Gerald's Game(77)

With these very real perils closing in on her, the terror she had felt of the space cowboy should have waned or disappeared entirely, but as the afternoon drew on, she found the white-faced stranger weighing more heavily on her mind rather than less. She saw its shape constantly, standing just beyond the small circle of light which enclosed her reduced consciousness, and although she could make out little more than its general shape (thin to the point of emaciation), she found she could see the sunken sickly grin that curved its mouth with greater and greater clarity as the sun dragged its harrow of hours into the west. In her ear she heard the dusty murmur of the bones and jewels as its hand stirred them in its old-fashioned case.

It would come for her. When it was dark it would come. The dead cowboy, the outsider, the specter of love.

You did see it, Jessie. It was Death, and you did see it, as people who die in the lonely places often do, Of course they do; it's stamped on their twisted faces, and you can read it in their bulging eyes. It was Old Cowboy Death, and tonight when the sun goes down, he'll be back for you.

Shortly after three, the wind, which had been calm all day, began to pick up. The back door began to bang restlessly against the jamb again. Not long after, the chainsaw quit and she could hear the faint sound of wind-driven wavelets slapping against the rocks along the shore. The loon did not raise its voice; perhaps it had decided the time had come to fly south, or at least relocate to a part of the lake where the screaming lady could not be heard.

It's just me now. Until the other one gets here, at least.

She no longer made any effort to believe her dark visitor was only imagination; things had gone much too far for that.

A fresh cramp sank long, bitter teeth into her left armpit, and she pulled her cracked lips back in a grimace. It was like having your heart poked with the tines of a barbecue fork. Then the muscles just below her br**sts tightened and the bundle of nerves in her solar plexus seemed to ignite like a pile of dry sticks. This pain was new, and it was enormous-far beyond anything she had experienced thus far. It bent her backward like a greenwood stick, torso twisting from side to side, knees snapping open and shut. Her hair flew in clots and clumps. She tried to scream and couldn't. For a moment she was sure this was it, the end of the line. One final convulsion, as powerful as six sticks of dy***ite planted in a granite ledge, and out you go, Jessie; cashier's on your right.

But this one passed, too.

She relaxed slowly, panting, her head turned up toward the ceiling. For the moment, at least, the dancing reflections up there didn't torment her; all her concentration was focused on that fiery bundle of nerves between and just below her br**sts, waiting to see if the pain was really going to go away or if it would flare up again instead. It went... but grudgingly, with a promise to be back soon. Jessie closed her eyes, praying for sleep. Even a short release from the long and tiresome job of dying would be welcome at this point.

Sleep didn't come, but Punkin, the girl from the stocks, did. She was free as a bird now, sexual enticement or no sexual enticement, walking barefooted across the town common of whatever Puritan village it was that she inhabited, and she was gloriously alone-there was no need to walk with her eyes decorously cast down so that some passing boy might not catch her gaze with a wink or a grin. The grass was a deep velvety green, and far away, on top of the next hill (this has to he the world's biggest town common, Jessie thought), a flock of sheep was grazing. The bell Jessie had heard before was sending its flat, monotonous peals across the darkening day.

Punkin was wearing a blue flannel nightie with a big yellow exclamation point on the front-hardly Puritan dress, although it was certainly modest enough, covering her from neck to feet. Jessie knew the garment well, and was delighted to see it again. Between the ages of ten and twelve, when she had finally been persuaded to donate it to the rag-basket, she must have worn that silly thing to two dozen slumber parties.

Punkin's hair, which had obscured her face completely while the neck-stock held her head down, was now tied back with a velvet bow of darkest midnight blue. The girl looked lovely and deeply happy, which didn't surprise Jessie at all. The girl had, after all, escaped her bonds; she was free. Jessie felt no jealousy of her on this account, but she did have a strong desire-almost a need-to tell her that she must do more than simply enjoy her freedom; she must treasure it and guard it and use it.

I went to sleep after all. I must have, because this has got to he a dream.

Another cramp, this one not quite as terrible as the one which had set fire to her solar plexus, froze the muscles in her right thigh and set her right foot wagging foolishly in the air. She opened her eyes and saw the bedroom, where the light had once again grown long and slanting. It was not quite what the French call l'heure bleue, but that time was now fast approaching. She heard the banging door, smelled her sweat and urine and sour, exhausted breath. All was exactly as it had been. Time had moved forward, but it had not leaped forward, as it so often seems to have done when one awakens from an unplanned doze. Her arms were a little colder, she thought, but no more or less numb than they had been. She hadn't been asleep and she hadn't been dreaming... but she had been doing something.

I can do it again, too, she thought, and closed her eyes. She was back on the improbably huge town common the moment she did. The girl with the big yellow exclamation point sprouting UP between her small br**sts was looking at her gravely and sweetly.

There's one thing you haven't tried, Jessie.