"Well, I'll do what I can for ya, already made up m'mind to that, but I got to ask you somethin now, while I got the chance."
Eddie and Roland exchanged a brief look. Roland said, "We'll answer if we can. Which is to say, John of East Stoneham, if we judge that the answer won't cause you harm."
John nodded. He seemed to gather himself. "I know you're not ghosts, because we all saw you back at the store and I just now touched you to shake hands. I can see the shadders you cast." He pointed at where they lay across the side of the boat. "Real as real. So my question is this: are you walk-ins?"
"Walk-ins," Eddie said. He looked at Roland, but Roland's face was completely blank. Eddie looked back at John Cullum, sitting in the stern of the boat and steering them toward the boathouse. "I'm sorry, but I don't..."
"Been a lot of em around here, last few years," John said. "Waterford, Stoneham, East Stoneham, Lovell, Sweden...even over in Bridgton and Denmark." This last township name came outDenmaa-aaak.
He saw they were still puzzled.
"Walk-ins're people who justappear, " he said. "Sometimes they're dressed in old-fashioned clothes, as if they came from...ago,I guess you'd say. One was nekkid as a jay-bird, walkin right up the middle of Route 5. Junior Angstrom seen im. Last November this was. Sometimes they talk other languages. One came to Don Russert's house over in Waterford. Sat right there in the kitchen! Donnie's a retired history professor from Vanderbilt College and he taped the fella. Fella jabbered quite awhile, then went into the laundry room. Donnie figured he must'a taken it for the bathroom and went after him to turn him around, but the fella was already gone. No door for him to go out of, but gone he was.
"Donnie played that tape of his for just about everyone in the Vandy Languages Department (Depaaa-aatment), and wasn't none of em recognized it. One said it must be a completely made-up language, like Esperanto. Do you sabby Esperanto, boys?"
Roland shook his head. Eddie said (cautiously), "I've heard of it, but I don't really know what it i - "
"And sometimes," John said, his voice lowering as they glided into the shadows of the boathouse, "sometimes they're hurt. Or disfigured. Roont."
Roland started so suddenly and so hard that the boat rocked. For a moment they were actually in danger of being tipped out. "What? What do you say? Speak again, John, for I would hear it very well."
John apparently thought it was purely an issue of verbal comprehension, because this time he was at pains to pronounce the word more carefully. "Ruined.Like folks who'd been in a nuclear war, or a fallout zone, or something."
"Slow mutants," Roland said. "I think he might be talking about slow muties. Here in this town."
Eddie nodded, thinking about the Grays and Pubes in Lud. Also thinking about a misshapen beehive and the monstrous insects which had been crawling over it.
John killed the little Evinrude engine, but for a moment the three of them sat where they were, listening to water slap hollowly against the aluminum sides of the boat.
"Slow mutants," the old fellow said, almost seeming to taste the words. "Ayuh, I guess that'd be as good a name for em as any. But they ain't the only ones. There's been animals, too, and kinds of birds no one's ever seen in these parts. But mostly it's the walk-ins that've got people worried and talkin amongst themselves. Donnie Russert called someone he knew at Duke University, and that fella called someone in their Department of Psychic Studies - amazin they've got such a thing as that in a real college, but it appears they do - and the Psychic Studies woman said that's what such folks are called: walk-ins. And then, when they disappear again - which they always do, except for one fella over in East Conway Village, who died - they're called walk-outs.The lady said that some scientists who study such things - I guess you could call em scientists, although I know a lot of folks might argue - b'lieve that walk-ins are aliens from other planets, that spaceships drop em off and then pick em up again, but most of em think they're time-travelers, or from different Earths that lie in a line with ours."
"How long has this been going on?" Eddie asked. "How long have the walk-ins been showing up?"
"Oh, two or three years. And it's gettin worse ruther'n better. I seen a couple of such fellas myself, and once a woman with a bald head who looked like she had this bleedin eye in the middle of her forread. But they was all at a distance, and you fellas are up close."
John leaned toward them over his bony knees, his eyes (as blue as Roland's own) gleaming. Water slapped hollowly at the boat. Eddie felt a strong urge to take John Cullum's hand again, to see if something else would happen. There was another Dylan song called "Visions of Johanna." What Eddie wanted was not a vision of Johanna, but the name was at least close to that.
"Ayuh," John was saying, "you boys are right up close and personal. Now, I'll help you along your way if I can, because I don't sense nothing the least bit bad about either of you (although I'm going to tell you flat out that I ain'tnever seen such shooting), but I want to know: are you walk-ins or not?"
Once more Roland and Eddie exchanged looks, and then Roland answered. "Yes," he said. "I suppose we are."
"Gorry," John whispered. In his awe, not even his seamed face could keep him from looking like a child. "Walk-ins! And where is it you're from, can you tell me that?" He looked at Eddie, laughed the way people do when they are admitting you've put a good one over on them, and said: "NotBrooklyn. "
"But Iam from Brooklyn," Eddie said. The only thing was it hadn't beenthis world's Brooklyn, and he knew that now. In the world he came from, a children's book namedCharlie the Choo-Choo had been written by a woman named Beryl Evans; in this one it had been written by someone named Claudia y Inez Bachman. Beryl Evans sounded real and Claudia y Inez Bachman sounded phony as a three-dollar bill, yet Eddie was coming more and more to believe that Bachman was the true handle. And why? Because it came as part of this world.