Gerald's Game - Stephen King [134]
But at first she just couldn't. Bizarre as it would undoubtedly seem to someone who hadn't been through what she had been through during the last twenty-eight 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 Gerald's 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 couldn't 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 night-creatures 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 don't want to look! her mind screamed. I don't want to look, I don't 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, bone-chilling howl spiralling into the black October sky. Her head turned until she was looking into her dead husband's study, and yes, sure enough, there it was, a tall figure standing beside Gerald's 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. 'Huhhhhaaahhhhhhh.'
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 record-breaking 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. Gerald's 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, you're seeing it, all right. Maybe not as well as the dog out there is smelling it, but you are seeing it,
As if to remove any lingering doubts she might have had on this score, her visitor poked its head forward in a kind of parody of inquisitiveness, giving Jessie a clear but mercifully brief look at it. The face was that of an alien being that has tried to mimic human features without much success. It was too narrow, for one thing — narrower than any face Jessie had ever seen in her life. The nose seemed to have no more thickness than a butter-knife. The high forehead bulged like a grotesque garden bulb. The thing's eyes were simple black circles below