Read Stephen King's N. for Free Online Page B

be institutionalized soon, if he doesn’t find a way to get back to his personal Highway 117. Turn around or back up, it doesn’t matter which, but he has to get away from that field. So do I, actually. I’ve been dreaming about N.’s field, which I’m sure I could find if I wanted to. Not that I do—that would be too much like sharing my patient’s delusion—but I’m sure I could find it. One night this weekend (while I was having trouble finding sleep myself), it occurred to me that I must have driven past it, not just once but hundreds of times. Because I’ve been over the Bale Road Bridge hundreds of times, and past Serenity Ridge Cemetery thousands of times; that was on the school-bus route to James Lowell Elementary, where Sheila and I went. So sure, I could find it. If I wanted to. If it exists.
    [I ask if the prescription helps, if he’s been sleeping. The dark circles under his eyes tell me he hasn’t been, but I’m curious to hear how he responds.]
    Much better. Thanks. And the OCD’s a little better, too.
    [As he says this, his hands—more prone to tell the truth—are stealthily placing the vase and the Kleenex box at opposing corners of the table by the couch. Today Sandy has put out roses. He arranges them so they link the box and the vase. I ask him what happened after he went up to to Ackerman’s Field with the borrowed camera. He shrugs.]
    Nothing. Except of course I paid for the photo-shop guy’s Nikon. Pretty soon it really was hunting season, and those woods get dangerous, even if you’re wearing blaze orange from head to toe. Although I somehow doubt if there are many deer in that area; I imagine they steer clear.
    The OCD shit smoothed out, and I started sleeping through the night again.
    Well…some of the nights. There were dreams, of course. In the dreams I was always in that field, trying to pull the camera out of the hay, but the hay wouldn’t let go. The blackness spilled out of the circle like oil, and when I looked up I saw the sky had cracked open from east to west and a terrible black light was pouring out…light that was alive. And hungry. That’s when I’d wake up, drenched with sweat. Sometimes screaming.
    Then, in early December, I got a letter at the office. It was marked PERSONAL with a small object inside. I tore it open and what fell out onto my desk was a little key with a tag on it. The tag said A.F. I knew what it was, and what it meant. If there’d been a letter, it would have said, “I tried to keep you out. It’s not my fault, and maybe not yours, but either way this key, and all it opens, is yours now. Take good care of it.”
    That weekend I drove back out to Motton, but I didn’t bother parking in the lot at Serenity Ridge. I didn’t need to anymore, you see. The Christmas decorations were up in Portland and the other small towns I passed along the way. It was bitterly cold, but there wasn’t any snow yet. You know how it’s always colder just before the snow comes? That’s how it was that day. But the sky was overcast, and the snow did come, a blizzard that very night. It was a big one. Do you remember?
    [I tell him I do. I have reason to remember (although I don’t tell him this). Sheila and I were snowed in at the home place, where we’d gone to check on some repair work. We got squiffy and danced to old Beatles and Rolling Stones records. It was pleasant.]
    The chain was still across the road, but the A.F. key fit the lock. And the downed trees had been hauled to one side. As I’d known they would be. It was no good blocking the road anymore, because that field is now my field, those stones are now my stones, and whatever it is they’re keeping in is my responsibility.
    [I ask him if he was frightened, sure the answer must be yes. But N. surprises me.]
    Not much, no. Because the place was different. I knew it even from the end of the road, where it T’s into 117. I could feel it. And I could hear crows cawing as I opened the lock with my new key. Ordinarily I think that’s an