The Dead Zone Read Online Free PDF Page B

“You cold?”
    â€œNo,” she said. “It’s a great night for it.”
    â€œIt is,” he agreed, and pulled away from the curb. Her thoughts went back to that ridiculous mask. Half Jekyll with Johnny’s blue eye visible behind the widened-O eyesocket of the surprised doctor— Say, that’s some cocktail I invented last night, but I don’t think they’ll be able to move it in the bars— and that side was all right because you could see a bit of Johnny inside. It was the Hyde part that had scared her silly, because that eye was closed down to a slit. It could have been anybody. Anybody at all. Dan, for instance.
    But by the time they reached the Esty fairgrounds, where the naked bulbs of the midway twinkled in the darkness and the long spokes of the Ferris wheel neon revolved up and down, she had forgotten the mask. She was with her guy, and they were going to have a good time.
♦ 3 ♦
    They walked up the midway hand in hand, not talking much, and Sarah found herself reliving the county fairs of her youth. She had grown up in South Paris, a paper town in western Maine, and the big fair had been the one in Fryeburg. ForJohnny, a Pownal boy, it probably would have been Topsham. But they were all the same, really, and they hadn’t changed much over the years. You parked your car in a dirt parking lot and paid your two bucks at the gate, and when you were barely inside the fairgrounds you could smell hot dogs, frying peppers and onions, bacon, cotton candy, sawdust, and sweet, aromatic horseshit. You heard the heavy, chain-driven rumble of the baby roller coaster, the one they called The Wild Mouse. You heard the popping of .22s in the shooting galleries, the tinny blare of the Bingo caller from the PA system strung around the big tent filled with long tables and folding chairs from the local mortuary. Rock ’n’ roll music vied with the calliope for supremacy. You heard the steady cry of the barkers—two shots for two bits, win one of these stuffed doggies for your baby, hey-hey-over-here, pitch till you win. It didn’t change. It turned you into a kid again, willing and eager to be suckered.
    â€œHere!” she said, stopping him. “The whip! The whip!”
    â€œOf course,” Johnny said comfortingly. He passed the woman in the ticket cage a dollar bill, and she pushed back two red tickets and two dimes with barely a glance up from her Photoplay.
    â€œWhat do you mean, ‘of course’? Why are you ‘of coursing’ me in that tone of voice?”
    He shrugged. His face was much too innocent.
    â€œIt wasn’t what you said, John Smith. It was how you said it.”
    The ride had stopped. Passengers were getting off and streaming past them, mostly teenagers in blue melton CPO shirts or open parkas. Johnny led her up the wooden ramp and surrendered their tickets to the whip’s starter, who looked like the most bored sentient creature in the universe.
    â€œNothing,” he said as the starter settled them into one of the little round shells and snapped the safety bar into place. “It’s just that these cars are on little circular tracks, right?”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œAnd the little circular tracks are embedded on a large circular dish that spins around and around, right?”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œWell, when this ride is going full steam, the little car we’re sitting in whips around on its little circular track and sometimes develops up to seven g, which is only five less than theastronauts get when they lift off from Cape Kennedy. And I knew this kid . . .” Johnny was leaning solemnly over her now.
    â€œOh, here comes one of your big lies,” Sarah said uneasily.
    â€œWhen this kid was five he fell down the front steps and put a tiny hairline fracture in his spine at the top of his neck. Then— ten years later —he went on the whip at Topsham Fair . . .