Stephen King - Gerald’s Game

(space cowboy-monster of love)

it all came back to her in a rush so strong it was like an electrical shock. The narrow, corpse-white checks; 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 bedpost. 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 stuff like 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 had 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 off right, 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.

Jessie walked slowly and carefully across the room on her trembling legs, once again holding out her left hand to steady her balance. The hallway beyond the bedroom door was a carousel of moving shadows with the door to the guest bedroom standing open on the right and the small spare room Gerald used as a study standing open on the left. Farther down on the left was the archway which gave on the kitchen and living room. On the right was the unlatched back door the Mercedes and maybe freedom.

Fifty steps, she thought. Can’t be any more than that, and it’s probably less. So get going, okay?

But at first she just couldn’t. Bizarre as it would undoubtedly seem to someone who hadn’t been through what she had been through during the last twenty-eight hours or so, the bedroom represented a kind of dour safety to her. The hallway, however… anything might be lurking out there. Anything, Then something which sounded like a thrown stone thudded against the west side of the house, just outside the window. Jessie uttered her own small howl of terror before realizing it was just the branch of the hoary old blue spruce out there by the deck.