Lois shoots Atropos with finger

Lois Chasse, a sixty-eight-year-old widow living on Harris Avenue, had been suffering from progressive insomnia and strange sensory experiences for months, but she had no idea she possessed any extraordinary power until the moment she raised her finger and shot a bolt of blue-gray energy at a supernatural creature. That act, performed in Strawford Park on a Tuesday morning in early October 1993, transformed her from a frightened, confused woman into an active combatant in the hidden war between the Purpose and the Random. It was the first time Lois consciously wielded the hyper-real abilities that she and Ralph Roberts had developed through their shared sleeplessness, and it proved that their powers were not hallucinations but real weapons that could hurt the little bald doctors who moved unseen through Derry.

The Confrontation in the Park

Ralph and Lois had been sitting on a bench in Strawford Park when they spotted Atropos, the rogue bald doctor, emerging from a Portosan at the bottom of the hill. He was wearing Bill McGovern's missing Panama hat and carrying a rusty scalpel, and he had already begun to torment Rosalie, the old stray dog who scavenged Harris Avenue. Ralph could see the creature clearly in his heightened state of perception, but Lois could only see "a shimmer, like the air over an incinerator." When Ralph put his hands over her eyes, a flash of white light transferred his ability to see the auras to her, and she suddenly perceived Atropos in all his malignant detail. The creature was trying to lure Rosalie across the street, and when Lois shouted at him to leave the dog alone, he snarled at her, calling her a "fat old Short-Time cunt" and claiming the dog belonged to him. Ralph tried to produce another bolt of blue light from his hand, but his power had faded, and he realized he could not stop Atropos alone. He turned to Lois and told her to shoot her hand at the creature, making frantic wood-chopping gestures to show her what he meant.

The First Shot

Lois initially responded with dismay and incomprehension, but when Ralph grabbed her hand and stripped off her glove, she understood. She raised her own hand, extended her forefinger, and made a child's shooting gesture, thinking "Pow! Pow!" Two compact lozenge shapes, the same gray-blue shade as Lois's aura but much brighter, flew from the end of her finger and streaked down the hill toward Atropos. The first of these "bullets" went under the creature as he leaped upward, striking the ground, rebounding like a flat stone skipped across a pond, and hitting the Portosan marked WOMEN, which glowed fiercely for a moment. The second blue-gray pellet clipped Atropos's left hip and ricocheted up into the sky. The creature screamed—a high, chattery sound that twisted like a worm in the middle of Ralph's and Lois's heads—and fell to the ground, rolling back and forth and howling, holding his hip like a small child who has tumbled off a tricycle.

Aftermath and Recognition

Atropos scrambled to his feet, his eyes blazing, the left side of his smock black and smoking from the impact. He screamed that he would get them both, then whirled and bounded down the path toward the playground, running in giant flying leaps like an astronaut on the moon. Lois stared at her own finger as if she had never seen it before, then turned to Ralph and said, "I shot it. I shot it with my finger." Ralph confirmed that she had, and that it had stung the creature hard. Lois was shaken but exhilarated, and when she asked Ralph what the power was for, he could only shake his head. But the event had changed everything: Lois was no longer a passive victim of the strange events unfolding around her. She had become an active participant, and she had proven that the hyper-real world was not just something to be observed but something to be fought. The encounter also deepened the bond between her and Ralph, as they had shared an experience that no one else in Derry could understand, and it set the stage for the larger confrontation to come at the Civic Center.