Gerald's Game - Stephen King [133]
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 years — the smell that meant sex, water, and father to her — but not exactly like that. Some other odor or odors seemed mixed into this version of it — old 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 creature — some 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.
It's come back, her mind whispered. It was all the voices now; they had entwined in a braid. That's what the dog smells, that's what you smell, and Jessie, that's 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 don't 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 her — the space cowboy, the reaper of love, just some door-to-door salesman of the dead, his sample case filled with bones and finger-rings instead of Amway or Fuller brushes.
The dog's ululating cry rose in the air, rose in her head, until she thought it must surely drive her mad.
I'm dreaming, she thought. That's why I couldn't remember standing up; dreams are the mind's version of Reader's Digest Condensed Books, and you can never remember unimportant stuff like that when you're having one. I passed out, yes — that 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 don't think people who are bleeding to death have nightmares when they're going down for the count. I'm sleeping, that's all, Sleeping and having the granddaddy of all had dreams.
A fabulously comforting idea, and only one thing wrong with it: it wasn't true. The dancing tree-shadows 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 can't move! she wailed.
Yes you can, Ruth told her grimly. You didn't get out of those fucking handcuffs just to die off right, tootsie. Get moving, now — I don't 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 it — her hand was a lot closer, and it was howling a lot louder.
And you know what to do next, toots — don't you?
Yes — the 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 Gerald's rifle surfaced for a second, and then she dismissed it. She didn't 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