Even her eyeballs were thirsty, and the sight of the ripples dancing on the ceiling to the left of the skylight made her groan softly. 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 whitefaced 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 oldfashioned 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; its 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, hell 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 winddriven 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. Its 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 breasts 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 enormousfar 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 couldnt. For a moment she was sure this was it, the end of the line. One final convulsion, as powerful as six sticks of dynamite planted in a granite ledge, and out you go, Jessie; cashiers 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 didnt torment her; all her concentration was focused on that fiery bundle of nerves between and just below her breasts, 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 didnt 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 alonethere 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 be the worlds 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 fronthardly 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 ragbasket, she must have worn that silly thing to two dozen slumber parties. Punkins hair, which had obscured her face completely while the neckstock held her head down, was now tied back with a velvet bow of darkest midnight blue. The girl looked lovely and deeply happy, which didnt 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 desirealmost a needto 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 be 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 lheure 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 hadnt been asleep and she hadnt 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 breasts was looking at her gravely and sweetly. Theres one thing you havent tried, Jessie. Thats not true, she told Punkin. Ive tried everything, believe me. And you know what? I think that if I hadnt dropped that damned jar of face cream when the dog scared me, I might have been able to squeak out of the left cuff. It was bad luck, that dog coming in when it did. Or bad karma. Bad something, anyway. The girl drifted closer, the grass whispering beneath her bare feet. Not the left cuff, Jessie. Its the right one you can squeak out of. Its an outside shot, Ill grant you that, but its possible. The real question now, I think, is whether you really want to live. Of course I want to live! Closer still. Those eyesa smoke color that tried to be blue and didnt quite make itnow seemed to peer right through her skin and into the heart of her. Do you? I wonder. What are you, crazy? Do you think I want to still be here, handcuffed to this bed, when Jessies eyesstill trying to be blue after all these years and still not quite making itslowly opened again. They gazed around the room with an expression of terrified solemnity. Saw her husband, now lying in an impossibly twisted position, glaring up at the ceiling. I dont want to still be handcuffed to this bed when it gets dark and the boogeyman comes back, she told the empty room. Close your eyes, Jessie. She closed them. Punkin stood there in her old flannel nightie, gazing at her calmly, and Jessie could now see the other girl as wellthe fat one with the pimply skin. The fat girl hadnt been as lucky as Punkin; there had been no escape for her, unless death itself was an escape in certain casesa hypothesis Jessie had become quite willing to accept. The fat girl had either choked to death or suffered some sort of seizure. Her face was the purpleblack color of summer thunderheads. One eye bulged from its socket; the other had burst like a squeezed grape. Her tongue, bloody where she had bitten it repeatedly in her last extremity, protruded between her lips. Jessie turned back to Punkin with a shudder. I dont want to end up like that. Whatever else may be wrong with me, I dont want to end up like that. How did you get out? Slid out, Punkin replied promptly. Slid out of the devils hand; oozed on over to the Promised Land. Jessie felt a throb of anger through her exhaustion. Havent you heard a single word Ive said? I dropped the goddam jar of Nivea! The dog came in and startled me and I dropped it! How can I Also, I remembered the eclipse. Punkin spoke abruptly, with the air of one who has become impatient with some complex but meaningless social formula; you curtsey, I bow, we all join hands. Thats how I really got out; I remembered the eclipse and what happened on the deck while the eclipse was going on. And youll have to remember, too. I think its the only chance you have to get free. You cant run away anymore, Jessie. You have to turn and face the truth. That again? Only that? Jessie felt a deep wave of exhaustion and disappointment. For a moment or two, hope had almost returned, but there was nothing here for her. Nothing at all. You dont understand, she told Punkin. Weve been down this path beforeall the way down. Yes, I suppose that what my father did to me then might have something to do with whats happening to me now, I suppose thats at least possible, but why go through all that pain again when theres so much other pain to go through before God finally gets tired of torturing me and decides to pull down the blinds? There was no answer. The little girl in the blue nightie, the little girl who had once been her, was gone. Now there was only darkness behind Jessies closed lids, like the darkness of a movie screen after the show has ended, so she opened her eyes again and took a long look around the room where she was going to die. She looked from the bathroom door to the framed batik butterfly to the bureau to her husbands body, lying beneath its noxious throwrug of sluggish autumn flies. Quit it, Jess. Go back to the eclipse.  Her eyes widened. That actually did sound reala real voice coming not from the bathroom or the hall or from inside her own head, but seeming to seep out of the very air itself. Punkin? Her voice was only a croak now. She tried to sit up a little more, but another ferocious cramp threatened her midsection and she lay back against the headboard at once, waiting for it to pass. Punkin, is that you? Is it, dear? For a moment she thought she heard something, that the voice said something else, but if it did, she was unable to make out the words. And then it was entirely gone. Go back to the eclipse, Jessie. No answers there, she muttered. Nothing there but pain and stupidity and ... And what? What else? The old Adam. The phrase rose naturally into her mind, lifted from some sermon she must have heard as a bored child sitting between her mother and father, kicking her feet in order to watch the light falling through the colored church windows shift and glimmer on her white patentleather shoes. Just some phrase that had caught on sticky flypaper in her subconscious and stayed with her. The old Adamand maybe that was all it was, as simple as that. A father who had halfconsciously arranged to be alone with his pretty, vivacious young daughter, thinking all the while There wont be any harm in it, no harm, not a bit of harm. Then the eclipse had started, and she had sat on his lap in the sundress that was both too tight and too shortthe sundress he himself had asked her to wearand what had happened had happened. Just a brief, goatish interlude that had shamed and embarrassed them both. He had squirted his squirtthat was the long and short of it (and if there was some sort of pun buried in there, she didnt give a shit about it); had shot it all over the back of her underwear, in factdefinitely not approved behavior for Daddies and definitely not a situation she had ever seen explored on The Brady Bunch, but . . . But lets face it, Jessie thought. I got off with barely a scratch compared to what could have happened ... what does happen every day. It doesnt just happen in places like Peyton Place and along Tobacco Road, either. My father wasnt the first collegeeducated, uppermiddleclass man to ever get a hardon for his daughter, and I wasnt the first daughter to ever find a wet spot on the back of her underpants. Thats not to say it was right, or even excusable; its just to say that its over, and it could have been a lot worse. Yes. And right now forgetting all that seemed a much better idea than going through it yet again, no matter what Punkin had to say on the subject. Best to let it fade into the general darkness which came with any solar eclipse. She still had a lot of dying to do in this stinking, flyfilled bedroom. She closed her eyes and immediately the scent of her fathers cologne seemed to drift into her nose. That, and the smell of his light, nervous sweat. The feel of the hard thing against her bottom. His little gasp as she squirmed on his lap, trying to get comfortable. Feeling his hand as it settled lightly on her breast. Wondering if he was all right. He had begun to breathe so fast. Marvin Gaye on the radio I love too hard, my friends sometimes say, but I believe . . . I believe . . . that a woman should be loved that way ... Do you love me, Punkin? Yes, sure Then dont worry about anything. Id never hurt you. Now his other hand was moving up her bare leg, pushing the sundress ahead of it, bunching it in her lap. I want...  