Стивен Кинг - Desperation

“I started wiggling out from under the desk, telling myself not to panic if I got a little stuck, and that was when I heard somebody come into the front of the store, and I yanked myself back under the desk again. It was him. I knew it just by the way he walked. It was the sound of a man in boots.

“He goes, ‘Is anyone here.’ and came up the aisle between the washers and dryers. Like he was following my tracks, In a way he was. It was my perfume. I hardly ever wear it, but putting on a dress made me think of it, made me think it might make things go a little smoother at my meeting with Mr. Symes.” She shrugged, maybe a little embarrassed.

“You know what they say about using the tools.”

Cynthia looked blank at this, but Mary nodded.

“It smells like Opium,’ he says. ‘Is it, miss. Is that what you’re wearing.’ I didn’t say anything, just curled up there in the kneehole with my arms wrapped around my head. He goes, ‘Why don’t you come out. If you come out, I’ll make it quick. If I have to find you, I 11 make it slow.’ And I wanted to come out, that’s how much he’d gotten to me. How much he’d scared me I believed he knew for sure that I was still in there some where, and that he was going to follow the smell of my perfume to me like a bloodhound, and I wanted to get out from under the desk and go to him so he’d kill me quick I wanted to go to him the way the people at Jonestown must have wanted to stand in line to get the Kool-Aid. Only I couldn’t. I froze up again and all I could do was lie there and think that I was going to die needing to pee. I saw the office chair-I’d pulled it out so I could get into the knee hole of the desk-and I thought, ‘When he sees where the chair is, he’ll know where I am.’ That was when he came into the office, while I was thinking that. ‘Is someone in here.’ he goes. ‘Come on out. I won’t hurt you. I just want to question you about what’s going on. We’ve got a big problem. — Audrey began to tremble, as Johnny supposed she had trembled while she had been hedgehogged in the kneehole of the desk, waiting for Entragian to come the rest of the way into the room, find her, and kill her. Except she was smiling, too, the kind of smile you could hardly bring yourself to look at.

“That’s how crazy he was.” She clasped her shaking hands together in her lap. “In one breath he says that if you come out he’ll reward you by killing you quick; in the next he says he just wants to ask you a few questions Crazy. But I believed both things at once.

So who’s the craziest one. Huh. Who’s the craziest one.

“He came a couple of steps into the room. I think it was a couple. Far enough for his shadow to fall over the desk and onto the other side, where I was. I remember thinking that if his shadow had eyes, they’d be able to see me. He stood there a long time. I could hear him breathing. Then he said ‘Fuck it’ and left. A minute or so later, I heard the street door open and close. At first I was sure it was a trick. In my mind’s eye I could see him just as clearly as I can see you guys now, opening the door and then closing it again, but still standing there on the inside, next to the machine with the little packets of soap in it. Standing there with his gun out, waiting for me to move. And you know what. I went on thinking that even after he started roaring around the streets in his car again, looking for other people to murder. I think I’d be under there still, except I knew that if I didn’t go to the bathroom I was going to wet my pants, and I didn’t want to do that. Huh-uh, no way. If he was able to smell my perfume, he’d smell fresh urine even quicker. So I crawled out and went to the bathroom-I hobbled like an old lady because my legs were still asleep, but I got there.”

And although she spoke for another ten minutes or so, Johnny thought that was where Audrey Wyler’s story essentially ended, with her hobbling into the office bath-room to take a leak. Her car was close by and she had the keys in her dress pocket, but it might as well have been on the moon instead of Main Street for all the good it was to her. She’d gone back and forth several times between the office and the laundrymat proper (Johnny didn’t doubt for a moment the courage it must have taken to move around even that much), but she had gone no farther. Her nerve wasn’t just shot, it was shattered. When the gunshots and the maddening, ceaselessly revving engine stopped for awhile, she would think about making a break for it, she said, but then she would imagine Entragian catching up to her, running her off the road, pulling her out of her car, and shooting her in the head. Also, she told them, she had been convinced that help would arrive. Had to.

Despera-tion was off the main road, yes, sure, but not that far off, and with the mine getting ready to reopen, people were always coming and going.

Some people had come into town, she said. She had seen a Federal Express panel truck around five that after-noon and a Wickoff County Light and Power pickup around noon of the next day, yesterday. Both went by on Main Street. She had heard music coming from the pickup. She didn’t hear Entragian’s cruiser that time, but five minutes or so after the pickup passed the laundrymat, there were more gunshots, and a man screaming “Oh, don’t! Oh, don’t!” in a voice so high it could have been a girl’s.

After that, another endless night, not wanting to stay, not quite daring to try and make a break for it, eating snacks from the machine that stood at the end of the dryers, drinking water from the basin in the bathroom. Then a new day, with Entragian still circling like a vulture.

She hadn’t been aware, she said, that he was bringing people into town and jugging them.

By then all she’d been able to think about were plans for getting away, none of them seeming quite good enough. And, in a way, the laundrymat had begun to feel like home…

to feel safe. Entragian had been in here once, had left, and hadn’t returned. He might never return.

“I hung onto the idea that he couldn’t have gotten everyone, that there had to be others like me, who saw what was going on in time to get their heads down. Some would get out. They’d call the State Police. I kept telling myself it was wiser, at least for the time being, to wait. Then the storm came, and I decided to try to use it for cover. I’d sneak back to the mining office. There’s an ATV in the garage of the Hideaway-”

Steve nodded. “We saw it. Got a little cart filled with rock samples behind it.”

“My idea was to unhook the gondola and drive north-west back to Highway 50. I could grab a compass out of a supply cabinet, so even in the blow I’d be okay. Of course I knew I might go falling into a crevasse or something, but that didn’t seem like much of a risk, not after what I’d seen. And I had to get out. Two nights in a laundrymat… hey, you try it. I was getting ready to do it when you two came along.”

“I damn near brained you,” Steve said. “Sorry about that.”

She smiled wanly, then looked around once more. “And the rest you know,” she said.

Idon’t agree, Johnny Marinville thought. The throb in his nose was increasing again. He wanted a drink, and badly. Since that would be madness-for him, anyway—he pulled the bottle of aspirin out of his pocket and took two with a sip of spring-water. I don’t think we know any-thing. Not yet, anyway.

Mary Jackson said: “What do we do now. How do we get out of this mess. Do we even try, or do we wait to be rescued.”

For a long time no one replied. Then Steve shifted in the chair he was sharing with Cynthia and said, “We can’t wait. Not for long, anyway.

“Why do you say that.” Johnny asked. His voice was curiously gentle, as if he already knew the answer to this question.