castle rock is smaller than he remembers. when gordie was a child, it had seemed huge and small at the same time, a never-ending patchwork of buildings, each one filled by someone else who knew him. someone else who knew the lesser lachance son. someone who knew the youngest chambers boy. it was big enough that he could never escape, yet small enough that he could never get away.
now, though, he knows that there are no demons left in the trashcans he and chris used to hide behind. castle rock is a ghost-town, and the old men on their rocking chairs are nothing but mist and memories. he and chris had taken the life out of castle rock when they left, their shitty car packed with shiny new hardcover textbooks and hand-me-down clothing from the brothers they were running from. there was a radio in the front seat, and chris had sung along the whole time, horribly off-key and so vibrant with hope and life.
there is only one spot that could still have that brightness, and gordie is running before he means to, kicking up clouds of dust on abandoned roads until the bones of the treehouse come into view. as his breath comes in rib-aching pants, he isn’t world renowned author gordon lachance. he isn’t denny lachance’s little brother. he’s just gordie, doing what he’s always done; gravitating to the one person who has always been the centre of his orbit.
but he is older, and the treehouse is too. the ladder creaks in protest as he scales it, but it isn’t until he gets inside properly that he realizes that it’s part of the ghost-town, too. The milk crates they used to sit on are covered in moss, and the shutters have long been blown off. But the two crates in the corner are still pushed together, as if the invisible people on them still have their heads bent together, whispering close, and gordie drops to his knees with the weight of his emotion.
he wants to weep. he wants to scream. he wants, more than anything, to crawl back in time. he wants to be twelve years old again, so full of hope and love. so desperately in love with the person sitting on the other crate. he wants — he needs the knowledge he had then: that even if he had nothing, he would have chris. chris would call, and he would come running, because that’s what he did. that’s what he still does, grasping at the edges of his ghost.
gordie takes a deep breath in, and out, the way his therapist taught him. then, because that doesn’t help enough, he punches the wall with all of his strength.
wood cracks under his fingers, the oldest pieces rotten with time, but he can barely feel the pain through the fog in his head. when a piece springs free to the side, he pulls with all his might, and it detaches from the wall of the treehouse with a crack. he and chris had fixed that wall, once.
but chris would never build a tree house again. he would never ride a bike or drive a car. he would never sing along to the songs on the radio in the summer again. the treehouse was theirs, but there wasn’t a them anymore.
gordie’s sobs sounded like screams as he tore it down. he leaves the broken heap of moldy wood at the bottom of the tree, and breaks his ankle by kicking the crate. the aged wood splits down the middle, and he wants to put it back together, but it’s just the latest thing in the long stream of ghosts in gordie’s life.
that night, as a doctor pulls slivers out of his broken knuckles, he doesn’t even wince. he just stares ahead, eyes unfocused and unseeing, half surprised that he was still able to bleed.
castle rock is a ghost-town, after all.
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