Stephen King: Night Journey

Except we couldn’t, they’d taken away the stepladder. I started to tell Brutal this, and then an extra-hard jounce of the truck woke me up. We were backing into the place where Harry had hidden the truck earlier on a day that already seemed to stretch back to the beginning of time.

The two of us got out and went around to the back. Brutal hopped down all right, but John Coffey’s knees buckled and he almost fell. It took all three of us to catch him, and he was no more than set solid on his feet again before he went off into another of those coughing fits, this one the worst yet. He bent over, the coughing sounds muffled by the heels of his palms, which he held pressed against his mouth.

When his coughing eased, we covered the front of the Farmall with the pine boughs again and walked back the way we had come. The worst part of that whole surreal furlough was—for me, at least—the last two hundred yards, with us scurrying back south along the shoulder of the highway. I could see (or thought I could) the first faint lightening of the sky in the east, and felt sure some early farmer, out to harvest his pumpkins or dig his last few rows of yams, would come along and see us. And even if that didn’t happen, we would hear someone (in my imagination it sounded like Curtis Anderson) shout “Hold it right there!” as I used the Aladdin key to unlock the enclosure around the bulkhead leading to the tunnel. Then two dozen carbine-toting guards would step out of the woods and our little adventure would be over.

By the time we actually got to the enclosure, my heart was whamming so hard that I could see little white dots exploding in front of my eyes with each pulse it made. My hands felt cold and numb and faraway, and for the longest time I couldn’t get the key to go into the lock.

“Oh Christ, headlights!” Harry moaned.

I looked up and saw brightening fans of light on the road. My keyring almost fell out of my hand; I managed to clutch it at the last second.

“Give them to me,” Brutal said. “I’ll do it.”

“No, I’ve got it,” I said. The key at last slipped into its slot and turned. A moment later we were in. We crouched behind the bulkhead and watched as a Sunshine Bread truck went pottering past the prison. Beside me I could hear John Coffey’s tortured breathing. He sounded like an engine which has almost run out of oil. He had held the bulkhead door up effortlessly for us on our way out, but we didn’t even ask him to help this time; it would have been out of the question. Brutal and I got the door up, and Harry led John down the steps. The big man tottered as he went, but he got down. Brutal and I followed him as fast as we could, then lowered the bulkhead behind us and locked it again.

“Christ, I think we’re gonna—” Brutal began, but I cut him off with a sharp elbow to the ribs.

“Don’t say it,” I said. “Don’t even think it, until he’s safe back in his cell.”

“And there’s Percy to think about,” Harry said. Our voices had a flat, echoey quality in the brick tunnel. “The evening ain’t over as long as we got him to contend with.”

As it turned out, our evening was far from over.

Volume I: The Two Dead Girls

Volume II: The Mouse on the Mile

Volume III: Coffey’s Hands

Volume IV: The Bad Death of Eduard Delacroix

Volume V: Night Journey

Volume VI: Coffey on the Mile

Stephen Kingis the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes the short story collection The Bazaar of Bad Dreams , Finders Keepers , Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel), Doctor Sleep , and Under the Dome , a major TV miniseries on CBS. His novel 11/22/63 —now a Hulu original television series event—was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller as well as the Best Hardcover Book Award from the International Thriller Writers. He is the recipient of the 2014 National Medal of Arts and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1996 by Stephen King

Illustrations copyright © 1996 by Mark Geyer

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ISBN 978-1-5011-3954-3 (ebook)