"Oh Jeez," she said in a faraway, frightened voice. "Jeez, Louise."
You have to get out of the bathroom, Jessie--you have to. Just worry about that, for now. I think you better crawl over the bed this time; I'm not sure you can make it underneath again.
But . . . but there's broken glass on the bed. What if I cut myself?
That brought Ruth Neary out again, and she was raving.
You've already taken most of the skin off your right hand--do you think a few more lacerations are going to make a difference? Jesus Christ, tootsie, what if you die in this bathroom with a cunt-diaper on your wrist and a big stupid grin on your face? How's that for a what-if? Get moving, bitch!
Two careful steps took her back to the bathroom doorway. Jessie only stood there for a moment, swaying and blinking her eyes against the sundazzle like someone who has spent the whole afternoon in a movie-theater. The next step took her to the bed. When her thighs were touching the bloodstained mattress, she carefully put her left knee up, grasped one of the footposts to ensure her balance, and then got onto the bed. She was unprepared for the feelings of fear and loathing which washed over her. She could no more imagine ever sleeping in this bed again than she could imagine sleeping in her own coffin. Just kneeling on it made her feel like screaming.
You don't need to have a deep, meaningful relationship with it, Jessie--just get across the fucking thing.
Somehow she managed to do that, avoiding the shelf and the crumbles and jags of broken water-glass by crossing at the foot of the mattress. Each time her eyes caught sight of the handcuffs dangling from the posts at the head of the bed, one sprung open, the other a closed steel circle covered with blood--her blood--a little sound of loathing and distress escaped her. The handcuffs didn't look like inanimate things to her. They looked alive. And still hungry.
She reached the far side of the bed, gripped the footpost with her good left hand, turned herself around on her knees with all the care of a hospital convalescent, then lay on her belly and lowered her feet to the floor. She had a bad moment when she didn't think she had strength enough to stand up again; that she would just lie there until she passed out and slid off the bed. Then she pulled in a deep breath and used her left hand to shove. A moment later she was on her feet. The sway was worse now--she looked like a sailor lurching into the Sunday morning segment of a weekend binge--but she was up, by God. Another wave of darkheadedness sailed across her mind like a pirate galleon with huge black sails. Or an eclipse.
Blind, rocking back and forth on her feet, she thought: Please, God, don't let me pass out. Please God, okay? Please.
At last the light began to come back into the day. When Jessie thought things had gotten as bright as they were going to, she slowly crossed the room to the telephone table, holding her left arm a few inches out from her body to maintain her balance. She picked up the receiver, which seemed to weigh as much as a volume of the Oxford English Dictionary, and brought it to her ear. There was no sound at all; the line was smooth and dead. Somehow this didn't surprise her, but it raised a question: had Gerald unplugged the phone from the wall, as he sometimes did when they were down here, or had her night-visitor cut the wires outside someplace?
"It wasn't Gerald," she croaked. "I would have seen him."
Then she realized that wasn't necessarily so--she had headed for the bathroom as soon as they were in the house. He could have done it then. She bent down, grasped the flat white ribbon that went from the back of the phone to the connector-box on the baseboard behind the chair, and pulled. She thought she felt a little give at first, and then nothing. Even that initial give might have been just her imagination; she knew perfectly well that her senses were no longer very trustworthy. The jack might just be bound up on the chair, but--
No, Goody said. It won't come because it's still plugged in--Gerald never disconnected it at all. The reason the phone doesn't work is because that thing that was in here with you last night cut the wire.
Don't listen to her; underneath that loud voice of hers, she's scared of her own shadow, Ruth said. The connector-plug's hung up on one of the chair's back legs--I practically guarantee it. Besides, it's easy enough to find out, isn't it?
Of course it was. All she had to do was pull the chair out and take a look behind it. And if the plug was out, put it back in.
What if you do all that and the phone still doesn't work? Goody asked. Then you'll know something else, won't you?
Ruth: Stop dithering--you need help, and you need it fast.
