And the lights came on. Just as they did in his Star Trek–style computer workroom when he voice-activated them from the top of the stairs leading down from the kitchen.

That’s where he was: in his basement on Elm Street, looking just as it had on the day he’d left it for the last time. There was another word that woke up another function, and now that he was here, he remembered that, as well. Because it was a good word.

“Chaos!”

In his mind, he boomed it out like Moses on Mount Sinai. In his hospital bed, it was a whispered croak. But it did the job, because his row of laptop computers came to life. On each screen was the number 20 . . . then 19 . . . then 18 . . .

What is this? What, in the name of God?

For a panicky moment he couldn’t remember. All he knew was that if the countdown he saw marching across the seven screens reached zero, the computers would freeze. He would lose them, this room, and the little sliver of consciousness he had somehow managed. He would be buried alive in the darkness of his own hea—

And that was the word! The very one!

“Darkness!”

He screamed it at the top of his lungs—at least inside. Outside it was that same whispered croak from long unused vocal cords. His pulse, respiration, and blood pressure had all begun to rise. Soon Head Nurse Becky Helmington would notice and come to check on him, hurrying but not quite running.

In Brady’s basement workroom, the countdown on the computers stopped at 14, and on each screen a picture appeared. Once upon a time, those computers (now stored in a cavernous police evidence room and labeled exhibits A through G) had booted up showing stills from a movie called The Wild Bunch. Now, however, they showed photographs from Brady’s life.

On screen 1 was his brother Frankie, who choked on an apple, suffered his own brain damage, and later fell down the cellar stairs (helped along by his big brother’s foot).

On screen 2 was Deborah herself. She was dressed in a clingy white robe that Brady remembered instantly. She called me her honeyboy, he thought, and when she kissed me her lips were always a little damp and I got a hard-on. When I was little, she called that a stiffy. Sometimes when I was in the tub she’d rub it with a warm wet washcloth and ask me if it felt good.

On screen 3 were Thing One and Thing Two, inventions that had actually worked.

On screen 4 was Mrs. Trelawney’s gray Mercedes sedan, the hood dented and the grille dripping with blood.

On screen 5 was a wheelchair. For a moment the relevance wouldn’t come, but then it clicked in. It was how he had gotten into the Mingo Auditorium on the night of the ’Round Here concert. Nobody worried about a poor old cripple in a wheelchair.