I want to be sweet to you,  Jessie muttered, shifting a little against the headboard. Her face was sallow and drawn. Thats what he said. Good Christ, he actually said that. Everybody knows ... especially you girls... that a love can be sad, well my love is twice as bad ... Im not sure I want to, Daddy... Im afraid of burning my eyes. You have another twenty seconds. At least that. So dont worry. And dont look around. Then there had been the snap of elasticnot hers but hisas he set the old Adam free. In defiance of her advancing dehydration, a single tear slipped from Jessies left eye and rolled slowly down her cheek. Im doing it, she said in a hoarse, choked voice. Im remembering. I hope youre happy. Yes, Punkin said, and although Jessie could no longer see it, she could feel that strange, sweet gaze on her. Youve gone too far, though. Back up a little. Just a little. An enormous sense of relief washed through Jessie as she realized the thing Punkin wanted her to remember had not happened during or after her fathers sexual advances, but before them ... although not long before. Then why did I have to go through the rest of that awful old stuff? The answer to that was pretty obvious, she supposed. It didnt matter if you wanted one sardine or twenty, you still had to open the can and look at all of them; you had to smell that horrible fishoil stink. And besides, a little ancient history wasnt going to kill her. The handcuffs holding her to the bed might, but not these old memories, painful as they might be. It was time to quit bitching and moaning and get down to business. Time to find whatever it was Punkin said she was supposed to find. Go back to just before he started to touch you that other waythe wrong way. Go back to the reason why the two of you were out there in the first place. Go back to the eclipse. Jessie closed her eyes tighter and went back. 28 Punkin? All right? Yes, but ... its a little scary, isnt it? Now she doesnt have to look into the reflectorbox to know somethings happening; the day is beginning to darken the way it does when a cloud passes over the sun. But this is no cloud; the murk has unravelled and what clouds there are lie quite far to the east. Yes, he says, and when she glances at him, she is enormously relieved to see he means it. Want to sit on my lap, Jess? Can I? You bet. So she does, glad of his nearness and warmth and his sweet smellthe smell of Daddyas the day continues to darken. Glad most of all because it is a little scary, scarier than she imagined it would be. What scares her the most is the way their shadows on the deck are fading. She has never seen shadows fade quite like this before, and is almost positive she never will again. Thats perfectly okay with me, she thinks, and snuggles closer, glad to be (at least for the duration of this slightly spooky interlude) her fathers Punkin again instead of plain old Jessietoo tall, too gawky... too squeaky. Can I look through the smoked glass yet, Dad? Not yet. His hand, heavy and warm on her leg. She puts her own hand over it, then turns to him and grins. Its exciting, isnt it? Yes.. Yes it is, Punkin. Quite a bit more than I thought it would be, actually. She wriggles again, wanting to find a way to coexist with the hard part of him against which her bottom is now resting. He draws in a quick hissing mouthful of air over his bottom lip. Daddy? Am I too heavy? Did I hurt you? No. Youre fine. Can I look at it through the glass yet? Not yet, Punkin. But very soon. The world no longer has the look it gets when the sun dives into a cloud; now it seems as if twilight has come in the middle of the afternoon. She hears the old hootyowl in the woods, and the sound makes her shiver. On WNCH Debbie Reynolds is fading out, and the deejay who comes in on top of them will soon be replaced by Marvin Gaye. Look out on the lake! Daddy tells her, and when she does, she sees a weird twilight creeping over a lackluster world from which every strong color has been subtracted, leaving nothing but subdued pastels. She shivers and tells him its creepy; he tells her to try not to be too scared to enjoy it, a statement she will examine carefullytoo carefully, perhapsfor double meanings years later. And now ... Dad? Daddy? Its gone. Can I Yes Now its okay. But when I say you have to stop, you have to stop. No arguments, understand? He gives her three panes of smoked glass in a stack, but first he gives her a potholder. He gives it to her because he made the viewers from panes of glass cut from an old shed window, and he is less than confident of his abilities with the glasscutter. And as she looks down at the potholder in this experience which is both dream and memory, her mind suddenly leaps even further back, as nimbly as an acrobat turning a flip, and she hears him say The last thing I need ... 29 . . . is for your mother to come home and find a note saying . . .  Jessies eyes flashed open as she spoke these words to the empty room, and the first thing they saw was the empty glass Geralds waterglass, still standing on the shelf. Standing there near the cuff binding her wrist to the bedpost. Not the left wrist but the right. . . . a note saying Ive taken you to the Emergency Room so they can try to sew a couple of your fingers back on. Now Jessie understood the purpose of that old, hurtful memory; understood what Punkin had been trying to tell her all along. The answer had nothing to do with the old Adam, or with the faint mineral smell of the wet spot on her old cotton underpants. It had everything to do with half a dozen panes of glass carefully cut from the crumbling putty of an old shed window. She had lost the jar of Nivea cream, but there was still at least one other source of lubrication left to her, wasnt there? One other way to ooze on over to the Promised Land. There was blood. Until it clotted, blood was almost as slippery as oil. Its going to hurt like hell, Jessie. Yes, of course it would hurt like hell. But she thought she had heard or read somewhere that there were fewer nerves in the wrists than at many of the bodys vital checkpoints; that was why slitting ones wrists, especially in a tubful of hot water, had been a preferred method of suicide ever since the original togaparties in Imperial Rome. Besides, she was halfnumb already. I was halfnumb to let him lock me up in these things in the first place, she croaked. If you cut too deep, youll bleed to death just like those old Romans. Yes, of course she would. But if she didnt cut at all, shed lie here until she died of seizures or dehydration ... or until her friend with the bag of bones showed up tonight. Okay, she said. Her heart was pumping very hard, and she was fully awake for the first time in hours. Time restarted with a ram and a jerk, like a freighttrain pulling out of a siding and back onto the main line. Okay, thats the convincer. Listen, a voice said urgently, and Jessie realized with amazement that it was the voice of Ruth and the Goodwife. They had merged, at least for the time being. Listen carefully, Jess. Im listening, she told the empty room. She was also looking. It was the glass she was looking at. One of a set of twelve shed gotten on sale at Sears three or four years ago. Six or eight of them broken by now. Soon there would be another She swallowed and grimaced. It was like trying to swallow around a flannelcovered stone lodged in her throat. Im listening very carefully, believe me. Good. Because once you start this, you wont be able to stop again. Everythings got to happen fast, because your system is already dehydrated. But remember this even if things go all wrong theyll work out just fine, she finished. And it was true, wasnt it? The situation had taken on a simplicity that was, in its own ghastly way, sort of elegant. She didnt want to bleed to death, of coursewho would?but it would be better than the intensifying cramps and the thirst. Better than him. It. The hallucination. Whatever it was. She licked her dry lips with her dry tongue and caught at her flying, confused thoughts. Tried to put them in order as she had done before going after the sample jar of face cream which was now lying uselessly on the floor beside the bed. It was getting harder to think, she discovered. She kept hearing snatches of (go greasy) that talking blues, kept smelling her fathers cologne, kept feeling that hard thing against her bottom. And then there was Gerald. Gerald seemed to be talking to her from his place on the floor. Its going to be back, Jessie. Nothing you can do will stop it. It will teach you a lesson, me proud beauty. She flicked her eyes toward him, then looked hastily back at the waterglass. Gerald appeared to be grinning ferociously at her with the part of his face which the dog had left intact. She made another effort to set her wits to work, and after some effort, the thoughts began to roll. She took ten minutes, going over the steps again and again. There wasnt much, in truth, to go overher agenda was suicidally risky but not complicated. She mentally rehearsed each move several times just the same, looking for the minor mistake which might cost her her last chance at life. She couldnt find it. In the end there was only one major drawbackit would have to be done very fast, before the blood could start to coagulateand there were only two possible outcomes a quick escape, or unconsciousness and death. She reviewed the whole thing one more timenot putting off the necessary nasty business but examining it the way she would have examined a scarf she had knitted for runs and dropped stitcheswhile the sun continued its steady westward run. On the back stoop the dog got up, leaving the glistening knot of gristle upon which it had been gnawing. It ambled toward the woods. It had caught a whiff of that black scent again, and with its belly full, even a whiff was too much. 30 Twelvetwelvetwelve, the clock flashed, and whatever time it really was, it was time. One more thing before you start. Youve got yourself nerved up to the sticking point, and thats good, but keep your focus. If you start off by dropping the damn glass on the floor, you really will be fucked. Stay out, dog! she called shrilly, with no idea that the dog had retreated to the stand of woods beyond the head of the driveway some minutes before. She hesitated a moment longer, considering another prayer, and then decided she had done all the praying she intended to do. Now she would depend on her voices ... and on herself. She reached for the glass with her right hand, moving without her former tentative care. Part of herprobably the part which had so liked and admired Ruth Nearyunderstood that this final job was not about care and caution but about bringing down the hammer and bringing it down hard. Now I must be Samurai Lady, she thought, and smiled. She closed her fingers upon the glass she had worked so hard to get in the first place, looked at it curiously for a momentlooked at it as a gardener might look at some unexpected specimen she has found growing in among her beans or peasthen gripped it. She slitted her eyes almost completely shut to protect them from flying splinters, then brought the glass down hard on the shelf, in the manner of one who cracks the shell of a hardboiled egg. The sound the glass made was absurdly familiar, absurdly normal, a sound no different from that made by the hundreds of glasses which had either slipped through her fingers during the washingup or been knocked onto the floor by her elbow or straying hand in all the years since she had graduated from her plastic Dandy Duck cup at the age of five. Same old kersmash; there was no special resonance to indicate the fact that she had just begun the unique job of risking her life in order to save it. She did feel a single random chunk of glass strike low on her forehead, just above the eyebrow, but that was the only one to hit her face. Another piecea big one, by the soundspun off the shelf and shattered on the floor. Jessies lips were pressed together in a tight white line, anticipating what would surely be the major source of pain, at least to begin with her fingers. They had been gripping the glass tightly when it shattered. But there was no pain, only a sense of faint pressure and even fainter heat. Compared with the cramps which had been ripping at her for the last couple of hours, it was nothing. The glass must have broken lucky, and why not? Isnt it time I had a little luck? Then she