It was true, but the thought of pulling out the chair filled her with weary gloom. She could probably do it --the chair was big, but it still couldn't weigh a fifth of what the bed had weighed, and she had managed to move that all the way across the room--but the thought was heavy. And pulling the chair out would only be the beginning. Once it was moved, she would have to get down on her knees... crawl into the dim, dusty corner behind it to find the connector-box...
Jesus, tootsie! Ruth cried. She sounded alarmed. You don't have any choice! I thought that at long last we all agreed on at least one thing, that you need help, and you need it f--
Jessie suddenly slammed the door on Ruth's voice, and slammed it hard. Instead of moving the chair, she bent over it, picked up the culotte skirt, and carefully pulled it up her legs. Drops of blood from the soaked bandage on her wrist splattered across the front of it at once, but she hardly saw them. She was busy ignoring the jangle of angry, perplexed voices, and wondering just who had let all these weird people into her head in the first place. It was like waking up one morning and discovering your home had become a boarding hotel overnight. All the voices were expressing horrified disbelief at what she was planning to do, but Jessie suddenly discovered she didn't give much of a shit. This was her life. Hers.
She picked up the blouse and slipped her head into it. To her confused, shocked mind, the fact that yesterday had been warm enough for this casual sleeveless top seemed to conclusively prove the existence of God. She didn't think she would have been able to bear sliding her stripped right hand down a long sleeve.
Never mind that, she thought, this is nuts, and I don't need any make-believe voices to tell me so. I'm thinking about driving out of here--about trying, anyway--when the only thing I have to do is move that chair and plug the phone back in. It must be the blood-loss--it's driven me temporarily insane. This is a nutty idea. Christ, that chair can't weigh fifty pounds ... I'm almost home and dry!
Yes, except it wasn't the chair, and it wasn't the idea of the Rescue Services guys finding her in the same room as the naked, chewed corpse of her husband. Jessie had a pretty good idea she would be preparing to leave in the Mercedes even if the phone were in perfect working order and she had already summoned the police, the ambulance, and the Deering High School Marching Band. Because the phone wasn't the important thing--not at all. The important thing was... well....
The important thing is that I have to get the fuck out of here right away, she thought, and suddenly she shuddered. Her bare arms broke out in gooseflesh. Because that thing is going to come back.
Bullseye. The problem wasn't Gerald, or the chair, or what the Rescue Services guys might think when they got down here and saw the situation. It wasn't even the question of the telephone. The problem was the space cowboy; her old friend Dr. Doom. That was why she was putting on her clothes and splashing a little more of her blood around instead of making an effort to re-establish communications with the outside world. The stranger was someplace close by; of that she felt certain. It was only waiting for dark, and dark was close now. If she passed out while she was trying to push the chair away from the wall, or while she was crawling gaily around in the dust and the cobwebs behind it, she might still be here, all alone, when the thing with the suitcase of bones arrived. Worse, she might still be alive.
Besides, her visitor had cut the line. She had no way of knowing this ... but her heart knew it just the same. If she went through all the rigamarole of moving the
chair and plugging the t-connector back in, the phone would still be dead, just like the one in the kitchen and the one in the front hall.
And what's the big deal, anyway? she told her voices. I'm planning to drive out to the main road, that's all. Compared to performing impromptu surgery with a water-glass and pushing a double bed across the room while losing a pint of blood, it'll be a breeze. The Mercedes is a good car, and it's a straight shot up the driveway. I'll putter out to Route 117 at ten miles an hour, and if I feel too weak to drive all the way to Dakin's Store once I make the highway, I'll just pull across the road, put on the four-way flashers, and lay on the horn when I see someone coming. No reason why that shouldn't work, with the road flat and open for a mile and a half in either direction. The big thing about the car is the locks. Once I'm in it, there'll be doors I can lock. It won't be able to get in.
It, Ruth tried to sneer, but Jessie thought she sounded scared--yes, even her.
