Read It for Free Online Page B

terrible unfinished novel. He expected to finish it by his birthday, in October. Of course, he didn’t know what Derry was really like. He thought he did, but he hadn’t been here long enough to get a whiff of the real Derry. I kept trying to tell him, but he wouldn’t listen.”
    â€œAnd what’s Derry really like, Don?” Reeves asked.
    â€œIt’s a lot like a dead strumpet with maggots squirming out of her cooze,” Don Hagarty said.
    The two cops stared in silent amazement.
    â€œIt’s a bad place,” Hagarty said. “It’s a sewer. You mean you two guys don’t know that? You two guys have lived here all of your lives and you don’t know that?”
    Neither of them answered. After a little while, Hagarty went on.
9
    Until Adrian Mellon entered his life, Don had been planning to leave Derry. He had been there for three years, mostly because he had agreed to a long-term lease on an apartment with the world’s most fantastic river-view, but now the lease was almost up and Don was glad. No more long commute back and forth to Bangor. Nomore weird vibes—in Derry, he once told Adrian, it always felt like thirteen o’clock. Adrian might think Derry was a great place, but it scared Don. It was not just the town’s tightly homophobic attitude, an attitude as clearly expressed by the town’s preachers as by the graffiti in Bassey Park, but that was one thing he had been able to put his finger on. Adrian had laughed.
    â€œDon, every town in America has a contingent that hates the gayfolk,” he said. “Don’t tell me you don’t know that. This is, after all, the era of Ronnie Moron and Phyllis Housefly.”
    â€œCome down to Bassey Park with me,” Don had replied, after seeing that Adrian really meant what he was saying—and what he was really saying was that Derry was no worse than any other fair-sized town in the hinterlands. “I want to show you something, my love.”
    They drove to Bassey Park—this had been in mid-June, about a month before Adrian’s murder, Hagarty told the cops. He took Adrian into the dark, vaguely unpleasant-smelling shadows of the Kissing Bridge. He pointed out one of the graffiti. Adrian had to strike a match and hold it below the writing in order to read it.
    SHOW ME YOUR COCK QUEER AND I’LL CUT IT OFF YOU .
    â€œI know how people feel about gays,” Don said quietly. “I got beaten up at a truck-stop in Dayton when I was a teenager; some fellows in Portland set my shoes on fire outside of a sandwich shop while this fat-assed old cop sat inside his cruiser and laughed. I’ve seen a lot . . . but I’ve never seen anything quite like this. Look over here. Check it out.”
    Another match revealed STICK NAILS IN EYES OF ALL FAGOTS (FOR GOD )!
    â€œWhoever writes these little homilies has got a case of the deep-down crazies. I’d feel better if I thought it was just one person, one isolated sickie, but . . .” Don swept his arm vaguely down the length of the Kissing Bridge. “There’s a lot of this stuff . . . and I just don’t think one person did it all. That’s why I want to leave Derry, Ade. Too many places and too many people seem to have the deep-down crazies.”
    â€œWell, wait until I finish my novel, okay? Please? October, I promise, no later. The air’s better here.”
    â€œHe didn’t know it was the water he was going to have to watch out for,” Don Hagarty said bitterly.
10
    Tom Boutillier and Chief Rademacher leaned forward, neither of them speaking. Chris Unwin sat with his head down, talking monotonously to the floor. This was the part they wanted to hear; this was the part that was going to send at least two of these assholes to Thomaston.
    â€œThe fair wasn’t no good,” Unwin said. “They was already takin down all the bitchin rides, you know, like the Devil Dish