raised her hand and saw the glass hadnt broken lucky after all. Dark red blisters of blood were welling up at the tips of her thumb and three of her four fingers; only her pinky had escaped being cut. Shards of glass stuck out of her thumb, second, and third fingers like weird quills. The creeping numbness in her extremitiesand perhaps the keen edges on the pieces of glass which had cut herhad kept her from feeling the lacerations much, but they were there. As she watched, fat drops of blood began to patter down on the pink quilted surface of the mattress, staining it a far darker color. Those narrow darts of glass, sticking out of her middle two fingers like pins from a pincushion, made her feel like throwing up even though there was nothing at all in her stomach. Some Samurai Lady you turned out to be, one of the UFO voices sneered. But theyre my fingers! she cried at it. Dont you see? Theyre my fingers! She felt panic flutter, forced it back, and returned her attention to the chunk of waterglass she was still holding. It was a curved upper section, probably a quarter of the whole, and on one side it had broken in two smooth arcs. They came to an almost perfect point which glittered cruelly in the afternoon sun. A lucky break, that ... maybe. If she could keep her courage up. To her this curving prong of glass looked like a fantastic fairytale weapona tiny scimitar, something to be carried by a warlike pixie on its way to do battle beneath a toadstool. Your mind is wandering, dear, Punkin said. Can you afford that? The answer, of course, was no. Jessie laid the quartersection of drinking glass back down on the shelf, placing it carefully so she would be able to reach it without serious contortions. It lay on its smooth curved belly, the scimitarshaped prong jutting out. A tiny spark of reflected sun glittered hotly at the tip. She thought it might do very well for the next job, if she was careful not to bear down too hard. If she did that, she would probably push the glass off the shelf or snap off the accidental bladeshape. Just be careful, she said. You wont need to bear down if youre careful, Jessie. Just pretend But the rest of that thought (youre carving roast beef) didnt seem very productive, so she blocked it before more than its leading edge could get through. She lifted her right arm, extending it until the handcuff chain was almost taut and her wrist hovered above the gleaming hook of glass. She wanted very much to sweep away the rest of the glass littering the shelfshe sensed it waiting for her up there like a minefieldbut she didnt dare. Not after her experience with the jar of Nivea cream. If she accidentally knocked the bladeshaped piece of glass off the shelf, or broke it, she would need to sift through the leftovers for an acceptable substitute. Such precautions seemed almost surreal to her, but she did not for a single moment try to tell herself they were unnecessary. If she was going to get out of this, she was going to have to bleed a lot more than she was bleeding now. Do it just the way you saw it, Jessie, thats all . . . and dont chicken out. No chickening out, Jessie agreed in her harsh dustinthecracks voice. She spread her hand and then shook her wrist, hoping to get rid of the glass poking out of her fingers. She mostly succeeded; only the sliver in her thumb, buried deeply in the tender flesh beneath the nail, refused to go. She decided to leave it and get on with the rest of her business. What youre planning to do is absolutely crazy, a nervous voice told her. No UFO here; this was a voice Jessie knew well. It was the voice of her mother. Not that Im surprised, you understand; its a typical Jessie Mahout overreaction, and if Ive seen it once, Ive seen it a thousand times. Think about it, Jessiewhy cut yourself up and maybe bleed to death? Someone will come and rescue you; anything else is simply unthinkable. Dying in ones summer house? Dying in handcuffs? Utterly ridiculous, take my word for it. So rise above your usual whiny nature, Jessie just this one time. Dont cut yourself on that glass. Dont you do it! That was her mother, all right; the mimicry was so good it was eerie. She wanted you to believe you were hearing love and common sense masquerading as anger, and while the woman had not been entirely incapable of love, Jessie thought the real Sally Mahout was the woman who had one day marched into Jessies room and thrown a pair of high heels at her without a single word of explanation, either then or later. Besides, everything that voice had said was a lie. A scared lie. No, she said, I wont take your word for it. No ones coming... except maybe the guy from last night. No chickening out. With that, Jessie lowered her right wrist toward the gleaming blade of glass. 31 It was important that she see what she was doing, because she felt almost nothing at first; she could have cut her wrist to bleeding ribbons and felt little save those distant sensations of pressure and warmth. She was greatly relieved to find that seeing wasnt going to be a problem; she had smashed the glass at a good place on the shelf (A break at last! part of her mind rejoiced sarcastically), and her view was almost completely unobstructed. Hand tilted back, Jessie sank her inner wristthat part which bears the lines palmreaders call the Bracelets of Fortuneonto the broken curve of glass. She watched, fascinated, as the jutting point first dimpled her skin, then popped it. She kept pressing and her wrist kept eating the glass. The dimple filled up with blood and disappeared. Jessies first reaction was disappointment. The glass hook hadnt created the gusher she had hoped for (and half feared). Then the sharp edge severed the blue bundles of vein lying closest to the surface of her skin, and the blood began flowing out faster. It did not come in the pulsing jets she had expected but in a fast, steady flow, like water from a tap which has been spun almost all the way open. Then something bigger parted and the stream became a freshet.


It coursed across the shelf and spilled down her forearm. Too late to back out now; she was for it. One way or the other, she was for it. Pull back, at least! the mothervoice screamed. Dont make it any worseyouve done enough! Try it now! A tempting idea, but Jessie thought that what she had done so far was a long way from being enough. She didnt know the word degloving, a technical term used most commonly by doctors in connection with burnvictims, but now that she had begun this grisly operation, she understood she could not depend on blood alone to slide her free. Blood might not be enough. She slowly and carefully twisted her wrist, splitting the tight skin of her lower hand. Now she felt a weird tingling across her palm, as if she had cut into some small but vital sheath of nerves which had been halfdead to begin with. The third and fourth fingers of her right hand swooned forward as if they had been killed. The first two, along with the thumb, began to jitter wildly back and forth. As mercifully numb as her flesh was, Jessie still found something inexpressibly horrible in these signs of the damage she was doing herself. Those two crumpled fingers, so like little corpses, were somehow worse than all the blood she had spilled thus far. Then both this horror and the growing feeling of heat and pressure in her wounded hand were overwhelmed as a fresh cramp moved into her side like a stormfront. It dug at her mercilessly, trying to tear her out of her twisted position, and Jessie fought back with terrified fury. She couldnt move now. She would almost certainly knock her improvised cutting tool to the floor if she did. No you dont, she muttered through her clenched teeth. No, you bastardget out of Dodge. She held herself rigidly in position, trying to keep from bearing down on the fragile glass blade any harder than she already was, not wanting to snap it off and have to try finishing with some less apt tool. But if the cramp spread from her side to her right arm, as it was apparently trying to No, she moaned. Go away, do you hear? Just go the fuck away! She waited, knowing she could not afford to wait, also knowing she could do nothing else; she waited and listened to the sound of her lifes blood pattering to the floor from the bottom of the headboard. She watched more blood run off the shelf in little streamlets. Tiny sparkles of glass gleamed in some of these. She had begun to feel like a victim in a slasher movie. You cant wait any longer, Jessie! Ruth rapped at her. Youre all out of time! What Im really out of is luck, and I never had that goddam much to start with, she told Ruth. At that moment she either felt the cramp loosen a little or was able to kid herself that she did. Jessie revolved her hand inside the cuff, screaming with pain as the cramp pounced once more, sinking its hot claws into her midsection, trying to set it on fire again. She kept moving just the same, however, and now it was the back of her wrist that she impaled. The soft inner part was turned up and Jessie watched, fascinated, as the deep gash across her Bracelets of Fortune opened its blackred mouth wide and appeared to laugh at her. She drove the glass as deeply into the back of her hand as she dared, still fighting the cramp in her midriff and lower chest, then yanked her hand back toward her, spraying a fine mist of backspatter across her forehead, her cheeks, and the bridge of her nose. The broken chunk of glass with which she had performed this rudimentary surgery went spinning to the floor, and there the pixieblade shattered. Jessie spared it not a single thought; its job was done. Meantime, there was one more step to be taken, one more thing to see whether the cuff would maintain its jealous hold on her, or if flesh and blood might not at last conspire to make it let go. The cramp in her side gave a final deep pinch and then began to loosen. Jessie noted its departure no more than she had noted the loss of her primitive glass scalpel. She could feel the force of her concentrationher mind seemed to burn with it, like a torch coated with pine resinand all of it was fixed on her right hand. She held it up, examining it, in the golden sunlight of late afternoon. The fingers were thickly streaked with gore. Her forearm appeared to have been daubed with slobbers of bright red latex paint. The handcuff was little more than a curved shape rising out of the general flood, and Jessie knew it was as good as it was going to be. She cocked her arm and then pulled downward, as she had twice before. The handcuff slid ... slid some more ... and then bound up again. It had been stopped once more by the obdurate outcrop of bone below the thumb. No! she shrieked, and yanked harder. I refuse to die this way! Do you hear me? I REFUSE TO DIE THIS WAY! The handcuff bit in deep, and for a moment Jessie was sickeningly sure that it would not move so much as another millimeter, that the next time it moved would be when some