Gwendy’s Final Task

And apparently she’s not the only one who notices. For the first time since he started recording, Vernon Beeson, from Providence, Rhode Island zooms in for a closer look. The houses and gas station and Bassey Park all fall away. As the front end of the Chrysler, with its acre of shiny green hood, rushes forward and fills the screen, Gwendy suddenly wishes she were wearing her flight helmet so she could lower the visor. Looking at the four men and their funny green car doesn’t just make her eyes want to water, it makes her brain want to water. The camera slowly pans away from the Chrysler and once again finds the men at the side of the road. Even up close, they continue to blur in and out, as if they’re being seen from behind a dirty pane of rain-streaked glass. One of the men is standing directly in front of Ryan’s body sparing Gwendy an up-close and personal look at the gruesome details. She swears if he moves one step to the left or right, she’s going to scream, or throw her laptop across the room, or both. There’s a sudden burst of ear-piercing static and then the screen goes dark. And remains that way for what feels like a long time. Just when she’s convinced the video is over, it sparks back to life again.

In the interim, cameraman Vernon Beeson has given up on the close-up, and is pulling back to the original wide-angle view. As the row of houses reappears on the right side of the screen, the abandoned gas station and Bassey Park creep back into view on the left. The four masked men standing across the intersection gradually regain their focus, albeit from a distance. The static is gone.

Gwendy glances at the time code in the upper corner of the video screen and is astonished to discover that she’s only been watching for three minutes and forty-seven seconds. It feels so much longer than that.

The men in the yellow dusters and bandanas have grown quiet. They shuffle closer to each other, standing with their heads pressed together—palavering, Gwendy thinks—and then they break up their impromptu huddle. Three of the men return to the car. Even with the volume turned down, the slamming of the car doors is very loud inside the small sitting room. The fourth man waits on the side of the road until the Chrysler speeds away—with not so much as a whisper of its engine—and then he jaywalks across Carter Street and disappears into the cold afternoon shadows of Bassey Park.

Ryan’s body remains silent and still on the shoulder of the road.

Nobody else comes, because in Derry, nobody ever does when things like this happen.

A few seconds later, the video ends.

33

GWENDY’S ANGER IS BACK. Her face feels as hot as a furnace and her jaw aches from grinding her teeth. She wipes away tears with a Kleenex, uses it to noisily blow her nose, and then stuffs it in the zero-g wastecan. While her shell-shocked mind is unable to fully comprehend what she’s just witnessed, she knows enough to call it what it is: cold-blooded murder. Someone—the blond stranger from her vision, the strange men in their yellow coats, or maybe even Gareth Winston—lured her husband to Derry and ran him down in the middle of the street like a stray dog. Were they all working for Sombra? Gwendy guesses they were. Are.

Even from across the room and inside the closet, she can hear the steady hum of the button box calling to her. Just because you hear it, she reminds herself, doesn’t mean you have to listen to it. She already knows what it’s saying anyway. Ever since they landed on Many Flags the button box is like a broken fucking record. Just one more piece of chocolate, Gwendy girl, that’s all. Just one more delicious bite-sized animal and you’ll think clearer and you’ll sleep better and you’ll never forget another goddamn thing. Or, better yet, why not press the red button and make all your troubles disappear? Starting with your billionaire friend. You know you want to …

“You’re damn right I want to,” she snaps, yanking another Kleenex from the box. “And if he’d actually been there in the video, I don’t think I could hold back.”

Gwendy shoves the voice into the corner of her broken brain—it’s getting more and more difficult to do this as her journey nears its end—and clicks on the MITCHELL file. There are a series of loud beeps and then the video begins.

The interrogation room is small and plain. Three gray walls. A tinted viewing window occupies the upper portion of the fourth. It’s impossible to tell who is watching from behind the dark glass, but Gwendy guesses that Charlotte Morgan is one of them. Possibly the only one.