Gerald's Game - Stephen King [24]
Jessie lifted her hands slowly, holding her arms out at a slight angle so her fists wouldn't fetch up on the underside of the shelf. She kept her head back, wanting to see what happened on the far end of the chains. The other cuffs were clamped to the bedposts between the second and third crossboards. As she lifted her fisted hands, looking like a woman bench-pressing an invisible barbell, the cuffs slid along the posts until they reached the next board up. If she could pull that board off, and the one above it, she would be able to simply slip the handcuffs off the ends of the bedposts. Voilà.
Probably too good to be true, bon — too easy to be true — but you might as well give it a shot. It's a way to pass the time, anyway.
She wrapped her hands around the engraved horizontal board currently barring any further upward progress for the cuffs clamped to the bedposts. She took a deep breath, held it, and yanked. One hard tug was enough to tell her that way was also blocked; it was like trying to pull a steel retaining rod out of a concrete wall. She could nor feel even a millimeter's worth of give.
I could yank on that bastard for ten years and not even move it, let alone pull it off the bedposts, she thought, and let her hands fall back to their former slack, chain-supported position above the bed. A despairing little cry escaped her. To her it sounded like the caw of a thirsty crow.
'What am I going to do?' she asked the shimmers on the ceiling, and at last gave way to desperate, frightened tears. 'Just what in the hell am I going to do?'
As if in answer, the dog began to bark again, and this time it was so close it scared her into a scream. It sounded, in fact, as if it was right outside the east window, in the driveway.
C H A P T E R F I V E
The dog wasn't in the driveway; it was even closer than that. The shadow stretching up the asphalt almost to the front bumper of the Mercedes meant it was on the back porch. That long, trailing shadow looked as if it belonged to some twisted and monstrous freakshow dog, and she hated it on sight.
Don't he so damned silly, she scolded herself. The shadow only looks that way because the sun's going down. Now open your mouth and make some noise, girl — it doesn't have to be a stray, after all.
True enough; there might be a master in the picture somewhere, but she didn't hold out much hope for the idea. She guessed that the dog had been drawn to the back deck by the wire-covered garbage bin just outside the door. Gerald had sometimes called this tidy little construction, with its cedar shingles on top and its double latches on the lid, their raccoon-magnet. This time it had drawn a dog instead of a coon, that was all — a stray, almost certainly. An ill-fed, down-on-its-luck mutt.
Still, she had to try.
'Hey!' she screamed. 'Hey! Is anyone there? I need some help if you are! Is anyone there?'
The dog stopped barking instantly. Its spidery, distorted shadow jerked, turned, started to move . . . and then stopped again. She and Gerald had eaten sub sandwiches on the ride up from Portland, big oily salami-and-cheese combos, and the first thing she'd done when they arrived was to gather up the scraps and wrappings and dump them into the garbage bin. The rich smell of oil and meat was probably what had drawn the dog in the first place, and it was undoubtedly the smell which kept it from bolting back into the woods at the sound of her voice. That smell was stronger than the impulses of its feral heart.
'Help!' Jessie screamed, — and part of her mind tried to warn her that screaming was probably a mistake, that she would only scrape her throat raw and make herself thirstier, but that rational, cautioning voice never had a chance. She had caught the stink of her own fear, it was as strong and compelling to her as the smell of the sandwich leftovers was to the dog, and it quickly carried her into a state that was not just panic but a kind of temporary insanity.
'HELP ME! SOMEBODY HELP ME! HELP! HELP!
HELLLLLLP!'
Her voice