Stephen King - The Tommyknockers

It seemed to Anderson that she fumbled for the knob of the outer door with her free hand for a hundred years. It was like having a nightmare where your hands are full and your pants start, slowly and inexorably, to slip down.

Peter did this. Somehow.

She turned the knob, then took one final, hasty glance around the waiting room. It had become an absurd little no-man's-land. Mommy was demanding first aid of Mrs Alden (and apparently really did need some; blood was now coursing down her arm in freshets, spotting her yellow slacks and white institutional shoes); Blacky the cat was still hissing; Dr Etheridge's gerbils were going mad in the complicated maze of plastic tubes and towers on the far shelf that made up their home; Eric the Crazed Pomeranian stood at the end of his leash, barking at Peter in a strangled voice. Peter was snarling back.

Anderson's eye fell on the little girl's blacksnake and saw that it had reared up like a cobra inside its Porta-Carry and was also looking at Peter, its fangless mouth yawning, its narrow pink tongue shuttling at the air in stiff little jabs.

Blacksnakes don't do that. I never saw a blacksnake do that in my life.

Now in something very close to real horror, Anderson fled, dragging Peter after her.

Pete began to calm down almost as soon as the door sighed shut behind them. He stopped coughing and dragging on the leash and began to walk at Anderson's side, glancing at her occasionally in that way that said I don't like this leash and I'm never going to like it, but okay, okay, if it's what you want.

By the time they were both in the cab of the pickup, Peter was entirely his old self again.

Anderson was not.

Her hands were shaking so badly that she had to try three times before she could get the ignition key into its slot. Then she popped the clutch and stalled the engine. The Chevy pickup gave a mighty jerk and Peter tumbled off the seat onto the floor. He gave Anderson a reproachful beagle look (although all dogs are capable of reproachful looks, only beagles seem to have mastered that long-suffering stare). Where did you say you got your license, Bobbi? that expression seemed to ask. Sears and Roebuck? Then he climbed up on the seat again. Anderson was already finding it hard to believe that only five minutes ago Peter had been growling and snarling, a bad-tempered dog she had never encountered before, apparently ready to bite anything that moved, and that expression, that… but her mind snapped shut on that before it could go any further.

She got the engine going again and then headed out of the parking lot. As she passed the side of the building-AUGUSTA VETERINARY CLINIC, the neat sign read-she rolled her window down. A few barks and yaps. Nothing out of the ordinary.

It had stopped.

And that wasn't all that had stopped, she thought. Although she couldn't be completely sure, she thought her period was over, too. If so, good riddance to bad rubbish.

To coin a phrase.

Bobbi didn't want to wait-or couldn't-to get back before having the drink she had promised herself. Just outside the Augusta city limits was a roadhouse that went by the charming name of The Big Lost Weekend Bar and Grille (Whopper Spareribs Our Specialty, The Nashville Kitty-Cats This Fri and Sad).

Anderson pulled in between an old station wagon and a John Deere tractor with a dirty harrow on the back with its blades kicked up. Further down was a big old Buick with a horse-trailer behind. Anderson had kept away from that on purpose.

“Stay,” Anderson said, and Peter, now curled up on the seat, gave her a look as if to say, Why would I want to go anywhere with you? So you can choke me some more with that stupid leash?

The Big Lost Weekend was dark and nearly deserted on a Wednesday afternoon, its dance-floor a cavern which glimmered faintly. The place reeked of sour beer. The bartender cum counterman strolled down and said, “Howdy, purty lady. The chili's on special. Also-”

“I'd like Cutty Sark,” Anderson said. “Double. Water back.”

“You always drink like a man?”

Usually from a glass,” Anderson said, a quip which made no sense at all, but she felt very tired… and harrowed to the bone. She went into the ladies” to change her pad and did slip one of the minis from her purse into the crotch of her panties as a precaution… but precaution was all it was, and that was a relief. It seemed that the cardinal had flown off for another month.

She returned to her stool in a better humor than she had left it, and felt better still when she had gotten half the drink inside her.

“Say, I sure didn't mean to offend you,” the bartender said. “It gets lonely in here, afternoons. When a stranger comes in, my lip gets runny.”

“My fault,” Anderson said. “I haven't been having the best day of my life.”

She finished her drink and sighed.

“You want another one, miss?”

I think I liked “purty lady” better, Anderson thought, and shook her head. “I'll take a glass of milk, though. Otherwise I'll have acid indigestion all afternoon.”

The bartender brought her the milk. Anderson sipped it and thought about what had happened at the vet's. The answer was quick and simple: she didn't know.

But I'll tell you what happened when you brought him in, she thought. Not a thing.

Her mind seized on this. The waiting room had been almost as crowded when she brought Peter in as it had been when she dragged him back out, only there had been no bedlam scene the first time. The place had not been quiet-animals of different types and species, many of them ancient and instinctive antagonists, do not make for a library atmosphere when brought together-but it had been normal. Now, with the booze working in her, she recalled the man in the mechanic's coverall leading the boxer in. The boxer had looked at Peter. Peter had looked mildly back. No big deal.

So?

So drink your milk and get on home and forget it.

Okay. And what about that thing in the woods? Do I forget that, too?

Instead of an answer, her grandfather's voice came: By the way, Bobbi, what's that thing doing to you? Have you thought about that?

She hadn't.

Now that she had, she was tempted to order another drink… except another, even a single, would make her drunk, and did she really want to be sitting in this huge barn in the early afternoon, getting drunk alone, waiting for the inevitable someone (maybe the bartender himself) to cruise up and ask what a pretty place like this was doing around a girl like her?

She left a five on the counter and the bartender saluted her. On her way out she saw a pay phone. The phone-box was dirty and dog-eared and smelled of used bourbon, but at least it was still there. Anderson deposited twenty cents, crooked the handset between shoulder and ear while she hunted through in the Yellow Pages, then called Etheridge's clinic. Mrs Alden sounded quite composed. In the background she could hear one dog barking. One.

“I didn't want you to think I stiffed you,” she said, “and I'll mail your leash back tomorrow.”

“Not at all, Ms Anderson,” she said. “After all the years you have done business with us, you're the last person we'd worry about when it comes to deadbeats. As for leashes, we've got a closetful.”

“Things seemed a little crazy there for a while.”

“Boy, were they ever! We had to call Medix for Mrs Perkins. I didn't think it was bad-she'll have needed stitches, of course, but lots of people who need stitches get to the doctor under their own power.” She lowered her voice a little, offering Anderson a confidence that she probably wouldn't have offered a man. “Thank God it was her own dog bit her. She's the sort of woman who starts shouting lawsuit at the drop of a hat.”