“I think it’s Frank Dunning,” I whispered to Sadie. I gripped her arm. It was very cold. It was like gripping the arm of a deadperson. A woman who had been beaten to death with a sledgehammer, perhaps.
Sadie shook her head. She was looking up at the ceiling, her mouth trembling.
Clud, thump, clud.
Plaster-dust sifting down.
“Then it’s John Clayton,” I whispered.
“No,” she said. “I think it’s the Yellow Card Man. He brought the Jimla.”
Above us, the thudding stopped abruptly.
She took hold of my arm and began to shake it. Her eyes were eating up her face. “It is! It’s the Jimla! And it heard us!The Jimla knows we’re here!”
13
“Wake up, George! Wake up!”
I opened my eyes. She was propped on one elbow beside me, her face a pale blur. “What? What time is it? Do we have to go?” But it was still dark and the wind was still high.
“No. It isn’t even midnight. You were having a bad dream.” She laughed, a little nervously. “Maybe about football? Because you were saying ‘Jimla, Jimla.’?”
“Was I?” I sat up. There was the scrape of a match and her face was momentarily illuminated as she lit a cigarette.
“Yes. You were. You said all kinds of stuff.”
That was not good. “Like what?”
“Most of it I couldn’t make out, but one thing was pretty clear. ‘Derry is Dallas,’ you said. Then you said it backwards. ‘Dallas is Derry.’ What wasthatabout? Do you remember?”
“No.” But it’s hard to lie convincingly when you’re fresh out of sleep, even a shallow doze, and I saw skepticism on her face. Before it could deepen into disbelief, there was a knock at the door. At quarter to midnight, a knock.
We stared at each other.
The knock came again.
It’s the Jimla.This thought was very clear, very certain.
Sadie put her cigarette in the ashtray, gathered the sheet around her, and ran to the bathroom without a word. The door shut behind her.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“It’s Mr. Yorrity, sir—Bud Yorrity?”
One of the gay retired teachers who ran the place.
I got out of bed and pulled on my pants. “What is it, Mr. Yorrity?”
“I have a message for you, sir. Lady said it was urgent.”
I opened the door. He was a small man in a threadbare bathrobe. His hair was a sleep-frizzed cloud around his head. In one hand he held a piece of paper.
“What lady?”
“Ellen Dockerty.”
I thanked him for his trouble and closed the door. I unfolded the paper and read the message.
