Page 63 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

Before he was aware of moving, Seth found himself back at the door, the book tucked under his arm.

He’d been spooking himself, but he hadn’t imagined that thump .

It could have been something precariously balanced, something that had been ready to fall over forever and his movements tipped it.

It could have been an animal under the floorboards.

It could have been a pair of stiffened feet hitting bedroom carpet as their owner sat up, eager to welcome home the prodigal son.

He couldn’t make himself look toward the hall, and if there was something in the corner of his vision, something impossibly thin that flattened itself against the wall as the stink of decay intensified—well, that didn’t mean he had to stand here and let it get him, did it?

He fumbled for the doorknob, had a bad moment when it wouldn’t turn, then realized he was twisting it the wrong way.

He spilled out onto the porch, shoved the key into the lock.

There. It was done. He was back in the world again.

As he drove home, there was still a trace of that faint decay in his nostrils.

Mole slept, and Mole dreamed.

The man’s face seemed familiar, though Mole was sure he’d never seen it in waking life. There was some sort of cowl around his head, and his eyes shone redly in its darkness. His grin was gruesome, yet jaunty.

“It would be an easy trip to the mainland,” the dark man whispered. “I could make it easy for you.”

“I get seasick.”

“I could stop the sickness. Only I could stop it. If you don’t come with me, you’ll never get off this island.”

“Don’t want to get off this island.”

“Oh yes, I forgot.” The man’s grin grew mocking. “You have to stay here and take care of your sea slug.”

“She ain’t a slug. She’s as smart as you or me.”

“Then why do you keep her captive?”

Mole didn’t say anything. He tried to look away from the man’s awful grinning face, but found he could not.

“Come to me,” the man said again. “Leave that thing to rot. I could use a man like you, a fellow good with his hands.”

“Can’t.”

“There’s still plague on this island,” the dark man hissed. “You think you’re immune just because you haven’t gotten sick yet? You can still get sick.”

Mole felt his throat swelling, felt thick mucus rising in his lungs.

He tried to take a breath and choked. Struggled for air.

Flailed and woke with a panicky little cry, alone in his narrow bed.

He had been having variations of this dream for a few weeks now, and they left him afraid to go back to sleep.

On the far side of the room, the big aquarium bubbled.

Mole swung his feet over the side of the bed and crossed the room to the tank.

He kept a chair here for nights like these, and he pulled it over now, sat and leaned his forehead against the cool glass.

He let his fingertips dangle into the water.

She fluttered, then extended a ruffle and twined it around his fingers.

He closed his eyes. Gradually his breathing slowed, and he spent the rest of the night asleep there, with the mermaid holding his hand.

Seth slept, and Seth dreamed.

He had not wanted to take the book into his cottage, so he sat in the porch swing and paged through it.

He soon found the picture he had half-remembered, a grotesque thing with a fish’s body, a human head, and masses of stringy black hair.

The face was like a woman’s, but with a gaping mouth and a cross-eyed glare in the old Kabuki tradition.

A pair of short, pointy horns jutted from the top of the head.

The caption identified it as a ningyo . The illustration creeped him out almost as much as the few minutes in his old house had done.

“ Ningyo is best translated as ‘human-fish,’?” he read.

“Its appearance portends disaster; conversely, it may also provide good luck and even immortality. A mummified ningyo is displayed at a Shinto temple near Mount Fuji, said to be a fisherman who was changed into this form as punishment for entering forbidden waters. Wearing an amulet with its picture, or even eating its flesh, can protect against illnesses and epidemics.”

Seth shuddered, remembering the wizened little face of the Jenny Haniver. A person would have to be pretty desperate to eat that… But people afraid of getting sick did become desperate sometimes, didn’t they? Unaware he was doing it, Seth touched his throat, feeling the swollen glands there.

He closed the book and set it on the porch boards beneath the swing, where he would not be able to easily reach it again. He wished he hadn’t gone and gotten it in the first place, couldn’t remember why it had seemed urgent enough to brave the horror of his old home.

Darkness had begun to draw down on the island again.