cigarchomping cop unlocked it and took it off her dead body. She could not move it, no power on earth could move it, and neither the princes of heaven nor the potentates of hell would move it. Then there was a sensation in the back of her wrist that felt like heatlightning, and the handcuff jerked upward a little. It stopped, then began to move again. That hot, electrical tingle began to spread as it did, quickly becoming a dark burning which first spread all the way around her hand like a bracelet and then bit in like a battalion of hungry red ants. The cuff was moving because the skin it rested on was moving, sliding the way a heavy object on a rug will slide if someone pulls the rug. The ragged, circular cut she had inscribed about her wrist widened, pulling wet strands of tendon across the gap and creating a red bracelet. The skin on the back of her hand began to wrinkle and bunch ahead of the cuff, and now what she thought of was how the coverlet had looked when she had pushed it down to the bottom of the bed with her pedaling feet. Im peeling my hand, she thought. Oh dear Jesus, Im peeling it like an orange. Let go! she screamed at the handcuff, suddenly infuriated beyond all reason. In that moment it became a live thing to her, some hateful clinging creature with many teeth, like a lamprey eel or a rabid weasel. Oh, wont you ever let me go? The cuff had slid much further than it had on her previous attempts to slip out of it, but still it clung, stubbornly refusing to give her that last quarter (or perhaps it was now only an eighth) of an inch. The bleary, bloodgreased circle of steel now lay across a hand partially stripped of skin, baring a shiny meshwork of tendons the color of fresh plums. The back of her hand looked like a turkey drumstick from which the crispy outer skin has been removed. The steady downward pressure she was exerting had yanked the wound across her inner wrist even wider, creating a bloodcaked chasm. Jessie wondered if she might not yank her hand right off in this final effort to free herself. And now the handcuff, which had still been moving a tittleat least she thought it had beenstopped again. And this time it stopped cold. Of course it has, Jessie! Punkin screamed. Look at it! Its all crooked! If you could straighten it out again Jessie pistoned her arm forward, snapping the handcuff chain back onto her wrist. Then, before her arm could even think of cramping, she pulled downward again, using every bit of strength she had left. A red mist of pain engulfed her hand as the cuff tore across the raw meat between her wrist and the middle of her hand. All the skin which had been pulled away was puddled loosely here, on a diagonal running from the base of her pinky to the base of her thumb. For a moment this loose mass of skin held the cuff back, and then it rolled under the steel with a tiny squelch. That left only that last outcrop of bone, but that was enough to stop her progress. Jessie pulled harder. Nothing happened. Thats it, she thought. Everybody out of the pool. Then, just as she was about to relax her aching arm, the cuff slid over the small protrusion which had held it for so long, flew off the ends of her fingers, and clacked against the bedpost. It all happened so fast that Jessie was at first unable to grasp that it had happened. Her hand no longer looked like the sort of equipment normally issued to human beings, but it was her hand, and it was free. Free. Jessie looked from the empty bloodsmeared cuff to her mangled hand, her face slowly filling with comprehension. Looks like a bird that flew into a factory machine and then got spit out the other end, she thought, but that cuffs not on it anymore. Its really not. Cant believe it, she croaked. Cant. Fucking. Believe it. Never mind, Jessie. You have to hurry. She started like someone being shaken awake from a doze. Hurry? Yes indeed. She didnt know how much blood she had losta pint seemed a reasonable enough guess, judging from the sodden mattress and the streamlets running and dripping down the crossboardsbut she knew that if she lost much more she was going to pass out, and the trip from unconsciousness to death would be a short onejust a quick ferryride across a narrow river. Not going to happen, she thought. It was the toughasnails voice again, but this time it belonged to no one but her, and that made Jessie happy. I didnt go through all this nasty shit just to die passed out on the floor. I havent seen the paperwork, but Im pretty sure that isnt in my contract. All right, but your legs It was a reminder she didnt really need. She hadnt been on her pins in over twentyfour hours, and despite her efforts to keep them waked up, it could be a bad mistake to depend on them too much, at least to begin with. They might cramp up; they might try to buckle under her; they might do both. But forewarned was forearmed ... or so they said. Of course she had gotten a lot of advice like that in the course of her lifetime (advice most often ascribed to that mysterious, ubiquitous group known as they), and nothing she had ever seen on Firing Line or read in the Readers Digest had prepared her for what she had just done. Still, she would be as careful as she could. Jessie had an idea she might not have a lot of leeway in that regard, however. She rolled left, her right arm trailing after her like the tail of a kite or the rusty exhaustpipe of an old car. The only part of it that felt completely alive was the back of her hand, where the exposed packets of tendon burned and raved. The pain was bad, and that sense that her right arm wanted a divorce from the rest of her body was worse, but these things were all but lost in an uprush of mingled hope and triumph. She felt an almost divine joy in her ability to roll across the bed without being stopped by the cuff around her wrist. Another cramp struck her, slamming into her lower belly like the business end of a Louisville Slugger, but she ignored it. Had she called that feeling joy? Oh, that was much too mild a word. It was ecstasy. Full, flatout ecsta Jessie! The edge of the bed! Jesus, stop! It didnt look like the edge of the bed; it looked like the edge of the world on one of those oldfashioned maps from before the time of Columbus. Beyond here there be monsters and sarpents, she thought. Not to mention a fractured left wrist. Stop, Jess! But her body ignored the command; it kept on rolling, cramps and all, and Jessie had just enough time to rotate her left hand inside the left cuff before she thumped onto her belly at the edge of the bed, then went off it entirely. Her toes hit the floor with a jarring smash, but her scream was not entirely one of pain. Her feet were, after all, on the floor again. They were actually on the floor. She finished her clumsy escape from the bed with her left arm stuck stiffly off in the direction of the post to which it was still tethered and her right arm temporarily trapped between her chest and the side of the bed. She could feel warm blood pumping onto her skin and running down her breasts. Jessie got her face over to one side, then had to wait in this new, agonizing position as a cramp of paralyzing, glassy intensity gripped her back from the nape of her neck to the cleft of her buttocks. The sheet against which her breasts and lacerated hand were pressed was growing soggy with blood. I have to get up, she thought. I have to get up right away, or Ill bleed to death right here. The cramp in her back passed and at last she found herself able to plant her feet solidly beneath her. Her legs felt nowhere near as weak and swoony as she had been afraid they might be; in fact, they felt absolutely eager to be about their appointed business. Jessie pushed upward. The shackle clipped around the lefthand bedpost slid up as far as it could before encountering the nexthighest crossboard, and Jessie suddenly found herself in a position she had strongly come to suspect she would never attain again standing on her own two feet, beside the bed which had been her prison... almost her coffin. A feeling of enormous gratitude tried to wash over her, and she pushed against it as firmly as she had pushed against the panic. There might be time for gratitude later, but the things to remember right now were that she still wasnt free of the goddamned bed, and her time to get free was severely limited. It was true that she hadnt felt the slightest sensation of faintness or lightheadedness yet, but she had an idea that meant nothing. When the collapse came, it would probably come all at once; shoot out the lights. Still, had standing uponty that, and nothing moreever been so great? So inexpressibly wonderful? Nope, Jessie croaked. Dont think so. Holding her right arm across her chest and keeping the wound in her inner wrist pressed tightly against the upper slope of her left breast, Jessie made a halfturn, placing her bottom against the wall. She was now standing next to the left side of the bed, in a position that looked almost like a soldiers parade rest. She took a long, deep breath, then asked her right arm and poor stripped right hand to go back to work. The arm rose creakily, like the arm of an old and badly caredfor mechanical toy, and her hand settled on the bedshelf. Her third and fourth fingers still refused to move at her command, but she was able to grip the shelf between her thumb and first two fingers well enough to tip it off its brackets. It landed on the mattress where she had lain for so many hours, the mattress where her outline still lay, a sunken, sweaty shape pressed into the pink quilting, its upper half partially traced in blood. Looking at that shape made Jessie feel sick and angry and afraid. Looking at it made her feel crazy. She shifted her eyes from the mattress with the shelf now lying on it to her trembling right hand. She raised it to her mouth and used her teeth to grip the sliver of glass poking out from beneath the thumbnail. The glass slipped, then slid between an upper canine and incisor, slicing deeply into the tender pink meat of her gum. There was a quick, penetrating sting and Jessie felt blood spew into her mouth, its taste sweetsalty, its texture as thick as the cherry coughsyrup shed had to swallow when she had the flu as a child. She paid no attention to this new cutshed made her peace with much worse in the last few minutesbut only reset her grip and drew the sliver smoothly free of her thumb. When it was out, she spat it onto the bed along with a mouthful of warm blood. Okay, she murmured, and began to wriggle her body in between the wall and the headboard, panting harshly as she did so. The bed moved out from the wall more easily than she could have hoped for, but one thing shed never questioned was that it would move, if she ever managed to get sufficient leverage. Now she had it, and began to herd the hateful bed across the waxed floor. Its foot slid off to the right as she went because she was only able to push on the left