Стивен Кинг - If It Bleeds

Drew closed his eyes tight enough to make spots flare, and then sprang them open. His orphan of the storm was still there.

“I can help you,” the rat announced. “If you want me to, that is.”

“And you’d do this because?”

The rat cocked his head, as if unable to believe a supposedly smart man—a college English teacher who had been published in The New Yorker !—could be so stupid. “You were going to kill me with a shovel, and why not? I’m just a lowly rat, after all. But you took me in instead. You saved me.”

“So as a reward you give me three wishes.” Drew said it with a smile. This was familiar ground: Hans Christian Andersen, Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, the Brothers Grimm.

“Just one,” the rat said. “A very specific one. You can wish to finish your book.” He lifted his tail and slapped it down on the manuscript of Bitter River for emphasis. “But it comes with a condition.”

“And that would be?”

“Someone you care for will have to die.”

More familiar ground. This turned out to be a dream where he was replaying his argument with Lucy. He had explained (not very well, but he had given it the old college try) that he needed to write the book. That it was very important. She had asked if it was as important as she and the kids. He had told her no, of course not, then asked if it had to be a choice.

I think it is a choice , she’d said. And you just made it .

“This isn’t actually a magic wish situation at all,” he said. “More of a business deal. Or a Faustian bargain. It’s sure not like any of the fairy tales I read as a kid.”

The rat scratched behind one ear, somehow keeping his balance while he did it. Admirable. “All the wishes in fairy tales come at a price. Then there’s ‘The Monkey’s Paw.’ Remember that one?”

“Even in a dream,” Drew said, “I would not trade my wife or either of my kids for an oat opera with no literary pretensions.”

As the words came out of his mouth, he realized that was why he had seized the idea of Bitter River so unquestioningly; his plot-driven western would never be stacked up against the next Rushdie or Atwood or Chabon. Not to mention the next Franzen.

“I would never ask you to,” the rat said. “Actually, I was thinking of Al Stamper. Your old department head.”

That silenced Drew. He just looked at the rat, which looked back with those beady black eyes. The wind blew around the cabin, sometimes gusting hard enough to shake the walls; the sleet rattled.

Pancreatic , Al had said when Drew commented on his startling weight loss. But, he had added, there was no need for anyone to be crafting obituaries just yet. The docs caught it relatively early. Confidence is high .

Looking at him, though—sallow skin, sunken eyes, lifeless hair—Drew had felt no confidence whatsoever. The key word in what Al had said was relatively . Pancreatic cancer was sly; it hid. The diagnosis was almost always a death sentence. And if he did die? There would be mourning, of course, and Nadine Stamper would be the chief mourner—they had been married for something like forty-five years. The members of the English Department would wear black armbands for a month or so. The obituary would be long, noting Al’s many accomplishments and awards. His books on Dickens and Hardy would be mentioned. But he was seventy-two at least, maybe even seventy-four, and nobody would say he died young, or with his promise unfulfilled.

Meanwhile, the rat was looking at him, its pink paws now curled against its furry chest.

What the hell? Drew thought. It’s only a hypothetical question. And one inside a dream, at that.

“I guess I’d take the deal and make the wish,” Drew said. Dream or no dream, hypothetical question or not, he felt uneasy saying it. “He’s dying, anyway.”

“You finish your book and Stamper dies,” the rat said, as if to make sure Drew understood.

Drew gave the rat a cunning sideways look. “Will the book be published?”

“I’m authorized to grant the wish if you make it,” the rat said. “I’m not authorized to predict the future of your literary endeavor. Were I to guess…” The rat cocked his head. “I’d guess it will be. As I said, you are talented.”

“Okay,” Drew said. “I finish the book, Al dies. Since he’s going to die anyway, that seems okay to me.” Only it didn’t, not really. “Do you think he’ll live long enough to read it, at least?”

“I just told you—”

Drew raised a hand. “Not authorized to predict the future of my literary endeavor, right. Are we done here?”

“There’s one more thing I need.”

“If it’s my signature in blood on a contract, you can forget the whole deal.”

“It’s not all about you, Mister,” the rat said. “I’m hungry.” He jumped onto the desk’s chair, and from the chair to the floor. He sped across to the kitchen table and picked up an oyster cracker, one Drew must have dropped on the day he had the grilled cheese and tomato soup. The rat sat up, grasping the oyster cracker in its paws, and went to work. The cracker was gone in seconds.

“Good talking to you,” the rat said. It disappeared almost as quickly as the oyster cracker, zipping across the floor and into the dead fireplace.

“Goddam,” Drew said.

He closed his eyes, then sprang them open. It didn’t feel like a dream. He closed them again, opened them again. The third time he closed them, they stayed closed.

He awoke in his bed, with no memory of how he’d gotten there… or had he been here all night? That was more than likely, considering how fucked up he’d been thanks to Roy DeWitt and his snotty bandanna. The whole previous day seemed like a dream, his conversation with the rat only the most vivid part of it.

The wind was still blowing and the sleet was still sleeting, but he felt better. There was no question of it. The fever was either going or entirely gone. His joints still ached and his throat was still sore, but neither was as bad as they had been last night, when part of him had been convinced he was going to die out here. Died of pneumonia on Shithouse Road —what an obituary that would have been.

He was in his boxers, the rest of his clothes heaped on the floor. He had no memory of undressing, either. He put them back on and went downstairs. He scrambled four eggs and this time ate them all, chasing each bite with orange juice. It was concentrate, all the Big 90 carried, but cold and delicious.

He looked across the room at Pop’s desk and thought about trying to work, maybe switching from the laptop to the portable typewriter to save the laptop’s battery. But after putting his dishes in the sink, he trudged up the stairs and went back to bed, where he slept until the middle of the afternoon.

The storm was still pounding away when he got up the second time, but Drew didn’t care. He felt almost like himself again. He wanted a sandwich—there was bologna and cheese—and then he wanted to go to work. Sheriff Averill was about to fool the gun thugs with his big abracadabra, and now that Drew felt rested and well, he couldn’t wait to write it.

Halfway down the stairs, he noticed that the toybox by the fireplace was lying on its side with the toys that had been inside spilling out onto the rag rug. Drew thought he must have kicked it over on his sleepwalk to bed the previous night. He went to it and knelt, meaning to put the toys back in the box before starting work. He had the Frisbee in one hand and the old Stretch Armstrong in the other, when he froze. Lying on its side near Stacey’s topless Barbie doll was a stuffed rat.