The important thing is that I have to get the fuck out of here rightaway, she thought, and suddenly she shuddered. Her bare arms broke out in gooseflesh. Because that thing is going to come back.
Bullseye. The problem wasn’t Gerald, or the chair, or what the Rescue Services guys might think when they got down here and saw the situation. It wasn’t even the question of the telephone. The problem was the space cowboy; her old friend Dr Doom. That was why she was putting on her clothes and splashing a little more of her blood around instead of making an effort to re-establish communications with the outside world. The stranger was someplace close by; of that she felt certain. It was only waiting for dark, and dark was close now. If she passed out while she was trying to push the chair away from the wall, or while she was crawling gaily around in the dust and the cobwebs behind it, she might still be here, all alone, when the thing with the suitcase of bones arrived. Worse, she might still be alive.
Besides, her visitor had cut the line. She had no way of knowing this… but her heart knew it just the same. If she went through all the rigamarole of moving the chair and plugging the t-connector back in, the phone would still be dead, just like the one in the kitchen and the one in the front hall.
And what’s the big deal, anyway? she told her voices. I’m planningto drive out to the main road, that’s all. Compared to performingimpromptu surgery with a water-glass and pushing a double bed across the room while losing a pint of blood, it’ll be a breeze. The Mercedes isa good car, and it’s a straight shot up the driveway. I’ll putter out toRoute 117 at ten miles an hour, and if I feel too weak to drive all theway to Dakin’s Store once I make the highway, I’ll just pull across theroad, put on the four-way flashers, and lay on the horn when I see someonecoming. No reason why that shouldn’t work, with the roadflat and openfor a mile and a half in either direction. The big thing about the car isthe locks. Once I’m in it, there’ll be doors I can lock. It won’t be able toget in.
It, Ruth tried to sneer, but Jessie thought she sounded scared-yes, even her.
That’s right, she returned. You were the one who always used to tellme I ought to put my head on hold more often and follow my heart,weren’t you? You bet you were, And do you know what my heart saysnow, Ruth? It says that the Mercedes is the only chance I have. And ifyou want to laugh at that, go right ahead…but my mind is made up.
Ruth apparently did not want to laugh. Ruth had fallen silent.
Gerald handed me the car-keys just before he got out of the car, so hecould reach into the back seat and get his briefcase. He did do that, didn’the? Please God, let my memory of that he right.
Jessie slipped her hand into the left pocket of her skirt and found only a couple of Kleenex. She reached down with her right hand, pressed it gingerly against the outside of that pocket, and let out a sigh of relief as she felt the familiar bulge of the car-key and the big round joke fob Gerald had given her for her last birthday. The words on the fob read YOU SEXY THING. Jessie decided she had never felt less sexy and more like a thing in her entire life, but that was okay; she could live with it. The key was in her pocket, that was the important thing. The key was her ticket out of this awful place.
Her tennies stood side by side underneath the telephone table, but Jessie decided she was as dressed as she intended to get. She started slowly toward the hall door, moving in tiny little invalid steps. As she went, she reminded herself to try the phone in the hall before going outside-it couldn’t hurt.
She had barely rounded the head of the bed when the light began to slink out of the day again. It was as if the fat bright sunbeams slanting through the west window were connected to a dimmer-circuit, and someone was turning down the rheostat. As they dimmed, the diamond-dust revolving within them disappeared.
Oh no, not now, she pleaded. Please, you’ve got to he kidding. But the light continued to fade, and Jessie suddenly realized she was swaying again, her upper body describing ever-widening circles in the air. She groped for the bedpost and instead found herself clutching the bloody handcuff from which she had so recently escaped.
July 20th, 1963, she thought incoherently. 5:42 P.M. Totaleclipse. Can I get a witness?
The mixed smell of sweat, semen, and her father’s cologne filled her nose. She wanted to gag on it, but she was suddenly too weak. She managed two more tottery steps, then fell forward onto the bloodstained mattress. Her eyes were open and they blinked occasionally, but otherwise she lay as limp and moveless as a woman who has been cast up, drowned, on some deserted beach.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Her first returning thought was that the darkness meant she was dead.
Her second was that if she was dead, her right hand wouldn’t feel as if it had first been napalmed and then flayed with razorblades. Her third was the dismayed realization that if it was dark and her eyes were open-as they seemed to be-then the sun had gone down. That jolted her up from the in-between place where she had been lying, not quite unconscious but deep in a post-shock lassitude, in a hurry. At first she couldn’t remember why the idea of sundown should be so frightening, and then
(space cowboy-monster of love)
it all came back to her in a rush so strong it was like an electrical shock. The narrow, corpse-white checks; the high forehead; the rapt eyes.
The wind had come up strongly once more while she had been lying semi-conscious on the bed, and the back door was banging again. For a moment the door and the wind were the only sounds, and then a long, wavering howl rose in the air. Jessie believed it was the most awful sound she had ever heard; the sound she imagined a victim of premature burial might make after being disinterred and dragged, alive but insane, from her coffin.
The sound faded into the uneasy night (and it was night, no doubt about that), but a moment later it came again: an inhuman falsetto, full of idiot terror. It rushed over her like a living thing, making her shudder helplessly on the bed and grope for her ears. She covered them, but could not shut out that terrible cry when it came a third time.
“Oh, don’t,” she moaned. She had never felt so cold, so cold, so cold. “Oh, don’t… don’t.”
The howl funneled away into the gusty night and was not immediately renewed. Jessie had a moment to catch her breath and realize it was only a dog, after all-probably the dog, in fact, the one who had turned her husband into its own personal McDonald’s Drive-Thru. Then the cry was renewed, and it was impossible to believe any creature from the natural world could make such a sound; surely it was a banshee, or a vampire writhing with a stake in its heart. As the howl rose toward its crystalline peak, Jessie suddenly understood why the animal was making that sound.
It had come back, just as she had feared it would. The dog knew it, sensed it, somehow.
She was shivering all over. Her eyes feverishly scanned the corner where she had seen her visitor standing last night-the corner where it had left the pearl earring and the single footprint. It was far too dark to see either of these artifacts (always assuming they were there at all), but for a moment Jessie thought she saw the creature itself, and she felt a scream rise in her throat. She closed her eyes tight, opened them again, and saw nothing but the wind-driven shadows of the trees outside the west window. Farther on in that direction, beyond the writhing shapes of the pines, she could see a fading band of gold on the line of the horizon.