side, but Jessie had taken this into account and was comfortable with it. Had, in fact, made it a part of her rudimentary plan. When your luck changes, she thought, it changes all the way. You may have cut your upper gum all to shit, Jess, but you havent stepped on a single piece of broken glass. So just keep moving this bed, sweetheart, and keep counting your bl Her foot thumped against something. She looked down and saw she had kicked Geralds plump right shoulder. Blood pattered down on his chest and face. A drop fell in one staring blue eye. She felt no pity for him; she felt no hate for him; she felt no love for him. She felt a kind of horror and disgust for herself, that all the feelings with which she had occupied herself over the yearsthose socalled civilized feelings that were the meat of every soapopera, talkshow, and radio phonein programshould prove so shallow compared with the survival instinct, which had turned out (in her case, at least), to be as overbearing and brutally insistent as a bulldozer blade. But that was the case, and she had an idea that if Arsenio or Oprah ever found themselves in this situation, they would do most of the things she had done. Out of my way, Gerald, she said, and kicked him (denying the enormous satisfaction it gave her even as it welled up inside). Gerald refused to move. It was as if the chemical changes which were part of his decay had bonded him to the floor. The flies rose in a buzzing, disturbed cloud just above his distended midsection. That was all. Fuck it, then, Jessie said. She began to push the bed again. She managed to step over Gerald with her right foot, but her left came down squarely on his belly. The pressure created a ghastly buzzing sound in his throat and forced a brief but filthy breath of gas from his gaping mouth. Excuse yourself, Gerald, she muttered, and then left him behind without another look. It was the bureau she was looking at now, the bureau with the keys resting on top of it. As soon as she had left Gerald behind, the blanket of disturbed flies resettled and resumed their days work. There was, after all, so much to do and so little time in which to do it. 32 Her biggest fear had been that the foot of the bed would try to hang up either in the bathroom door or the far corner of the room, making it necessary for her to back and fill like a woman trying to shoehorn a big car into a small parking space. As it turned out, the rightwardtending arc the bed described as she moved it slowly across the room was almost perfect. She only had to make a single midcourse correction, pulling her end of the bed a little farther to the left so she could be sure the other end would clear the bureau. It was while she was doing thispulling with her head down and her butt out and both arms wrapped tightly around the bedpostthat she suffered her first bout of lightheadedness ... only as she lay with her weight against the post, looking like a woman who is so drunk and tired that she can only stand up by pretending to dance cheektocheek with her boyfriend, she thought that darkheadedness would probably be a better way to describe it. The dominant feeling was one of lossnot just of thought and will but of sensory input as well. For one confused moment she was convinced that time had whiplashed, flinging her to a place that was neither Dark Score nor Kashwakamak but some other place entirely, a place that was on the ocean rather than any inland lake. The smell was no longer oysters and pennies but seasalt. It was the day of the eclipse again, that was the only thing that was the same. She had run into the blackberry tangles to get away from some other man, some other Daddy who wanted to do a lot more than shoot his squirt on the back of her panties. And now he was at the bottom of the well. Dj vu poured over her like strange water. Oh Jesus, what is this? she thought, but there was no answer, only that puzzling image again, one she hadnt thought of since she had returned to the sheetdivided bedroom to change her clothes on the day of the eclipse a skinny woman in a housedress, her dark hair put up in a bun, a puddle of white fabric beside her. Whoa, Jessie thought, clutching at the bedpost with her tattered right hand and trying desperately to keep her knees from buckling. Hold on, Jessiejust hold on. Never mind the woman, never mind the smells, never mind the darkness. Hold on and the darkness will pass. She did, and it did. The image of the skinny woman kneeling beside her slip and looking at the splintered hole in the old boards went first, and then the darkness began to fade. The bedroom brightened again, gradually taking on its former five oclock autumn hue. She saw motes of dust dancing in the light slanting in through the lakeside windows, saw her own shadowlegs stretching across the floor. They broke at the knees so that the rest of her shadow could climb the wall. The darkness pulled back, but it left a high sweet buzzing in her ears. When she looked down at her feet she saw they too were coated with blood. She was walking in it, leaving tracks in it. Youre running out of time, Jessie. She knew. Jessie lowered her chest to the headboard again. Getting the bed started was harder this time, but she finally managed it. Two minutes later she was standing next to the bureau she had stared at so long and hopelessly from the other side of the room. A tiny dry smile quivered the corners of her lips. Im like a woman whos spent her whole life dreaming of the black sands of Kona and cant believe it when shes finally standing on them, she thought. It seems like just another dream, only maybe a little more real than most, because in this one your nose itches. Her nose didnt itch, but she was looking down at the crumpled snake of Geralds tie and the knot was still in it. That last was the sort of detail even the most realistic dreams rarely supplied. Beside the red tie were two small, roundbarrelled keys, clearly identical. The handcuff keys. Jessie raised her right hand and looked at it critically. The third and fourth fingers still hung limply. She wondered briefly just how much nervedamage she had done to her hand, then dismissed the thought. It might matter later onas some of the other things she had dismissed for the duration of this gruelling fourthquarter drive downfield might matter later onbut for the time being, nervedamage to her right hand was no more important to her than the price of hogbelly futures in Omaha. The important thing was that the thumb and first two fingers on that hand were still taking messages. They shook a little, as if expressing shock at the sudden loss of their lifelong neighbors, but they still responded. Jessie bent her head and spoke to them. You have to stop doing that. Later on you can shake like mad, if you want, but right now you have to help me. You have to. Yes. Because the thought of dropping the keys or knocking them off the bureau after getting this far ... that was unthinkable. She stared sternly at her fingers. They didnt stop trembling, not entirely, but as she watched, their jitters quieted to a barely visible thrumming. Okay, she said softly. I dont know if thats good enough or not, but were going to find out. At least the keys were the same, which gave her two chances. She found nothing at all strange in the fact that Gerald had brought them both; he was nothing if not methodical. Planning for contingencies, he often said, was the difference between being good and being great. The only contingencies he hadnt planned on this time were the heart attack and the kick which had provoked it. The result, of course, was that he was neither good nor great, only dead. The doggys dinner, Jessie muttered, once again having no idea at all she was speaking aloud. Gerald used to be a winner, but now hes just the doggys dinner. Right, Ruth? Right, Punkin? She tweezed one of the small steel keys between the thumb and forefinger of her sizzling right hand (as she touched the metal, that pervasive feeling that all this was a dream recurred), picked it up, looked at it, then looked at the cuff which enclosed her left wrist. The lock was a small circle pressed into its side; to Jessie it looked like the sort of doorbell a rich person might have at the tradesmans entrance of the manor house. To open the lock, you simply stuck the hollow barrel of the key into the circle until you heard it click into place, then turned it. She lowered the key toward the lock, but before she could slip the barrel in, another wave of that peculiar darkheadedness rolled through her mind. She swayed on her feet and found herself once again thinking of Karl Wallenda. Her hand began to shake again. Stop that! she cried fiercely, and jammed the key desperately at the lock. Stop th The key missed the circle, struck the hard steel beside it instead, and turned in her bloodslicked fingers. She held onto it a second longer, and then it squirted out of her graspwent greasy, one might have saidand fell to the floor. Now there was only the one key left, and if she lost that You wont, Punkin said. I swear you wont. Just go for it before you lose your courage. She flexed her right arm once, then raised the fingers toward her face. She looked at them closely. The shakes were abating again, not enough to suit her, but she couldnt wait. She was afraid she would black out if she did. She reached out with her faintly trembling hand, and came very close to pushing the remaining key over the edge of the bureau in her first effort to grip it. It was the numbnessthe goddam numbness that simply wouldnt leave her fingers. She took a deep breath, held it, made a fist in spite of the pain and the fresh flow of blood it provoked, then let the air out of her lungs in a long, whistling sigh. She felt a little better. This time she pressed her first finger to the small head of the key and dragged it toward the edge of the bureau instead of trying to pick it up immediately. She didnt stop until it was sticking out over the edge. If you drop it, Jessie! the Goodwife moaned. Oh, if you drop this one, too! Shut up, Goody, Jessie said, and pushed her thumb up against the bottom of the key, creating a pincers. Then, trying not to think at all about what was going to happen to her if this went wrong, she lifted the key and brought it to the cuff. There was a bad run of seconds when she was unable to align the shaking barrel of the key with the lock, and a worse one when the lock itself momentarily doubled... then quadrupled. Jessie squeezed her eyes shut, took another deep breath, then popped them open. Now she saw only one lock again, and she jabbed the key into it before her eyes could do any more tricks. Okay, she breathed. Lets see. She applied clockwise pressure. Nothing happened. Panic tried to jump up into her throat, and then she suddenly remembered the rusty old pickup truck Bill Dunn drove on his caretaking rounds, and the joke sticker on the back bumper LEFTY LOOSEY, RIGHTY