That's right, she returned. You were the one who always used to tell me I ought to put my head on hold more often and follow my heart, weren't you? You bet you were. And do you know what my heart says now, Ruth? It says that the Mercedes is the only chance I have. And if you want to laugh at that, go right ahead... but my mind is made up.
Ruth apparently did not want to laugh. Ruth had fallen silent.
Gerald handed me the car-keys just before he got out of the car, so he could reach into the back seat and get his briefcase. He did do that, didn't he? Please God, let my memory of that be right.
Jessie slipped her hand into the left pocket of her skirt and found only a couple of Kleenex. She reached down with her right hand, pressed it gingerly against the outside of that pocket, and let out a sigh of relief as she felt the familiar bulge of the car-key and the big round joke fob Gerald had given her for her last birthday. The words on the fob read YOU SEXY THING. Jessie decided she had never felt less sexy and more like a thing in her entire life, but that was okay; she could live with it. The key was in her pocket, that was the important thing. The key was her ticket out of this awful place.
Her tennies stood side by side underneath the telephone table, but Jessie decided she was as dressed as she intended to get. She started slowly toward the hall door, moving in tiny little invalid steps. As she went, she reminded herself to try the phone in the hall before going outside--it couldn't hurt.
She had barely rounded the head of the bed when the light began to slink out of the day again. It was as if the fat bright sunbeams slanting through the west window were connected to a dimmer-circuit, and someone was turning down the rheostat. As they dimmed, the diamond-dust revolving within them disappeared.
Oh no, not now, she pleaded. Please, you've got to be kidding. But the light continued to fade, and Jessie suddenly realized she was swaying again, her upper body describing ever-widening circles in the air. She groped for the bedpost and instead found herself clutching the bloody handcuff from which she had so recently escaped.
July 20th, 1963, she thought incoherently. 5:39 P.M. Total eclipse. Can I get a witness?
The mixed smell of sweat, semen, and her father's cologne filled her nose. She wanted to gag on it, but she was suddenly too weak. She managed two more tottery steps, then fell forward onto the bloodstained mattress. Her eyes were open and they blinked occasionally, but otherwise she lay as limp and moveless as a woman who has been cast up, drowned, on some deserted beach.
34
Her first returning thought was that the darkness meant she was dead.
Her second was that if she was dead, her right hand wouldn't feel as if it had first been napalmed and then flayed with razor-blades. Her third was the dismayed realization that if it was dark and her eyes were open--as they seemed to be--then the sun had gone down. That jolted her up from the in-between place where she had been lying, not quite unconscious but deep in a post-shock lassitude, in a hurry. At first she couldn't remember why the idea of sundown should be so frightening, and then
(space corwboy--monster of love)
it all came back to her in a rush so strong it was like an electrical shock. The narrow, corpse-white cheeks; the high forehead; the rapt eyes.
The wind had come up strongly once more while she had been lying semi-conscious on the bed, and the back door was banging again. For a moment the door and the wind were the only sounds, and then a long, wavering howl rose in the air. Jessie believed it was the most awful sound she had ever heard; the sound she imagined a victim of premature burial might make after being disinterred and dragged, alive but insane, from her coffin.
The sound faded into the uneasy night (and it was night, no doubt about that), but a moment later it came again: an inhuman falsetto, full of idiot terror. It rushed over her like a living thing, making her shudder helplessly on the bed and grope for her ears. She covered them, but could not shut out that terrible cry when it came a third time.
"Oh, don't," she moaned. She had never felt so cold, so cold, so cold. "Oh, don't... don't."
The howl funneled away into the gusty night and was not immediately renewed. Jessie had a moment to catch her breath and realize it was only a dog, after all--probably the dog, in fact, the one who had turned her husband into its own personal McDonald's Drive-Thru. Then the cry was renewed, and it was impossible to believe any creature from the natural world could make such a sound; surely it was a banshee, or a vampire writhing with a stake in its heart. As the howl rose toward its crystalline peak, Jessie suddenly understood why the animal was making that sound.
