Read Online Hearts In Atlantis by Stephen King - Free Book Online Page A

touch of the fingers, thickened almost into knots at the joints. And this wasn’t lying, not really. It was leaving out.
    â€œYou’re really sure?”
    If you want to learn to lie, Bobby-O, I suppose leaving things out is as good a place to start as any , an interior voice whispered. Bobby ignored it. “Yes,” he said,“really sure. Ted . . . are these guys just dangerous to you or to anybody?” He was thinking of his mom, but he was also thinking of himself.
    â€œTo me they could be very dangerous indeed. To other people— most other people—probably not. Do you want to know a funny thing?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œThe majority of people don’t even see them unless they’re very, very close. It’s almost as if they have the power to cloud men’s minds, like The Shadow on that old radio program.”
    â€œDo you mean they’re . . . well . . .” He supposed supernatural was the word he wasn’t quite able to say.
    â€œNo, no, not at all.” Waving his question away before it could be fully articulated. Lying in bed that night and sleepless for longer than usual, Bobby thought that Ted had almost been afraid for it to be spoken aloud. “There are lots of people, quite ordinary ones, we don’t see. The waitress walking home from work with her head down and her restaurant shoes in a paper bag. Old fellows out for their afternoon walks in the park. Teenage girls with their hair in rollers and their transistor radios playing Peter Tripp’s countdown. But children see them. Children see them all. And Bobby, you are still a child.”
    â€œThese guys don’t sound exactly easy to miss.”
    â€œThe coats, you mean. The shoes. The loud cars. But those are the very things which cause some people—many people, actually—to turn away. To erect little roadblocks between the eye and the brain. In any case, I won’t have you taking chances. If you do see the men in the yellow coats, don’t approach them . Don’t speak to them even if they should speak to you.I can’t think why they would, I don’t believe they would even see you—just as most people don’t really see them—but there are plenty of things I don’t know about them. Now tell me what I just said. Repeat it back. It’s important.”
    â€œDon’t approach them and don’t speak to them.”
    â€œEven if they speak to you.” Rather impatiently.
    â€œEven if they speak to me, right. What should I do?”
    â€œCome back here and tell me they’re about and where you saw them. Walk until you’re certain you’re out of their sight, then run. Run like the wind. Run like hell was after you.”
    â€œAnd what will you do?” Bobby asked, but of course he knew. Maybe he wasn’t as sharp as Carol, but he wasn’t a complete dodo, either. “You’ll go away, won’t you?”
    Ted Brautigan shrugged and finished his glass of rootbeer without meeting Bobby’s eyes. “I’ll decide when that time comes. If it comes. If I’m lucky, the feelings I’ve had for the last few days—my sense of these men—will go away.”
    â€œHas that happened before?”
    â€œIndeed it has. Now why don’t we talk of more pleasant things?”
    For the next half an hour they discussed baseball, then music (Bobby was startled to discover Ted not only knew the music of Elvis Presley but actually liked some of it), then Bobby’s hopes and fears concerning the seventh grade in September. All this was pleasant enough, but behind each topic Bobby sensed the lurk of the low men. The low men were here in Ted’s third-floor room like peculiar shadows which cannot quite be seen.
    It wasn’t until Bobby was getting ready to leave that Ted raised the subject of them again. “There are things you should look for,” he said.