TIGHTY, it said. Above the words was a drawing of a large screw. Lefty loosey, Jessie muttered, and tried turning the key counterclockwise. For one moment she did not understand that the cuff had popped open; she thought the loud click she heard was the sound of the key breaking off in the lock, and she shrieked, sending a spray of blood from her cut mouth to the top of the dresser. Some of it spattered Geralds tie, red on red. Then she saw the notched latchlock was standing open, and realized she had done itshe had actually done it. Jessie Burlingame pulled her left hand, a little puffy around the wrist but otherwise unharmed, free of the open cuff, which fell back against the headboard as its mate had done. Then, with an expression of deep, wondering awe, she raised both hands slowly up to her face. She looked from the left to the right and back to the left again. She was unmindful of the fact that the right was covered with blood it was not blood she was interested in, at least not yet. For the moment she only wanted to make absolutely sure she was really free. She looked back and forth between her hands for almost thirty seconds, her eyes moving like those of a woman watching a PingPong match. Then she drew in a deep breath, cocked her head back, and uttered another highpitched, drilling shriek. She felt a fresh wave of darkness, big and smooth and vicious, thunder through her, but she ignored it and went on shrieking. It seemed to her that she had no choice; it was either shriek or die. The brittle brokenglass edge of madness in that shriek was unmistakable, but it was still a scream of utter triumph and victory. Two hundred yards away, in the woods at the head of the driveway, the former Prince lifted its head from its muzzle and looked uneasily toward the house. She couldnt seem to take her eyes off her hands, couldnt seem to stop shrieking. She had never felt anything remotely like what she was feeling now, and some distant part of her thought If sex was even half this good, people would be doing it on every streetcornerthey just wouldnt be able to help themselves. Then she ran out of breath and swayed backward. She grabbed for the headboard, but a moment too late she lost her balance and spilled onto the bedroom floor. As she went down, Jessie realized that part of her had been expecting the handcuff chains to snub her before she fell. Pretty funny, when you thought about it. She struck the open wound on the inside of her wrist as she landed. Pain lit up her right arm like the lights on a Christmas tree and this time when she screamed it was all pain. She bit it off quickly when she felt herself drifting away from consciousness again. She opened her eyes and stared into her husbands torn face. Gerald looked back at her with an expression of endless, glazed surpriseThis wasnt supposed to happen to me, Im a lawyer with my name on the door. Then the fly which had been washing its front legs on his upper lip disappeared up one of his nostrils and Jessie turned her head so quickly she thumped it on the floorboards and saw stars. When she opened her eyes this time, she was looking up at the headboard, with its gaudy drips and runnels of blood. Had she been standing way up there only a few seconds ago? She was pretty sure she had been, but it was hard to believefrom here, the fucking bed looked approximately as tall as the Chrysler Building. Get moving, Jess! It was Punkin, once more yelling in that urgent, annoying voice of hers. For someone with such a sweet little face, Punkin could certainly be a bitch when she set her mind to it. Not a bitch, she said, letting her eyes slip closed. A small, dreamy smile touched the corners of her mouth. A squeaky wheel. Get moving, damn it! Cant. Need a little rest first. If you dont get. moving right away, you can rest forever! Now shag your fat ass! That got to her. Nothing fat about it, Miss Smartmouth, she muttered pettishly, and tried to struggle to her feet. It took only two efforts (the second thwarted by another of those paralyzing cramps across her diaphragm) to convince her that getting up was, at least for the time being, a bad idea. And doing so would actually create more problems than it would solve, because she needed to get into the bathroom, and the foot of the bed now lay across the doorway like a roadblock. Jessie went under the bed, moving with a gliding, swimming motion that was almost graceful, blowing a few errant dust bunnies out of her way as she went. They drifted off like small gray tumbleweeds. For some reason the dust bunnies made her think of the woman in her vision againthe woman kneeling in the blackberry tangles with her slip in a white pile beside her. She slid into the gloom of the bathroom and a new smell smote her nostrils the dark, mossy smell of water. Water dripping from the tub faucets; water dripping from the shower head; water dripping from the washbasin taps.


She could even smell the peculiar waitingtobemildew odor of a damp towel in the basket behind the door. Water, water, everywhere, and every drop to drink. Her throat shrank dryly inside her neck, seeming to cry out, and she became aware that she was actually touching watera small puddle from the leaky pipe under the sink, the one the plumber never seemed to get to no matter how many times he was asked. Gasping, Jessie pulled herself over to the puddle, dropped her head, and began to lick the linoleum. The taste of the water was indescribable, the silky feel of it on her lips and tongue beyond all dreams of sweet sensuousness. The only problem was that there wasnt enough. That enchantingly dank, enchantingly green smell was all around her, but the puddle below the sink was gone and her thirst wasnt slaked but only awake. That smell, the smell of shady springs and old hidden wellheads, did what even Punkins voice hadnt been able to do it got Jessie on her feet again. She used the edge of the sink to haul herself up. She caught just a glimpse of an eighthundredyearold woman looking out of the mirror at her, and then she twisted the basin tap marked C. Fresh wateratt the water in the worldcame gushing out. She tried to voice that triumphant shriek again, but this time managed nothing but a harsh susurrant whisper. She bent over the basin, her mouth opening and closing like the mouth of a fish, and lunged into that mossy wellhead perfume. It was also the bland mineral smell which had so haunted her over all the years since her father had molested her during the eclipse, but now it was all right; now it was not the smell of fear and shame but of life. Jessie inhaled it, then coughed it out joyously again as she shoved her open mouth into the water jetting from the tap. She drank until a powerful but painless cramp caused her to heave it all back up again. It came still cool from its short visit in her stomach and sprayed the mirror with pink droplets. Then she gasped in several breaths and tried again. The second time the water stayed down. 33 The water brought her back wonderfully, and when she at last turned off the tap and looked at herself in the mirror again, she felt like a reasonable facsimile of a human beingweak, hurting, and shaky on her feet... but alive and aware, just the same. She thought she would never again experience anything as deeply satisfying as those first few swallows of cold water from the gushing tap, and in all her previous experience, only her first orgasm came close to rivalling that moment. In both cases she had been totally commanded by the cells and tissues of her physical being for a few brief seconds, conscious thought (but not consciousness itself) wiped away, and the result had been ecstasy. Ill never forget it, she thought, knowing she had forgotten it already, just as she had forgotten the gorgeous honeyed sting of that first orgasm as soon as the nerves had stopped firing off. It was as if the body disdained memory... or refused the responsibility of it. Never mind all that, Jessieyou have to hurry! Cant you stop yapping at me? she responded. Her wounded wrist was no longer gushing, but it was still doing a hell of a lot more than trickling, and the bed she saw reflected in the bathroom mirror was a horror the mattress soaked with blood and the headboard streaked with it. She had read that people could lose a great deal of blood and keep on functioning, but when they started to tip over, everything went at once. And she had to be pushing the envelope. She opened the medicine cabinet, looked at the box of BandAids, and uttered a harsh caw of laughter. Her eye happened on the small box of Always maxipads sitting discreetly behind a clutter of perfumes and colognes and aftershaves. She knocked two or three of the bottles over dragging the box out, and the air filled with a gagging combination of scents. She stripped the paper cover from one of the pads, which she then wrapped around her wrist like a fat white bracelet. Poppies began to bloom on it almost at once. Who would have thought the lawyers wife had so much blood in her? she mused, and uttered another harsh caw of laughter. There was a tin wheel of Red Cross tape on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet. She took it, using her left hand. Her right now seemed capable of very little except bleeding and howling with pain. Yet she still felt a deep love for it, and why not? When shed needed it, when there had been absolutely nothing else, it had grasped the remaining key, put it in the lock, and turned it. No, she had nothing at all against Ms. Right. That was you, Jessie, Punkin said. I mean . . . were all you. You do know that, dont you? Yes. She knew that perfectly well. She pushed the cover off the adhesive tape and held the roll clumsily with her right hand while she used her left thumb to lift up the end of the tape. She returned the roll to her left hand, pressed the end of the tape to her makeshift bandage, and revolved the roll around her right wrist several times, binding the already damp sanitary pad as tightly against the slash on the inside of her wrist as she could. She tore the tape off the roll with her teeth, hesitated, and then added a white, overlapping armlet of adhesive tape just below her right elbow. Jessie had no idea how much good such a makeshift tourniquet could do, but she didnt think it could do any harm. She tore the tape a second time, and as she dropped the muchdiminished roll back onto the counter, she saw a green bottle of Excedrin standing on the middle shelf of the medicine cabinet. No childproof cap, eitherGod be thanked. She took it down with her left hand and used her teeth to pry off the white plastic top. The smell of the aspirin tablets was acrid, sharp, faintly vinegary. I dont think thats a good idea at all, Goodwife Burlingame said nervously. Aspirin thins the blood and slows clotting. That was probably true, but the exposed nerves on the back of her right hand were now shrieking like a firealarm, and if she didnt do something to