Gerald's Game(29)

Suddenly the wind dropped and the sounds from the entry seemed very loud. "Are you enjoying him, shithead?" Jessie screamed. Pain ripped at her throat, but she didn't-couldn't-stop. "I hopeso, because the first thing I'm going to do when I get out of these cuffs is blow your head off!"

Big talk, she thought. Very big talk for a woman who no longereven remembers if Gerald's old shotgun-the one that belonged to his dad-is here or in the attic of the Portland house.

Nevertheless, there was a gratifying moment of silence from the shadowy world beyond the bedroom door. It was almost as if the dog were giving this threat its soberest, most thoughtful consideration.

Then the smackings and chewings began again.

Jessie's right wrist twanged warningly, threatening to cramp up, warning her that she had better get on with her business right away... if she actually had any business to do, that was.

She leaned to the left and stretched her hand as far as the chain would allow. Then she began to put the pressure on the shelf again. At first there was nothing. She pulled harder, eyes slitted almost shut, the corners of her mouth turned down. It was the face of a child who expects a dose of bad medicine. And, just before she reached the maximum downward pressure her aching arm muscles could exert, she felt a tiny shift in the board, a change in the uniform drag of gravity so minute that it was more intuited than actually sensed.

Wishful thinking, Jess-that's all you felt. Only that and nothingmore.

No. It was the input of senses which had been jacked into the stratosphere by terror, perhaps, but it wasn't wishful thinking.

She let go of the shelf and just lay there for a few moments, taking long slow breaths and letting her muscles recover. She didn't want them spasming or cramping up at the critical moment; she had quite enough problems without that, thanks. When she thought she felt as ready as she could feel, she curled her left fist loosely around the bedpost and slid it up and down until the sweat on her palm dried and the mahogany squeaked. Then she stretched out her arm and gripped the shelf again, It was time.

Got to be careful, though. The shelf moved, no question about that,and it'll move more, but it's going to take all my strength to get thatglass in motion...if I can do it at all, that is. And when a persongets near the end of their strength, control gets spotty.

That was true, but it wasn't the kicker. The kicker was this: she had no feet for the shelf's tip-point. Absolutely none at all.

Jessie remembered seesawing with her sister Maddy on the playground behind Falmouth Grammar School-they had come back early from the lake one summer and it seemed to her she had spent that whole August going up and down on those paintpeeling teeterboards with Maddy as her partner-and how they had been able to balance perfectly whenever they felt like it. All it took was for Maddy, who weighed a little more, to move a butt's length in toward the middle. Long hot afternoons of practice, singing jump-rope songs to each other as they went up and own, had enabled them to find each seesaw's tip-point with an almost scientific exactitude; those half a dozen warped green boards standing in a row on the sizzling hot-top had seemed almost like living things to them. She felt none of that eager liveliness under her fingers now. She would simply have to try her best and hope it was good enough.

And whatever the Bible may say to the contrary, don't let your lefthand forget what your right hand is supposed to be doing. Your leftmay be your ashtray-throwing hand, but your right had better be yourglass-catching hand, Jessie. There's only a few inches of shelf where you'll have a chance to get hold of it. if it slides past that area, it won't matterif it stays up-it'll he as out of reach as it is right now.

Jessie didn't think she could forget what her right hand was doing-it hurt too much. Whether or not it would be able to do what she needed it to do was another question entirely, though. She increased the pressure on the left side of the shelf as steadily and as gradually as she could. A stinging drop of sweat ran into the corner of one eye and she blinked it away. Somewhere the back door was banging again, but it had joined the telephone in that other universe. Here there was only the glass, the shelf, and Jessie. Part of her expected the shelf to come up all at once like a brutal Jack-in-the-box, catapulting everything off, and she tried to steel herself against the possible disappointment.

Worry about that if it happens, toots. In the meantime, don't lose your concentration. I think something's happening.

Something was. She could feel that minute shift again-that feel of the shelf starting to come unanchored at some point along Gerald's side. This time Jessie didn't let up her pressure but increased it, the muscles in her upper left arm standing out in hard little arcs that trembled with strain. She voiced a series of small explosive grunts. That sense of the shelf coming unanchored grew steadily stronger.

And suddenly the flat circular surface of the water in Gerald's glass was a tilted plane and she heard the last slivers of ice chatter faintly as the right end of the board actually did come up. The glass itself did not move, however, and a horrible thought occurred to her: what if some of the water trickling down the sides of the glass had seeped beneath the cardboard coaster on which it sat? What if it had formed a seal, bonding it to the shelf?

"No, that can't happen." The words came out in a single whispered blurt, like a tired child's rote prayer. She pulled down harder on the left end of the shelf, using all her strength. Every last horse was now running in harness; the stable was empty.