It had come back, just as she had feared it would. The dog knew it, sensed it, somehow.
She was shivering all over. Her eyes feverishly scanned the corner where she had seen her visitor standing last night--the corner where it had left the pearl earring and the single footprint. It was far too dark to see either of these artifacts (always assuming they were there at all), but for a moment Jessie thought she saw the creature itself, and she felt a scream rise in her throat. She closed her eyes tight, opened them again, and saw nothing but the wind-driven shadows of the trees outside the west window. Farther on in that direction, beyond the writhing shapes of the pines, she could see a fading band of gold on the line of the horizon.
It might be seven o'clock, but if I can still see the last of the sunset, it's probably not even that late. Which means I was only out for an hour, an hour and a half, tops. Maybe it's not too late to get out of here. Maybe--
This time the dog seemed actually to scream. The sound made Jessie feel like screaming back. She grasped one of the footposts because she had started to sway on her feet again, and suddenly realized she couldn't remember getting off the bed in the first place. That was how much the dog had freaked her out.
Get control of yourself, girl. Take a deep breath and get control of yourself.
She did take a deep breath, and the smell she drew in with the air was one she knew. It was like that flat mineral smell which had haunted her all these years--the smell that meant sex, water, and father to her--but not exactly like that. Some other odor or odors seemed mixed into this version of it--old garlic... ancient onions... dirt... unwashed feet, maybe. The smell tumbled Jessie back down a well of years and filled her with the helpless, inarticulate terror children feel when they sense some faceless, nameless creature--some It --waiting patiently beneath the bed for them to stick out a foot... or perhaps dangle a hand...
The wind gusted. The door banged. And somewhere closer by, a board creaked stealthily the way boards do when someone who is trying to be quiet treads lightly upon them.
It's come back, her mind whispered. It was all the voices now; they had entwined in a braid. That's what the dog smells, that's what you smell, and Jessie, that's what made the board creak. The thing that was here last night has come back for you.
"Oh God, please, no," she moaned. "Oh God no. Oh God no. Oh dear God don't let that be true."
She tried to move, but her feet were frozen to the floor and her left hand was nailed to the be
dpost. Her fear had immobilized her as surely as oncoming headlights immobilize a deer or rabbit caught in the middle of the road. She would stand here, moaning under her breath and trying to pray, until it came to her, came for her--the space cowboy, the reaper of love, just some door-to-door salesman of the dead, his sample case filled with bones and finger-rings instead of Amway or Fuller brushes.
The dog's ululating cry rose in the air, rose in her head, until she thought it must surely drive her mad.
I'm dreaming, she thought. That's why I couldn't remember standing up; dreams are the mind's version of Reader's Digest Condensed Books, and you can never remember unimportant stufflike that when you're having one. I passed out, yes--that really happened, only instead of going down into a coma, I came up into natural sleep. I guess that means the bleeding must have stopped, because I don't think people who are bleeding to death have nightmares when they're going down for the count. I'm sleeping, that's all. Sleeping and having the granddaddy of all bad dreams.
A fabulously comforting idea, and only one thing wrong with it: it wasn't true. The dancing tree-shadows on the wall by the bureau were real. So was that weird smell drifting through the house. She was awake, and she had to get out of here.
I can't move! she wailed.
Yes you can, Ruth told her grimly. You didn't get out of those fucking handcuffs just to die of fright, tootsie. Get moving, now--I don't need to tell you how to do it, do I?
"No," Jessie whispered, and slapped lightly at the bedpost with the back of her right hand. The result was an immediate and enormous blast of pain. The vise of panic which had been holding her shattered like glass, and when the dog voiced another of those freezing howls, Jessie barely heard it--her hand was a lot closer, and it was howling a lot louder.
And you know what to do next, toots--don't you?
Yes--the time had come to make like a hockey player and get the puck out of here, to make like a library and book. The thought of Gerald's rifle surfaced for a second, and then she dismissed it. She didn't have the slightest idea where the gun was, or even if it was here at all.