damp them down a little, Jessie thought she would soon be rolling around on the floor and baying at the reflections on the ceiling. She shook two Excedrin into her mouth, hesitated, shook in two more. She turned on the tap again, swallowed them, then looked guiltily at the makeshift bandage on her wrist. The red was still sinking through the layers of paper; soon she would be able to take the pad off and wring blood out of it like hot red water. An awful image... and once she had it in her head, she could not seem to get rid of it. If you made that worseGoody began dolefully. Oh, give me a break, the Ruthvoice responded. It spoke briskly but not unkindly. If I die of bloodloss now, am I supposed to blame it on four aspirin after I damned near scalped my right hand in order to get off the bed in the first place? Thats surreal! Yes indeed. Everything seemed surreal now. Except that wasnt exactly the right word. The right word was... Hyperreal, she said in a low, musing voice. Yes, that was it. Definitely it. Jessie turned around so she was facing out the bathroom door again, then gasped in alarm. The part of her head which monitored equilibrium reported that she was still turning. For a moment she imagined dozens of Jessies, an overlapping chain of them, documenting the arc of her turn like frames of moviefilm. Her alarm deepened as she observed that the golden bars of light slanting in through the west window had taken on an actual texturethey looked like swatches of bright yellow snakeskin. The dust motes spinning through them had become sprays of diamond grit. She could hear the fast light beat of her heart, could smell the mixed aromas of blood and wellwater. It was like sniffing an ancient copper pipe. Im getting ready to pass out. No, Jess, youre not. You cant afford to pass out. That was probably true, but she was pretty sure it was going to happen, anyway. There was nothing she could do about it. Yes, there is. And you know what. She looked down at her skinned hand, then raised it. There would be no need to actually do anything except relax the muscles of her right arm. Gravity would take care of the rest. If the pain of her peeled hand striking the edge of the counter werent enough to drag her out of this terrible bright place she suddenly found herself in, nothing would be. She held the hand beside her bloodsmeared left breast for a long moment, trying to nerve herself up enough to do it. Finally she lowered it to her side again. She couldntsimply could not. It was one thing too much. One pain too much. Then get moving before you pass out. I cant do that, either, she responded. She felt more than tired; she felt as if she had just smoked a whole bong of absolutely primo Cambodian Red by herself. All she wanted to do was stand here and watch the motes of diamonddust spin their slow circles in the sunbeams coming in through the west window. And maybe get one more drink of that darkgreen, mossytasting water. Oh Jeez, she said in a faraway, frightened voice. Jeez, Louise. You have to get out of the bathroom, Jessieyou have to. Just worry about that, for now. I think you better crawl over the bed this time; Im not sure you can make it underneath again. But . . . but theres broken glass on the bed. What if I cut myself? That brought Ruth Neary out again, and she was raving. Youve already taken most of the skin off your right handdo you think a few more lacerations are going to make a difference? Jesus Christ, tootsie, what if you die in this bathroom with a cuntdiaper on your wrist and a big stupid grin on your face? Hows that for a whatif? Get moving, bitch! Two careful steps took her back to the bathroom doorway. Jessie only stood there for a moment, swaying and blinking her eyes against the sundazzle like someone who has spent the whole afternoon in a movietheater. The next step took her to the bed. When her thighs were touching the bloodstained mattress, she carefully put her left knee up, grasped one of the footposts to ensure her balance, and then got onto the bed. She was unprepared for the feelings of fear and loathing which washed over her. She could no more imagine ever sleeping in this bed again than she could imagine sleeping in her own coffin. Just kneeling on it made her feel like screaming. You dont need to have a deep, meaningful relationship with it, Jessiejust get across the fucking thing. Somehow she managed to do that, avoiding the shelf and the crumbles and jags of broken waterglass by crossing at the foot of the mattress. Each time her eyes caught sight of the handcuffs dangling from the posts at the head of the bed, one sprung open, the other a closed steel circle covered with bloodher blooda little sound of loathing and distress escaped her. The handcuffs didnt look like inanimate things to her. They looked alive. And still hungry. She reached the far side of the bed, gripped the footpost with her good left hand, turned herself around on her knees with all the care of a hospital convalescent, then lay on her belly and lowered her feet to the floor. She had a bad moment when she didnt think she had strength enough to stand up again; that she would just lie there until she passed out and slid off the bed. Then she pulled in a deep breath and used her left hand to shove. A moment later she was on her feet. The sway was worse nowshe looked like a sailor lurching into the Sunday morning segment of a weekend bingebut she was up, by God. Another wave of darkheadedness sailed across her mind like a pirate galleon with huge black sails. Or an eclipse. Blind, rocking back and forth on her feet, she thought Please, God, dont let me pass out. Please God, okay? Please. At last the light began to come back into the day. When Jessie thought things had gotten as bright as they were going to, she slowly crossed the room to the telephone table, holding her left arm a few inches out from her body to maintain her balance. She picked up the receiver, which seemed to weigh as much as a volume of the Oxford English Dictionary, and brought it to her ear. There was no sound at all; the line was smooth and dead. Somehow this didnt surprise her, but it raised a question had Gerald unplugged the phone from the wall, as he sometimes did when they were down here, or had her nightvisitor cut the wires outside someplace? It wasnt Gerald, she croaked. I would have seen him. Then she realized that wasnt necessarily soshe had headed for the bathroom as soon as they were in the house. He could have done it then. She bent down, grasped the flat white ribbon that went from the back of the phone to the connectorbox on the baseboard behind the chair, and pulled. She thought she felt a little give at first, and then nothing. Even that initial give might have been just her imagination; she knew perfectly well that her senses were no longer very trustworthy. The jack might just be bound up on the chair, but No, Goody said. It wont come because its still plugged inGerald never disconnected it at all. The reason the phone doesnt work is because that thing that was in here with you last night cut the wire. Dont listen to her; underneath that loud voice of hers, shes scared of her own shadow, Ruth said. The connectorplugs hung up on one of the chairs back legsI practically guarantee it. Besides, its easy enough to find out, isnt it? Of course it was. All she had to do was pull the chair out and take a look behind it. And if the plug was out, put it back in. What if you do all that and the phone still doesnt work? Goody asked. Then youll know something else, wont you? Ruth Stop ditheringyou need help, and you need it fast. It was true, but the thought of pulling out the chair filled her with weary gloom. She could probably do it the chair was big, but it still couldnt weigh a fifth of what the bed had weighed, and she had managed to move that all the way across the roombut the thought was heavy. And pulling the chair out would only be the beginning. Once it was moved, she would have to get down on her knees... crawl into the dim, dusty corner behind it to find the connectorbox... Jesus, tootsie! Ruth cried. She sounded alarmed. You dont have any choice! I thought that at long last we all agreed on at least one thing, that you need help, and you need it f Jessie suddenly slammed the door on Ruths voice, and slammed it hard. Instead of moving the chair, she bent over it, picked up the culotte skirt, and carefully pulled it up her legs. Drops of blood from the soaked bandage on her wrist splattered across the front of it at once, but she hardly saw them. She was busy ignoring the jangle of angry, perplexed voices, and wondering just who had let all these weird people into her head in the first place. It was like waking up one morning and discovering your home had become a boarding hotel overnight. All the voices were expressing horrified disbelief at what she was planning to do, but Jessie suddenly discovered she didnt give much of a shit. This was her life. Hers. She picked up the blouse and slipped her head into it. To her confused, shocked mind, the fact that yesterday had been warm enough for this casual sleeveless top seemed to conclusively prove the existence of God. She didnt think she would have been able to bear sliding her stripped right hand down a long sleeve. Never mind that, she thought, this is nuts, and I dont need any makebelieve voices to tell me so. Im thinking about driving out of hereabout trying, anywaywhen the only thing I have to do is move that chair and plug the phone back in. It must be the bloodlossits driven me temporarily insane. This is a nutty idea. Christ, that chair cant weigh fifty pounds ... Im almost home and dry! Yes, except it wasnt the chair, and it wasnt the idea of the Rescue Services guys finding her in the same room as the naked, chewed corpse of her husband. Jessie had a pretty good idea she would be preparing to leave in the Mercedes even if the phone were in perfect working order and she had already summoned the police, the ambulance, and the Deering High School Marching Band. Because the phone wasnt the important thingnot at all. The important thing was... well.... The important thing is that I have to get the fuck out of here right away, she thought, and suddenly she shuddered. Her bare arms broke out in gooseflesh. Because that thing is going to come back. Bullseye. The problem wasnt Gerald, or the chair, or what the Rescue Services guys might think when they got down here and saw the situation. It wasnt 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 reestablish 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 tconnector back in, the phone would still be dead, just like the one in the kitchen and the one in the front hall. And whats the big deal, anyway? she told her voices. Im planning to drive out to the main road, thats all. Compared to performing impromptu surgery with a waterglass and pushing a double bed across the room while losing a pint of blood, itll be a