Stephen King - Revival

“Do you love me, Con?” I ask.

So far he hasn’t answered, but sometimes he smiles a little. That’s an answer of a kind, wouldn’t you agree?

When four o’clock comesand our visit is over, I reverse course and walk back down to the atrium, where the shadows—of the palms, the avocados, and the big, twisted banyan at the center of it all—have begun to grow long.

I count my steps, and I take little glances at the door ahead of me, but otherwise keep my gaze firmly fixed on the carpet. Unless I hear that voice whispering my name.

Sometimes when that happens, I’m able to ignore it.

Sometimes I cannot.

Sometimes I look up in spite of myself and see that the hospital wall, painted soothing pastel yellow, has been replaced with gray stones held together by ancient mortar and covered with ivy. The ivy is dead, and the branches look like grasping skeletal hands. The small door in the wall is hidden, Astrid was right about that, but it’s there. The voice comes from behind it, drifting through an ancient rusty keyhole.

I walk on resolutely. Of course I do. Horrors beyond comprehension wait on the other side of that door. Not just the land of death, but the land beyond death, a place full of insane colors, mad geometry, and bottomless chasms where the Great Ones live their endless, alien lives and think their endless, malevolent thoughts.

It’s the Null beyond that door.

I walk on, and think of the couplet in Bree’s last email: That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons, even death may die .

Jamie , an old woman’s voice whispers from the keyhole of a door only I can see. Come. Come to me and live forever .

No , I tell her, just as I told her in my vision. No .

And… so far, so good. But eventually something will happen. Something always does. And when it does…

I will come to Mother.

April 6, 2013–December 27, 2013

CHUCK VERRILL is my agent. He sold the book, and provided aid and comfort along the way.

NAN GRAHAM edited the book with a sharp eye and an even sharper blue pencil.

RUSS DORR, my tireless researcher, provided information when information was needed. If I screwed something up, it was because I failed to understand. In such cases blame me, not him.

SUSAN MOLDOW took all my calls, even when I was being a pain in the ass, and urged me ever onward.

MARSHA DeFILIPPO and JULIE EUGLEY mind my real-world affairs so I can live in my imagination.

TABITHA KING, my wife and best critic, pointed out the soft places and urged me to fix them. Which I did, to the best of my ability. I love her a bunch.

Thanks to all of you, and special thanks to THE ROCK BOTTOM REMAINDERS, who taught me you’re never too old to rock and roll and have kept me high-stepping to “In the Midnight Hour” since 1992. Key of E. All that shit starts in E.

Stephen King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes Mr. Mercedes , Doctor Sleep, and Under the Dome , now a major TV miniseries on CBS. His novel 11/22/63 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 Association. He is the recipient of 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 © 2014 by Stephen King

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Manufactured in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2014005950

ISBN 978-1-4767-7038-3

ISBN 978-1-4767-7040-6 (ebook)