CHET LANDRY DOES not refer to himself as Charlie Bencroft’s stepfather. In the same way that Charlie thinks of Chet only as his mom’s husband, Chet thinks of Charlie as the bitch’s kid. And since the bitch got locked out of town, and the bitch’s kid has gone AWOL, Chet is left to fend for himself. Not an easy task, considering Sammy was supposed to bring the goods home with her and not a single other person in town that Chet knows has anything that can help take away his shivers.
He’s been alone in the trailer since Saturday afternoon, chewing his fingernails down to their quicks, knocking back can after can of beer, alternating between nibbling on some saltine crackers and puking his brains out. Every time he hears a noise outside, he’s positive it’s the army showing up to drag him out and toss him into a cell. Chet’s been mumbling to himself, but he’s also trying to keep quiet because maybe, just maybe, the army has already been there. They could have planted a bug in one of the ceiling fans, could be listening in on everything he’s doing, which has mostly just been drinking.
Chet sits in his armchair, bobbing his knee up and down, watching himself in the dark TV screen on the other side of the living room. It’s quiet and hot. The trailer sits at the northeastern edge of the mobile home park, close enough to Dagger Hill that in the stuffy silence, Chet can just hear the faint echoes of the volunteers combing the woods for the kid’s friend, the Dowd girl.
“KIMBERLY!” They’re yelling her name, over and over again. “KIMBERLY DOWD!”
Or maybe it’s just Chet’s hard-boiled brain making him hear things. Either way, it’s driving him fucking batshit.
He snatches up the remote from the end table, almost knocking his can of PBR over in the process, and hits the POWER button. There aren’t any lights on in the house, but as soon as Chet presses the button, every light bulb flickers. Just a quick, momentary stutter, like an electronic shiver runs through the house.
The TV does come to life, though, only it’s not tuned to any channel he recognizes. A brief cloud of static snow fades into darkness, cut through every so often by a thin gray line rolling from the top of the screen to the bottom, like a bad reel in a VHS tape. But Chet doesn’t own a VCR.
On the screen, he can just make out something moving around in the fuzzy, unfocused shadows. At first, Chet thinks it’s an animal. But it has a humanlike face. And maybe those are arms and legs? They just don’t look right. None of this is right. Someone is tampering with Chet’s cable lines. Maybe it’s the army. Subliminal messaging. They’re trying to take advantage of his weakened state and brainwash him.
“I know what you’re doing!” Chet shouts at the TV. He hits the POWER button on the remote again, but the TV stays on. He tries a second time. The hazy outline of that thing is still there, lingering in the gray-black square of the screen. Watching him. It’s tall, so it has to lean to the side to keep its head in the shot, sort of drooping over, arms hanging limp. There are dark pits where the eyes should be, but they’re watching Chet all the same. For a second, he’s even sure that it winks at him—a bizarrely human gesture for something that looks like it tried to be a human and couldn’t quite get it right.
Chet throws the remote at the screen, and it knocks against the glass with a deep, gonging crack. Then the TV’s speakers emit a sound that stabs into Chet’s already aching head like a nail. He puts his hands over his ears, but it’s not enough to block out the noise. It’s as if the sound is coming from inside his own head. That can’t be right, though, can it? God, he could use a line right now. Just one, just enough to smooth him out around the edges and bring the bubbling in his brain down to a low simmer.
The noise persists. It jabs into his head, and he falls forward out of his chair, hits the floor on his knees. Chet Landry is crying, dripping snot and tears onto the dirty carpet.
“Please,” he moans. “Please make it stop.”
He doesn’t see the man in the gas mask standing behind the armchair where he was sitting only moments ago, staring down at him. He doesn’t realize what’s happening as that noise coming from the TV begins to break Chet down and pull him out. Memories and ideas go first, drifting away like flotsam and jetsam on a choppy swath of open sea. Then his personality—his addictions and ailments and the small shred of joyousness that he’s reserved for things like NASCAR and rebuilding motorcycle engines. Gone.
Much like it tried to do with Ricky Montoya and June Rapaport, the thing in the TV leaves only enough of Chet behind to retain his motor function and his ability to follow directions, and not much else. Maybe there’s a little leftover hatred banging around in there somewhere, but that’s all right. That might come in handy.
Chet’s crying eventually stops, and he’s lying on his side on the floor, drooling from the corner of his mouth. After a few minutes, he pulls his hollowed body up, walks in a straight line across the living room, takes his truck keys off the hook by the door.
It’s time to get to work.
As he steps out into the bright June day, unaware that the sun no longer burns his sore eyes, the cavities in his mind where Chet Landry used to exist begin to fill up with a strange sort of song, an ancient nursery rhyme that uses new words to tell an old story:
A song sung one, the end of the line.
A song sung two, we’ll be just fine.
A song sung three, dead is divine.
A song sung four, all outta time.