breeze. The Mercedes is a good car, and its a straight shot up the driveway. Ill putter out to Route 117 at ten miles an hour, and if I feel too weak to drive all the way to Dakins Store once I make the highway, Ill just pull across the road, put on the fourway flashers, and lay on the horn when I see someone coming. No reason why that shouldnt work, with the road flat and open for a mile and a half in either direction. The big thing about the car is the locks. Once Im in it, therell be doors I can lock. It wont be able to get in. It, Ruth tried to sneer, but Jessie thought she sounded scaredyes, even her. Thats right, she returned. You were the one who always used to tell me I ought to put my head on hold more often and follow my heart, werent you? You bet you were. And do you know what my heart says now, Ruth? It says that the Mercedes is the only chance I have. And if you 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 carkeys just before he got out of the car, so he could reach into the back seat and get his briefcase. He did do that, didnt he? Please God, let my memory of that be 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 carkey 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 outsideit couldnt 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 dimmercircuit, and someone was turning down the rheostat. As they dimmed, the diamonddust revolving within them disappeared. Oh no, not now, she pleaded. Please, youve got to be kidding. But the light continued to fade, and Jessie suddenly realized she was swaying again, her upper body describing everwidening 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. 539 P.M. Total eclipse. Can I get a witness? The mixed smell of sweat, semen, and her fathers 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. 34 Her first returning thought was that the darkness meant she was dead. Her second was that if she was dead, her right hand wouldnt 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 openas they seemed to bethen the sun had gone down. That jolted her up from the inbetween place where she had been lying, not quite unconscious but deep in a postshock lassitude, in a hurry. At first she couldnt remember why the idea of sundown should be so frightening, and then (space corwboymonster of love) it all came back to her in a rush so strong it was like an electrical shock. The narrow, corpsewhite cheeks; the high forehead; the rapt eyes. The wind had come up strongly once more while she had been lying semiconscious 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, dont, she moaned. She had never felt so cold, so cold, so cold. Oh, dont... dont. 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 allprobably the dog, in fact, the one who had turned her husband into its own personal McDonalds DriveThru. 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 nightthe 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 winddriven 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. It might be seven oclock, but if I can still see the last of the sunset, its probably not even that late. Which means I was only out for an hour, an hour and a half, tops. Maybe its not too late to get out of here. Maybe This time the dog seemed actually to scream. The sound made Jessie feel like screaming back. She grasped one of the footposts because she had started to sway on her feet again, and suddenly realized she couldnt remember getting off the bed in the first place. That was how much the dog had freaked her out. Get control of yourself, girl. Take a deep breath and get control of yourself. She did take a deep breath, and the smell she drew in with the air was one she knew. It was like that flat mineral smell which had haunted her all these yearsthe smell that meant sex, water, and father to herbut not exactly like that. Some other odor or odors seemed mixed into this version of itold garlic... ancient onions... dirt... unwashed feet, maybe. The smell tumbled Jessie back down a well of years and filled her with the helpless, inarticulate terror children feel when they sense some faceless, nameless creaturesome It waiting patiently beneath the bed for them to stick out a foot... or perhaps dangle a hand... The wind gusted. The door banged. And somewhere closer by, a board creaked stealthily the way boards do when someone who is trying to be quiet treads lightly upon them. Its come back, her mind whispered. It was all the voices now; they had entwined in a braid. Thats what the dog smells, thats what you smell, and Jessie, thats what made the board creak. The thing that was here last night has come back for you. Oh God, please, no, she moaned. Oh God no. Oh God no. Oh dear God dont let that be true. She tried to move, but her feet were frozen to the floor and her left hand was nailed to the bedpost. Her fear had immobilized her as surely as oncoming headlights immobilize a deer or rabbit caught in the middle of the road. She would stand here, moaning under her breath and trying to pray, until it came to her, came for herthe space cowboy, the reaper of love, just some doortodoor salesman of the dead, his sample case filled with bones and fingerrings instead of Amway or Fuller brushes. The dogs ululating cry rose in the air, rose in her head, until she thought it must surely drive her mad. Im dreaming, she thought. Thats why I couldnt remember standing up; dreams are the minds version of Readers Digest Condensed Books, and you can never remember unimportant stufflike that when youre having one. I passed out, yesthat really happened, only instead of going down into a coma, I came up into natural sleep. I guess that means the bleeding must have stopped, because I dont think people who are bleeding to death have nightmares when theyre going down for the count. Im sleeping, thats all. Sleeping and having the granddaddy of all bad dreams. A fabulously comforting idea, and only one thing wrong with it it wasnt true. The dancing treeshadows on the wall by the bureau were real. So was that weird smell drifting through the house. She was awake, and she had to get out of here. I cant move! she wailed. Yes you can, Ruth told her grimly. You didnt get out of those fucking handcuffs just to die of fright, tootsie. Get moving, nowI dont need to tell you how to do it, do I? No, Jessie whispered, and slapped lightly at the bedpost with the back of her right hand. The result was an immediate and enormous blast of pain. The vise of panic which had been holding her shattered like glass, and when the dog voiced another of those freezing howls, Jessie barely heard ither hand was a lot closer, and it was howling a lot louder. And you know what to do next, tootsdont you? Yesthe time had come to make like a hockey player and get the puck out of here, to make like a library and book. The thought of Geralds rifle surfaced for a second, and then she dismissed it. She didnt have the slightest idea where the gun was, or even if it was here at all. Jessie walked slowly and carefully across the room on her trembling legs, once again holding out her left hand to steady her balance. The hallway beyond the bedroom door was a carousel of moving shadows with the door to the guest bedroom standing open on the right and the small spare room Gerald used as a study standing open on the left. Farther down on the left was the archway which gave on the kitchen and living room. On the right was the unlatched back door... the Mercedes ... and maybe freedom. Fifty steps, she thought. Cant be any more than that, and its probably less. So get going, okay? But at first she just couldnt. Bizarre as it would undoubtedly seem to someone who hadnt been through what she had been through during the last twentyeight hours or so, the bedroom represented a kind of dour safety to her. The hallway, however... anything might be lurking out there. Anything. Then something which sounded like a thrown stone thudded against the west side of the house, just outside the window. Jessie uttered her own small howl of terror before realizing it was just the branch of the hoary old blue spruce out there by the deck. Get hold of yourself, Punkin said sternly. Get hold of yourself and get out of here. She tottered gamely onward, left arm still out, counting steps under her breath as she went. She passed the guest bedroom at twelve. At fifteen she reached Geralds study, and as she did, she began to hear a low, toneless hissing sound, like steam escaping a very old radiator. At first Jessie did not associate the sound with the study; she thought she was making it herself. Then, as she was raising her right foot to make the sixteenth step, the sound intensified. This time it registered more clearly, and Jessie realized she couldnt be the one making it, because she was holding her breath. Slowly, very slowly, she turned her head toward the study, where her husband would never again work on legal briefs while he chainsmoked Marlboros and sang old Beach Boys hits under his breath. The house was groaning around her like an old ship plowing through a moderately heavy sea, creaking in its various joints as the wind shouldered against it with cold air. Now she could hear a clapping shutter as well as the banging door, but these sounds were somewhere else, in some other world where wives were not handcuffed and husbands did not refuse to listen and nightcreatures did not stalk. She could hear the muscles and tendons in her neck creaking like old bedsprings as she turned her head. Her eyes throbbed in their sockets like chunks of hot charcoal. I dont want to look! her mind screamed. I dont want to look, I dont want to see! But she was helpless not to look. It was as if strong invisible hands were turning her head while the wind gusted and the back door banged and the shutter clapped and the dog once more sent its desolate, bonechilling howl spiralling into the black October sky. Her head turned until she was looking into her dead husbands study, and yes, sure enough, there it was, a tall figure standing beside Geralds Eames chair and in front of the sliding glass door. Its narrow white face hung in the darkness like a stretched skull. The dark, squarish shadow of its souvenir case squatted between its feet. She drew in breath to scream with, but what came out was a sound like a teakettle with a broken whistle Huhhhaaahhhhhhh. Only that and nothing more. Somewhere, in that other world, hot urine was running down her legs; she had wet her pants for a second recordbreaking day. The wind gusted in that other world, making the house shiver on its bones. The blue spruce knocked its branch against the west wall again. Geralds study was a lagoon of dancing shadows, and it was once more very difficult to tell what she was seeing ... or if she was in fact seeing anything at all. The dog raised its keen, horrified cry again and Jessie thought Oh, youre seeing it, all right. Maybe not as well as the dog out there is smelling it, but you are seeing it.