c.ked now!" Amanda cried. No rusty giggles now; now she was full-out laughing. Lisey was also laughing. "Floor it, Lisey!"

Lisey did. The BMW scooted with surprising gusto, and she nipped back into her own lane with plenty of time to spare. Darla, she reflected, would have been screaming her head off by this point.

"There," she said to Amanda, "are you happy?"

"Yes," Amanda said, and put her left hand over Lisey's right one, caressing it, making it give up its death-grip on the steering wheel. "Glad to be here, very glad you came for me. Not all of me wanted to come back, but so much of me was just...I don't know...sad to be away. And afraid that pretty soon I wouldn't even care. So thank you, Lisey."

"Thank Scott. He knew you'd need help."

"He knew that you would, too." Now Amanda's tone was very gentle. "And I bet he knew only one of your sisters would be crazy enough to give it."

Lisey took her eyes off the road long enough to glance at Amanda. "Did you and Scott talk about me, Amanda? Did you talk about me over there?"

"We talked. Here or there, I don't remember and I don't think it matters. We talked about how much we loved you."

Lisey could not reply. Her heart was too full. She wanted to cry, but then she wouldn't be able to see the road. And maybe there had been enough tears, anyway. Which was not to say there wouldn't be more.