Not yet ready to get up, he dozed in the swing and dreamed of Grand Illumination Night, one of the touchstones of his childhood.

On this magical evening, the gingerbread cottages were decorated with thousands of paper lanterns in all colors and sizes.

When the signal came, the lanterns blazed to life, a softly shifting, swaying array that painted the crowd’s faces with kaleidoscopic light.

The eye scarcely knew where to look, how to credit such wonder.

His parents had brought him to Illumination every year.

He remembered walking beside his mother, holding her hand.

Back in the days when she was a living person who loved him, not a rotting body he had abandoned.

Seth saw the lanterns in his dream, but now their colors seemed wrong, as if a slightly different spectrum had become visible.

An especially large one hung nearby, swaying in an unfelt breeze.

He didn’t want to look at it, but in the way of dreams, he could not stop his head from turning.

It was the chōchin’obake , his childhood fear, its split-open mouth sagging, its huge mournful eyes beseeching him to come closer.

If he did, he knew its long paper tongue would lick at his face.

He tried to back away, but his feet wouldn’t move.

The mouth drooped farther and the creature spoke in a terrible rasping whisper: “ Hello, gayboy, little infected gayboy. There’s no place for you in the old woman’s world, you know.

They would drive you out. You and your plague . ”

Seth didn’t know who the old woman was. He thought he might know, might be able to think of it, but only if the chōchin’obake would stop that awful whispering.

“ The world has had enough plague. No one will want you, no one will welcome you. They might even kill you. Yes, I think they might very well kill you. The old woman’s God doesn’t love little infected gayboys . ”

There was a dark man inside the chōchin’obake .

Seth could see his awful, gleeful face now, hiding behind the lantern’s facade.

The paper tongue lolled out, seeming to taste the air.

“ But if you come to me, if you come with the other sinners, I will welcome you. I will value your tainted blood. There are … things I can do with it .”

The creature laughed, and the tongue shot out like a party blower, at least ten feet long.

Seth wrenched himself awake before it could touch him.

He was halfway out of the porch swing, his legs pedaling madly, trying to propel himself backward.

He grabbed for the flashlight he knew was nearby.

Found it. Clicked it on and nearly screamed when he saw what was at his feet: The Old Legends of Japan , open to the picture of the ningyo , though Seth clearly remembered closing the book before he dozed off.

After a few bad moments, he realized that compared with the horror he had met in his dream, the mermaid creature wasn’t so fearsome.

It almost seemed to be smiling at him. He pulled the book toward him, and as he touched it, he felt a wave of reassurance and comfort like a mother’s embrace.

The old woman’s God loves everyone , he thought, although his nightmare was fading quickly and he was unsure what the phrase meant.

He found that he was no longer reluctant to bring the book inside. He took it to bed with him, and slept a blessedly dreamless sleep.

Seth went back to Menemsha the next day. He found Mole cleaning bonito in the boat shed; his rough hands bloody with it. “Thought you said you got seasick,” Seth said.

“Catch these with a line from shore when they’re runnin’,” said the old man. “I should think an island kid would know that much.”

“I know how to dig for clams.”

Mole snorted. “Every little squirt on this island learns to dig for clams before they’re off their mother’s tit. D’you want to meet the mermaid?”

“The mermaid?”

“Yeah, that’s why you’re here, ain’t it? I don’t think you came back for me .” That merited a brief cackle as the old man wiped the blood from his hands. “Come on up. We’ll see if she wants to say hello.”

The interior of the shack was dark and dismal, smelling strongly of low tide.

As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, Seth saw Jenny Hanivers hung on the walls and dangling on wires from exposed beams. He remembered a childhood friend who’d had a huge doll collection arrayed on shelves in her bedroom.

These things seemed to stare at you like those had, blind yet knowing.

Interspersed here and there were other bits of flotsam: a dried starfish, a horseshoe crab shell, a green glass ball float encased in netting.

A ratty-looking hammock hung in one corner.

He saw the big aquarium on the far side of the room, sensed murky movement within.

“Come on,” said Mole, crossing the room. “No need to be shy. She sure ain’t.”