Free Dreamcatcher by Stephen King

“It’s all mixed up in my mind . . . my stomach’s been hurting ever since I got lost . . . it always hurts when I’m ascairt, ever since I was a little kid . . .”
    And he was like a little kid, Jonesy thought, looking everywhere at once with perfect unselfconsciousness. Jonesy led the guy toward the couch in front of the fireplace and the guy let himself be led. Ascairt. He even said ascairt instead of afraid, like a kid. A little kid.
    â€œGive me your coat,” Jonesy said, and as the guy first unbuttoned the buttons and then reached for the zipper under them, Jonesy thought again of how he had thought he was looking at a deer, at a buck for Chrissake—he had mistaken one of those buttons for an eye and had damned near put a bullet through it.
    The guy got the zipper halfway down and then it stuck, one side of the little gold mouth choking on the cloth. He looked at it—gawked at it, really—as if he had never seen such a thing before. And when Jonesy reached for the zipper, the man dropped his hands to his sides and simply let Jonesy reach, as a first-grader would stand and let the teacher put matters right when he got his galoshes on the wrong feet or his jacket on inside out.
    Jonesy got the little gold mouth started again and pulled it the rest of the way down. Outside the window-wall, The Gulch was disappearing, although you could still see the black scrawled shapes of the trees. Almost twenty-five years they had come up here together for the hunting, almost twenty-five years without a single miss, and in none of that time had there been snow heavier than the occasional squall. It looked like all that was about to change, although how could you tell? These days the guys on radio and TVmade four inches of fresh powder sound like the next Ice Age.
    For a moment the guy only stood there with his jacket hanging open and snow melting around his boots on the polished wooden floor, looking up at the rafters with his mouth open, and yes, he was like a great big six-year-old—or like Duddits. You almost expected to see mittens dangling from the cuffs of his jacket on clips. He shrugged out of his coat in that perfectly recognizable child’s way, simply slumping his shoulders once it was unzipped and letting it fall. If Jonesy hadn’t been there to catch it, it would have gone on the floor and gotten right to work sopping up the puddles of melting snow.
    â€œWhat’s that?” he asked.
    For a moment Jonesy had no idea what the guy was talking about, and then he traced the stranger’s gaze to the bit of weaving which hung from the center rafter. It was colorful—red and green, with shoots of canary yellow, as well—and it looked like a spiderweb.
    â€œIt’s a dreamcatcher,” Jonesy said. “An Indian charm. Supposed to keep the nightmares away, I guess.”
    â€œIs it yours?”
    Jonesy didn’t know if he meant the whole place (perhaps the guy hadn’t been listening before) or just the dreamcatcher, but in either case the answer was the same. “No, my friend’s. We come up hunting every year.”
    â€œHow many of you?” The man was shivering, holding his arms crisscrossed over his chest and cuppinghis elbows in his palms as he watched Jonesy hang his coat on the tree by the door.
    â€œFour. Beaver—this is his camp—is out hunting now. I don’t know if the snow’ll bring him back in or not. Probably it will. Pete and Henry went to the store.”
    â€œGosselin’s? That one?”
    â€œUh-huh. Come on over here and sit down on the couch.”
    Jonesy led him to the couch, a ridiculously long sectional. Such things had gone out of style decades ago, but it didn’t smell too bad and nothing had infested it. Style and taste didn’t matter much at Hole in the Wall.
    â€œStay put now,” he said, and left the man sitting there, shivering and shaking with his