Page 136 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

“Oh, I’ve got loads of them. I’m the Nowhere Man.

Lord of the Narrative Cul-de-Sac. Maestro Supreme of the Disposable Digression.

You see, not everyone gets the old woman.

Not everyone gets the Walkin Dude. Some people—the people who don’t get the chance to choose—get little ol’ me.

Yup! When you won’t be takin’ any stand, you’ll find me cuz I’m your man. ” He giggles at his near-rhyme.

Ezra finds his voice at last. “Great. Another basket case.”

“A tisket and a tasket,” the man replies, nodding. “Tom’s a-cold.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Ezra says. “I don’t like this. I think if we keep walking, we can hit Green River in probably—”

Outside, a sudden clap of thunder makes the windows rattle. Susie and Ezra both flinch. It hadn’t looked like rain when they’d walked in. Now, through the windows, the sky has gone from dusk to midnight black.

“Gonna be a big storm,” the man says. “Might as well wait it out here. I’ll be gentle. Why don’t you call me…” A shimmer of inspiration. “Tom Bombadil.”

“Oh, come on .” Ezra crosses his arms over his chest.

“Why not?” the man asks. “As good a name as any! We can be whoever we want to be these days, right?”

Susie looks at Ezra. “What’s he talking about? Who’s—?”

“He’s screwing with us. That’s a character from a book. The Lord of the Rings .”

“Oh, I saw that Bakshi cartoon! My friend Corey got a hold of a print right before everything, y’know. But I don’t remember anyone named—”

“No, they cut that part out of the movie.” The man lets out a great guffaw. “Now what’s so funny?”

“I just love watching people put puzzles together. ‘They cut that part out.’ You’re soooo close already!”

“Close to what?” Ezra asks.

“Tom” leans forward with a stage whisper. “Not every Armageddon puts up a fight. The scenery’s being scrubbed. The world’s being moved on. There’s been a revision. A rewrite .”

“Okay.” Ezra heaves a sigh. “So, are you with those two Renaissance Fair rejects we just ran into? Prince Peter and what’s-his-name? Or did you all just happen to get the same head injury?”

Tom looks genuinely aghast. “Oh noooo. They wound up here ? Ugh, hope they find their way out. A long time ago, I gave them my Ur. Thought maybe it’d help get them back on track. See, this is why I don’t give gifts, Poor Tom.”

Ezra rubs his temples. “Why is everyone so damned insane all of a sudden?!”

Then Susie takes a brave step forward. “Are we dead?”

Tom and Ezra both react: one, delighted, the other, appalled. Susie holds Tom’s gaze.

“Aw, sweet child,” Tom says at last. “You’re not dead. No more than anyone else who’s ever asked that question.”

“Wonderful!” Ezra exclaims. “Confirmation! From such an obviously trustworthy source. If you’re satisfied, can we please— ”

“I want to hear what else he has to say,” Susie says with measured patience. “I think he might… know things.”

A wicked grin smears across Tom Bombadil’s face, behind his beard. “I know lots of things. But I’ll warn you, most people find what I know to be immensely unsatisfying. That’s kinda my deal.”

“Where are we?” she asks. “What’s going on? Where is everybody?”

Ezra groans again. “We know what’s going on. There was a pandemic. A catastrophic event. These things happen. But we survived.”

Tom watches them like a gleeful tennis spectator. “Wow, you two definitely aren’t on the same page here. (That’s funny for a number of reasons.)”

“Shut up,” Ezra says.

“I bet you two haven’t even asked each other who the president is.”

“SHUT UP.”

“There’s too much confusion,” Tom sighs. “We can’t get no relief. There must be some kind of door out of here.”

Outside, more thunder. The machine-gun drumroll of heavy rain.

Susie has gone pale. “A door.”

“I don’t want to hear any of this,” Ezra seethes to himself.

“Look,” Tom says. “You can’t expect everything to make sense, okay? You’re both basically drafts. Ur-texts. But the connections are there.”

Susie runs her hands over her face. When she removes them, tears are spilling. “This is all just so confusing. Please, what is going on? What’s happening to us?”

Tom cocks his head, a portrait of sympathy. “Take heart, little one! You’re in better shape than most. After all, you’re still in print!”

“What?”

“You don’t really belong here . You only think you do—and wish you do.

You think you do, because this is the same story.

But it’s a different version, I’m afraid.

And you wish you do because… well, that’s all you ever wanted, right?

To find somewhere to belong. To be needed by someone.

So you found this guy.” He cocks a thumb at Ezra.

Ezra feels his cheeks burn. Rage swells.

