Gwendy’s Final Task

There are four men crammed inside the room. One of them, wearing a dark suit and holstered sidearm, leans against the only door. His face is blurred, and for a fleeting instant, Gwendy thinks he’s one of them—the men in the yellow coats—but then she quickly realizes the man’s face has been purposely obscured to protect his identity. A second agent’s face has also been hidden. He’s sitting behind a narrow desk, studying an open laptop. To his immediate right is the agent in charge, whose unblurred face instantly reminds Gwendy of her father’s youngest brother, Uncle Harvey. With his tortoise-shell glasses and bushy mustache, this guy looks like he could be just about anyone’s favorite uncle or maybe even a science teacher from the local high school, the one who gets voted school favorite in the yearbook. Both of the agents sitting behind the desk are dressed in slacks and Oxford shirts. No jackets or ties.

The final man in the room is the guest of honor. Ward Mitchell is wearing a loose-fitting orange jumpsuit with the sleeves rolled up. He’s seated in a straight-backed metal chair that has been securely bolted to the floor. Gwendy can see he’s struggling to keep his head up and his eyes open. There’s a darkening bruise rising beneath one of his eyes and both of his lips appear to be swollen. That dismissive little smile of his is nowhere to be seen. Mitchell’s arms are propped up in front of him atop the desk. A small surgical tube runs from the bend of his right arm to a portable IV stand. A bag of clear fluid hangs on the uppermost hook, honey-dripping top-secret contents into Mitchell’s bloodstream. There’s a pressure cuff wrapped around the detective’s left bicep, as well as a tangle of wires leading from just inside the collar of his jumpsuit to the back of the agent’s laptop.

“Let’s start with your name.” The agent’s voice is firm but pleasant. He even sounds like a science teacher.

Mitchell blinks and looks around the room as if he’s just awakened from a deep sleep. He clears his throat. “Ward Thomas Mitchell.”

“Age?”

“Forty-four.”

You look older, Gwendy thinks, not without satisfaction.

“Address?”

“1920 Tupelo Road. Derry, Maine.”

“And you’re from Derry originally?”

“Born and raised there.”

Well, that explains a lot, the senator thinks.

“Occupation?”

“Derry PD. Almost thirty years. Detective the last twelve.”

“Married?”

“Divorced.”

“Kids?”

“One. A boy.”

“How ol—”

She knows what they’re doing, easing him into it with easy questions, but this isn’t what she came for. Gwendy presses the arrow button on her laptop and fast-forwards the video. She forgets what she’s doing for a moment—a mini Brain Freeze, here and gone in a matter of seconds—and advances too far. She quickly hits REWIND and watches as the time code begins to reverse. Finally stopping at the 5:33 mark, she presses PLAY. Her hands are shaking.

“… referenced strange occurrences in Derry. Can you give us an example?”

Mitchell gives a confidential smile. His eyes are drifting around in their sockets. Gwendy thinks she might have seen people this cataclysmically stoned, but not since college. “I’ve heard voices.”

“Like in your head, Detective?”

“No-ooo … from inside the drains at my house.”

“Really?” The head guy glances at the tinted window and wiggles his eyebrows. “From the drains, huh?”

“Once … I’d just turned off the water after taking a shower … someone called out to me from inside the drain. And then they started laughing.”

“They?”

“It sounded like kids. A whole bunch of kids laughing.”

“And this voice, what did it say to you?”

“My name.”

The agent in charge scratches his chin. This time he gives the eyebrow-waggle to his partner.

“Another time I was loading the dishwater and I heard that same voice coming from the kitchen sink. It said ‘We’re saving you a seat, Warthog.’ No one’s called me that since I was a snot-nose kid at Derry Elementary.”

“Anything else?”

Ward Thomas Mitchell, aka Warthog, laughs. But there’s no laughter in his eyes. “There’s the clown.”

“Want to see a clown, Ward, look in the mirror,” one of the others says. He sounds disgusted.

Mitchell pays no attention. “Back when I was a rookie, I started having bad dreams. They got so horrible I was afraid to go to sleep at night. I was being chased in the sewers by someone dressed as a clown.”

Gwendy suddenly thinks of her old friend’s story about a clown with big silver eyes chasing her in Derry. She’s also thinking about her father and his warnings about the town. So out of character for him. She’s almost certain that something happened to her father during his short stay in Derry—something horrible—but he’s never admitted as much, and she doubts he even remembers now. Or maybe he does and is just too frightened, even after all these years, to talk about it.