Joyland(2)
I walked slowly down the double-S, thinking it would not be beyond Eddie to hear me and shut off the overhead worklights as a joke. To leave me in here to feel my way past the murder site with only the sound of the wind and that one slapping board to keep me company. And suppose ... just suppose ... a young girl's hand reached out in that darkness and took mine ... ?
SOME OTHER HARD CASE CRIME BOOKS
YOU WILL ENJOY:
FIFTY-TO-ONE byCharlesArdai
KILLING CASTRO by Lawrence Block
THE DEAD MAN'S BROTHER by Roger Zelazny THE CUTIE by Donald E. Westlake
HOUSE DICK by E. Howard Hunt
CASINO MOON by Peter Blauner
FAKE I. D. by jason Starr
PASSPORT TO PERIL by Robert B. Parker STOP THIS MAN! byPeterRabe
LOSERS LIVE LONGER by Russell Atwood HONEY IN HIS MOUTH byLesterDent
QUARRY IN THE MIDDLE by Max Allan Collins THE CORPSE WORE PASTIES byjonnyPorkpie THE VALLEY OF FEAR byA.C. Doyle ME M 0 R Y by Donald E. Westlake
NOBODY'S ANGEL byjackClark
MURDER IS MY BUSINESS by Brett Halliday GETTING 0 F F by Lawrence Block
QUARRY'S EX byMaxAllanCollins
THE CONSUMMATA
by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins CHOKE HOLD by Christa Faust
THE COMEDY IS FINISHED byDonaldE. Westlake BLOOD ON THE MINK by Robert Silverberg FALSE NEGATIVE byjosephKoenig THE TWENTY-YEAR DEATH by Ariel S. Winter THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS by james M. Cain SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT by Max Allan Collins WEB OF THE CITY by Harlan Ellison
JOYLAND
by Stephen King
HARD
CASE
o?a
A HARD CASE
r CRIME NOVEL
CRIME
A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK
(HCC-112)
First Hard Case Crime edition: June 2013
Published by
Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd 144 Southwark Street
London
SE1 OUP
in collaboration with Winterfall LLC
Copyright? 2013 by Stephen King
Cover painting copyright? 2013 by Glen Orbik All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 978-1-78116-264-4
Design direction by Max Phillips
www.maxphillips.net
Typeset by Swordsmith Productions
The name "Hard Case Crime" and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks ofWinterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.
Printed in the United States of America Visit us on the web at www.HardCaseCrime.com For Donald Westlake
?
I had a car, but on most days in that fall of 1973 I walked to Joyland from M rs. Shoplaw's Beachside Accommodations in the town of Heaven's Bay. It seemed like the right thing to do.
The only thing, actually. By early September, Heaven Beach was almost completely deserted, which suited my mood. That fall was the most beautiful of my life. Even forty years later I can say that. And I was never so unhappy, I can say that, too.
People think first love is sweet, and never sweeter than when that first bond snaps. You've heard a thousand pop and country songs that prove the point; some fool got his heart broke. Yet that first broken heart is always the most painful, the slowest to mend, and leaves the most visible scar. What's so sweet about that?
?
Through September and right into October, the North Carolina skies were clear and the air was warm even at seven in the morning, when I left my second-floor apartment by the outside stairs. If I started with a light jacket on, I was wearing it tied around my waist before I'd finished half of the three miles between the town and the amusement park.
I'd make Betty's Bakery my first stop, grabbing a couple of still-warm croissants. My shadow would walk with me on the 12
STEPHEN K I N G
sand, at least twenty feet long. Hopeful gulls, smelling the croissants in their waxed paper, would circle overhead. And when I walked back, usually around five (although sometimes I stayed later-there was nothing waiting for me in Heaven's Bay, a town that mostly went sleepybye when summer was over), my shadow walked with me on the water. If the tide was in, it would waver on the surface, seeming to do a slow hula.
Although I can't be completely sure, I think the boy and the woman and their dog were there from the first time I took that walk. The shore between the town and the cheerful, blinking gimcrackery of Joyland was lined with summer homes, many of them expensive, most of them clapped shut after Labor Day.
But not the biggest of them, the one that looked like a green wooden castle. A boardwalk led from its wide back patio down to where the seagrass gave way to fine white sand. At the end of the boardwalk was a picnic table shaded by a bright green beach umbrella. In its shade, the boy sat in his wheelchair, wearing a baseball cap and covered from the waist down by a blanket even in the late afternoons, when the temperature lingered in the seventies. I thought he was five or so, surely no older than seven. The dog, a Jack Russell terrier, either lay beside him or sat at his feet. The woman sat on one of the picnic table benches, sometimes reading a book, mostly just staring out at the water. She was very beautiful.