“Are you finished yet?” He asks through gritted teeth. “Now that you’ve made a kid cry?”

“I’m not a kid.” Susie wipes at her eyes.

“She’s better off than you, Mr. Ez L!” Tom says. “She might be ancillary, but you ?” He shakes his head mournfully.

Ezra’s jaw clenches even tighter. His hands wring the strap of his duffel bag across his chest. “What about me?”

“I already said, dummy!” Tom hops off the counter. Starts putting on his yellow trench coat. “There’s been a revision. And you didn’t make the cut .”

Sensing the rising tension, Susie says, “Look. Can we all just cool out? There’s no need to make this heavier than it needs to be.”

“It is getting awfully feverish in here, isn’t it?

I should be getting back to my wife, anyway.

This particular Somewhere is no more. Nowhere, man.

Please listen, they won’t know what they’re missing.

I am glad you two found each other, though.

I hope you’ve helped each other feel a little more complete.

Merrily merrily merrily, the story is almost ov—”

A monstrous fury overcomes Ezra. Bellowing, he swings his bag of canned goods as hard as he can at Tom’s head, hoping to shut the guy up, hell, maybe even knock his head clean off his shoulders—

—but the guy is gone. Ezra is swinging the heavy duffel in a laughable pirouette, almost falling over with his force.

Hours pass. The storm rages outside.

Ezra and Susie search every inch of the building, but they find no trace of the man who called himself Tom Bombadil. Eventually, they have no choice but to assume he truly up and vanished.

They mostly work in pained silence, neither wanting to hear the other’s thoughts on the matter.

Ezra can tell Susie’s furious with him. He doesn’t have the energy to work on pacifying her.

In fact, all the outbursts and exertions have left him thoroughly depleted—like he’s been arguing in court for days straight.

He tells Susie they should probably try to get some rest. They’ll have a long day’s walking ahead of them tomorrow.

She tells him he should sleep first. She’ll stay up and keep watch.

He looks tired, she says. He doesn’t want to admit it, but the aches, the dry mouth, the nagging headache have all crept back a little.

Part of him wonders if they ever really left.

He unbuttons his top shirt button so he can swallow more easily.

Using the duffel full of clothes as a pillow, he sets himself up in a corner of the main room. He takes his notebook out first, though. Hugs it to his chest.

Once he feels physically comfortable enough, he can’t help himself. “What do you think he meant?”

“Huh?” Susie staring, dull-eyed, at a brochure for the park.

“?‘There was a revision.’ Did he mean the plague? That the earth has been… revised?”

She shrugs. “Guess that makes sense. Humans had their time and now… donezo.”

“We’re still here, though.”

Her eyes slip up to meet his with a flat, inscrutable glare. A glare that asks, Are we?

Suddenly ashamed of all his gainsaying, he looks away. The words come out of his mouth before he can stop them:

“Hey. Who’s the president?”

She sucks her teeth. Looks at him for a long time. “Jimmy Durante.”

He nods, relieved at her obvious sarcasm. If she actually has a different answer than his, he doesn’t want to know. Something about her cranberry bell-bottoms… Maybe they’re not retro chic after all…

“Ha-cha-cha,” he says in an exhausted monotone.

When he’s finally able to sleep, his dreams are vivid and strange. Feverish, even.

A sky, glaringly white and yellow. Faces, masked, behind plastic, distorted, bulging, looming way too close.

His car, the detested Plymouth, still parked on the side of the road as he left it, only something’s changed.

The key chain. His dreamself swells forward.

The embossed fob no longer reads SL , but AC .

This troubles him, so he contracts back a little, and then time speeds up.

Clouds whiz erratically across the sky. A jackrabbit finds shelter under the car.

A white-tailed deer pokes its snout at the chrome.

Birds land on the roof, report their inscrutable bulletins to the world.

And a limping man, held up by a much larger man with a child’s face and followed by a shaggy, auburn dog, approaches the vehicle.

Ezra feels a sort of peace, seeing them. I’m here, too. I’ve contributed. Then he remembers that keychain. Except those aren’t my initials. Those AREN’T my—

Hands shake him awake.

“Hey,” Susie whispers. “Hey, I need you. Please .”

She sounds close to panic. He comes to, groggy, but ready for anything. “Wuh?”

“I need you to see something. I need you to tell me I’m not going crazy.”

We’re all going crazy , he wants to say. He focuses on swallowing instead. His throat feels sore. Intubated.

He follows her to the gift shop. It’s barely a room, let alone a shop. More like a nook of the first floor, where some maps and picture books and key chains are displayed.

Outside, the patter of dripping rain. The storm has passed.

Susie is rambling nervously.