Dolores Claiborne - Stephen King [80]
There was another voice that answered all those questions. I suppose it belonged to the inside eye, but to me it sounded a lot more like Vera Donovan than it did Dolores Claiborne; it sounded bright n dry n kiss-my-back-cheeks-if-you-don't-like-it. Of course he's dead, that voice said, and even if he isn't, he soon will be. He'll die of shock and exposure and punctured lungs. There are probably people who wouldn't believe a man could die of exposure on a July night, but they'd be people who've never spent a few hours thirty feet under the ground, sitting right on top of the dank island bedrock. I know none of that is pleasant to think of, Dolores, but at least it means you can quit your worrying. Sleep for awhile, and when you go back out there, you'll see.
I didn't know if that voice was makin sense or not, but it seemed to be makin sense, and I did try to go to sleep. I couldn't, though. Each time I'd drift a little, I'd think I could hear Joe stumblin his way up the side of the shed toward the back door, and every time the house creaked, I jumped.
At last I couldn't stand it anymore. I took off my dress, put on a pair of jeans n a sweater (lockin the barn door after the hoss has been stolen, I guess you'd say), and grabbed the flashlight off the bath-room floor from beside the commode, where I'd dropped it when I knelt down to vomit. Then I went back out.
It was darker'n ever. I don't know if there was any kind of moon that night, but it wouldn't've mattered even if there was, because the clouds had rolled back in again. The closer I got to the blackberry tangle behind the shed, the heavier my feet got. By the time I could see the wellcap again in the flashlight beam, it seemed like I couldn't hardly lift em at all.
I did, though-I made myself walk right up to it. I stood there listenin for almost five minutes and there wasn't a sound but the crickets and the wind rattlin through the blackberry bushes and an owl hooty-hoom someplace prob'ly the exact same one I'd heard before. Oh, and far off to the east I could hear the waves strikin the headland, only that's a sound you get so used to on the island you don't hardly hear it at all. I stood there with Joe's flashlight in my hand, the beam aimed at the hole in the wellcap, feelin greasy, sticky sweat creepin down all over my body, stingin in the cuts n digs the blackberry thorns had made, and I told myself to kneel down and look in the well. After all, wa'ant that what I'd come out there to do?
It was, but once I was actually out there, I couldn't do it. All I could do was tremble n make a high moanin sound in my throat. My heart wasn't really beatin, either, but only flutterin in my chest like a humminbird's wings.
And then a white hand all streaked with dirt n blood n moss snaked right outta that well n grabbed my ankle.
I dropped the flashlight. It fell in the bushes right at the edge of the well, which was lucky for me; if it'd fallen into the well, I'd've been in deep shit indeed. But I wasn't thinkin about the flashlight or my good luck, because the shit I was in right then was plenty deep enough, and the only thing I was thinkin about was the hand on my ankle, the hand that was draggin me toward the hole. That, and a line from the Bible. It clanged in my head like a big iron bell: I have digged a pit for mine enemies, and am fallen into it myself.
I screamed n tried to pull away, but Joe had me so tight it felt like his hand'd been dipped in cement. My eyes had adjusted to the dark enough so I could see him even with the flashlight beam shinin off in the wrong direction. He'd almost managed to climb