The Regulators

And yes, he can see Mary Jackson’s pussy, that highly sought-after part of the female anatomy that was known, in those dim old junior high school days, as “the bearded clam”. He doesn’t want to be thinking this-doesn’t want to be seeing what he’s seeing, for that matter-but he’s not in charge. All the barriers in his mind have fallen, the way they used to when he was writing (it was one of the reasons he had quit writing novels, not the only one, but a biggie), time’s passage slowing as perception grows, widening until it’s like being in a Sergio Leone movie where people die the way people swim in underwater ballets.

Little bitty baby Smitty, he thought, again hearing the voice from the telephone. I seen you bite your mommy’s titty. Why should that voice remind him of the man in the bizarre costume and even more bizarre almond-eyed alien mask?

“What in the name of Jesus H. Sodapop Christ happened?” a voice asks from beside him. The others have converged on David Carver, but Gary Soderson has come over here, on to Old Doc’s lawn. With his pale face and scrawny body, he looks like a man suffering from mid-stage cholera. “Holy shit, Joh

“Shut up, you drunken asshole,” Joh

Slowly, like a stupid child who has been called upon to recite, Gary says: “What did you call me?” He isn’t looking at Joh

“Never mind, just keep your mouth shut. I mean it.” He looks to his right, down the street, and sees Collie Entragian ru

And behind them, quickly outdistancing old Tom Billingsley and closing in on Cynthia, wild-eyed, comes the street’s resident expert on James Dickey and the New Southerns.

“Daddy!” A piercing, desolate little-girl shriek: Ellen Carver.

“Get those kids out of here!” Brad Josephson, hard and commanding, God bless him, but Joh

“Why-” Gary begins, then stops when Joh

“Say anything and I’ll punch your lights out,” he says. “I mean it.”

Gary looks vague-almost doltish-for a moment, and then his face fills first with a goaty sort of understanding, followed by fake solemnity. He makes a zipping motion across his lips, though, and that’s good. In the long run Gary will almost certainly talk, but Joh

He turns toward the Carver house and sees David Reed carrying the little Carver girl-she is shrieking and kicking her legs in vast scissoring motions-toward the house. Pie Carver on her knees, wailing as Joh

“Jim,” Joh

“Take Ralphie inside, Jim. He shouldn’t be here.”

Jim nods, picks the boy up, and trots up the walk with him. Joh

He thinks of trying to separate Kirsten from the corpse-it’ll have to be done sooner or later-but Collie Entragian arrives at the Billingsley house before he can make his move, with the counter-girl from the E-Z Stop right behind him. The girl has pulled ahead of the longhair, who is puffing badly. The guy isn’t as young as his rock and roll hair made him look from a distance. Joh

It’s like the last chapter of an Agatha Christie, he thinks, when Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot explains everything, even how the murderer got out of the locked sleeping-car berth after doing the deed. We’re all here except for Frank Geller and Charlie Reed, who are still at work. It’s a regular block-party.

Except, he realizes, that’s not quite true. Audrey Wyler isn’t here, and neither is her nephew. The edge of something glimmers in his mind at that. He has a flash memory-the sound of a kid with a cold, he had thought-but before he can do more than start to reach for it, wanting to see if it’s co