Stephen King - Gerald’s Game

Her visitor was grinning at her, its lips wrinkling away from its gums, once again revealing those glimmers of gold at the back of its mouth, glimmers that reminded her of Gerald. Gold teeth.

It had gold teeth, and that meant it was-

It means it’s real, yes, but we’ve already established that, haven’t we? The only question left is what you’re going to do now. Got any ideas, Jessie? If you do, you better trot them out, because time has gotten awfully short.

The apparition stepped forward, still holding its case open, as if it expected her to admire the contents. It was wearing a necklace, she saw-some weird sort of necklace. The thick, unpleasant smell was growing stronger. So was that unmistakable feeling of malevolence. Jessie tried to take a compensatory step back for the one the visitor had taken toward her, and found that she couldn’t move her feet. It was as if they had been glued to the floor.

It means to kill you, toots, Ruth said, and Jessie understood this was true. Are you going to let it? There was no anger or sarcasm in Ruth’s voice now, only curiosity. After all that’s happened to you, are you really going to let it?

The dog howled. The hand stirred. The bones whispered. The diamonds and rubies flashed their dim nightfire.

Hardly aware of what she was doing, let alone why she was doing it, Jessie grasped her own rings, the ones on the third finger of her left hand, with the wildly trembling thumb and forefinger of her right. The pain across the back of that hand as she squeezed was dim and distant. She had worn the rings almost constantly across all the days and years of her marriage and the last time she’d taken them off, she’d had to soap her finger. Not this time. This time they slid off easily.

She held her bloody right hand out to the creature, who had now come all the way to the bookcase just inside the entrance to the study. The rings lay on her palm in a mystic figure eight below the makeshift sanitary napkin bandage. The creature stopped. The smile on its pudgy, misshapen mouth faltered into some new expression which might have been anger or only confusion.

“Here,” Jessie said in a harsh, choked growl. “Here, take them. Take them and leave me alone.”

Before the creature could move, she threw the rings at the open case as she had once thrown coins at the EXACT CHANGE baskets on the New Hampshire Turnpike. There was less than five feet between them now, the mouth of the case was large, and both rings went in. She distinctly heard the double click as her wedding and engagement bands fell against the bones of strangers.

The thing’s lips wrinkled back from its teeth again, and it once more began to utter that sibilant, creamy hiss. It took another step forward, and something-something which had been lying stunned and unbelieving on the floor of her mind-awoke.

“ No!” she screamed. She turned and went lurching up the hallway while the wind gusted and the door banged and the shutter clapped and the dog howled and it was right behind her, it was, she could hear that hissing sound, and at any moment it would reach out for her, a narrow white hand floating at the end of a fantastic arm as long as a tentacle, she would feel those rotting white fingers close on her throat-

Then she was at the back door, she was opening it, she was spilling out onto the stoop and tripping over her own right foot; she was falling and somehow reminding herself even as she went down to turn her body so she would land on her left side. She did, but still hit hard enough to see stars. She rolled over onto her back, lifted her head, and stared at the door, expecting to see the narrow white face of the space cowboy loom behind the screen. It didn’t, and she could no longer hear the hissing sound, either. Not that those things meant much; it could hurtle into view at any second, seize her, and tear her throat out.

Jessie struggled to her feet, managed one step, and then her legs, trembling with a combination of shock and blood-loss, betrayed her and spilled her back to the planks next to the wirecovered compartment which held the garbage. She moaned and looked up at the sky, where clouds filigreed by a moon three-quarters full were racing from west to east at lunatic speed. Shadows rolled across her face like fabulous tattoos. Then the dog howled again, sounding much closer now that she was outside, and that provided the tiny bit of extra incentive she needed. She reached up to the garbage compartment’s low sloped top with her left hand, felt around for the handle, and used it to haul herself to her feet. Once she was up, she held the handle tightly until the world stopped swaying. Then she let go and walked slowly toward the Mercedes, now holding out both arms for balance.

How like a skull the house looks in the moonlight! she marvelled following her first wide-eyed, frantic look back. How very like a skull! The door is its mouth, the windows are its eyes, the shadows of the trees are its hair…

Then another thought occurred, and it must have been amusing, because she screamed laughter into the windy night.

And the brain-don’t forget the brain. Gerald’s the brain, of course. The house’s dead and rotting brain.

She laughed again as she reached the car, louder than ever, and the dog howled in answer. My dog has fleas, they bite his knees, she thought. Her own knees buckled and she grabbed the doorhandle to keep from falling down in the driveway, and she never stopped laughing as she did it. Exactly why she was laughing was beyond her. She might understand if the parts of her mind which had shut down in self-defense ever woke up again, but that wasn’t going to happen until she got out of here. If she ever did.

“I imagine I’ll need a transfusion, too, eventually,” she said, and that caused another outburst of laughter. She reached clumsily across to her right pocket with her left hand, still laughing. She was feeling around for the key when she realized the smell was back, and that the creature with the wicker case was standing right behind her.

Jessie turned her head, laughter still in her throat and a grin still twitching her lips, and for a moment she did see those narrow cheeks and rapt, bottomless eyes. But she only saw them because of

(the eclipse)

how afraid she was, not because there was really anything there; the back stoop was still deserted, the screen door a tall rectangle of darkness.

But you better hurry, Goodwife Burlingame said. Yes, you better make like a hockey player while you still can, don’t you think?

“Going to make like an amoeba and split,” Jessie agreed, and laughed some more as she pulled the key out of her pocket. It almost slipped through her fingers, but she caught it by the oversized plastic fob. “You sexy thing,” Jessie said, and laughed hilariously as the door banged and the dead cowboy specter of love came charging out of the house in a dirty white cloud of bonedust, but when she turned (almost dropping the key again in spite of the oversized fob), there was nothing there. It was only the wind which had banged the door-only that and nothing more.

She opened the driver’s door, slid behind the wheel of the Mercedes, and managed to pull her trembling legs in after her. She slammed the door and, as she pushed down the master-lock which locked all the other doors (plus the trunk, of course; there was really nothing in the world quite like German efficiency), an inexpressible sense of relief washed over her. Relief and something else. That something else felt like sanity, and she thought she had never felt anything in her life which could compare with its sweet and perfect return… except for that first drink of water from the tap, of course. Jessie had an idea that was going to end up being the all-time champeen.