Gerald's Game(69)

It was a dream! Stop it, Jessie, it was just a dream!

She slowly lowered her hands, letting them dangle limply inside the cuffs once more. Of course it had been-just a variation of the bad dream she'd had last night. It had been realistic, though-Jesus, yes. Far worse, when you got right down to it, than the one of the croquet party, or even the one in which she had recalled the furtive and unhappy interlude with her father during the eclipse. It was passing strange that she had spent so much time this morning thinking about those dreams and so little thinking about the far scarier one. In fact, she really hadn't thought of the creature with the weirdly long arms and the gruesome souvenir case at all until she'd dozed off and dreamed of him just now.

A snatch of song occurred to her, something from the Latter Psychedelic Age: "Some people call me the space cowboy... yeah... some call me the gangster of love."

Jessie shuddered. The space cowboy. That was somehow just right. An outsider, someone who had nothing to do with anything, a wildcard, a-

"A stranger," Jessie whispered, and suddenly remembered the way its cheeks had wrinkled when it began to grin. And once that detail had fallen into place, others began falling into place around it. The gold teeth twinkling far back in the grinning mouth. The pouty, poochy lips. The livid brow and the blade of nose. And there was the case, of course, like something you might expect to see banging against a travelling salesman's leg as he ran to catch his train-

Stop it, Jessie-stop giving yourself the horrors. Don't you have enough problems without worrying about the boogeyman?

She most certainly did, but she found that, now that she had begun thinking about the dream, she couldn't seem to stop. Worse than that was the fact that the more she thought about it, the less dreamlike it became.

What if I was awake? she thought suddenly, and once the idea was articulated, she was horrified to discover some part of her had believed just that all along. It had only been waiting for the rest of her to catch up.

No, oh no, it was just a dream, that's all-

But what if it wasn't? What if it wasn't?

Death, the white-faced stranger agreed. It was Death you saw, I'll he back tonight, Jessie, And tomorrow night I'll have your rings in my case with the rest of my pretty things... my souvenirs.

Jessie realized she was shivering violently, as if she had caught a chill. Her wide eyes looked helplessly into the empty corner where the

(space cowboy gangster of love)

had stood, the corner which was now bright with morning sunshine but would be dark with tangles of shadow tonight. Knots of gooseflesh had begun to pop up on her skin. The inescapable truth came again: she was probably going to die here.

Eventually someone will find you, Jessie, but it might take a long time. The first assumption will be that the two of you are off on some wild romantic fling. Why not? Didn't you and Gerald give every outward appearance of second-decade wedded bliss? It was only the two of you who knew that, at the end, Gerald could get it up with any reliability only if you were handcuffed to the bed, Sort of makes you wonder if someone played a few little games with him on the day of the eclipse, doesn't it?

"Stop talking," she muttered. "All of you, stop talking."

But sooner or later people will get nervous and start hunting for you. It'll probably be Gerald's colleagues who actually get the wheels turning, don't you think? I mean, there are a couple of women in Portland you call friends, but you've never really let them inside your life, have you? Acquaintances is really all they are, ladies to have tea with and swap catalogues with. None of them are going to worry much if you drop out of sight for a week or ten days. But Gerald will have appointments, and when be doesn't show up by Friday noon, I think some of his bullpen buddies will start making phone calls and asking questions. Yes, that's the way it Will probably start, but I think it'll probably he the caretaker who actually discovers the bodies, don't you? I bet he'll turn his face away while he's throwing the spare blanket from the closet shelf over you, Jessie. He won't want to see the way your fingers stick out of the handcuffs, as stiff as pencils and as white as candles. He won't want to look at your frozen mouth, or the foam long since dried to scales on your lips. Most of all he won't want to look at the expression of horror in your eyes, so he'll shift his own eyes to the side while he covers you up.

Jessie moved her head from side to side in a slow, hopeless gesture of negation.

Bill will call the police and they'll show up with the forensics unit and the County Coroner. They'll all stand around the bed smoking cigars (Doug Rowe, undoubtedly wearing his awful white trenchcoat, will be standing outside with his film-crew, Of course), and when the coroner pulls off the blanket, they'll wince. Yes-I think even the most hardened of them are going to wince a little, and some of them may actually leave the room. Their buddies will razz them about it later. And the ones who stay will nod and tell each other that the person on the bed died hard. "You only have to look at her to see that," they'll say. But they won't know the half of it. They won't know that the real reasons your eyes are staring and your mouth is frozen in a scream is because of what you saw at the end. What you saw coming out of the dark. Your father may have been your first lover, Jessie, but your last is going to be the stranger with the long white face and the travelling bag made out of human skin.

"Oh please, can't you quit?" Jessie moaned. "No more voices, please, no more voices."