Gerald's Game - Stephen King [42]
Suddenly the wind dropped and the sounds from the entry seemed very loud. 'Are you enjoying him, shithead?' Jessie screamed. Pain ripped at her throat, but she didn't — couldn't — stop. 'I hope so, because the first thing I'm going to do when I get out of these cuffs is blow your head off!'
Big talk, she thought. Very big talk for a woman who no longer even remembers if Gerald's old shotgun — the one that belonged to his dad — is here or in the attic of the Portland house.
Nevertheless, there was a gratifying moment of silence from the shadowy world beyond the bedroom door. It was almost as if the dog were giving this threat its soberest, most thoughtful consideration.
Then the smackings and chewings began again.
Jessie's right wrist twanged warningly, threatening to cramp up, warning her that she had better get on with her business right away . . . if she actually had any business to do, that was.
She leaned to the left and stretched her hand as far as the chain would allow. Then she began to put the pressure on the shelf again. At first there was nothing. She pulled harder, eyes slitted almost shut, the corners of her mouth turned down. It was the face of a child who expects a dose of bad medicine. And, just before she reached the maximum downward pressure her aching arm muscles could exert, she felt a tiny shift in the board, a change in the uniform drag of gravity so minute that it was more intuited than actually sensed.
Wishful thinking, Jess — that's all you felt. Only that and nothing more.
No. It was the input of senses which had been jacked into the stratosphere by terror, perhaps, but it wasn't wishful thinking.
She let go of the shelf and just lay there for a few moments, taking long slow breaths and letting her muscles recover. She didn't want them spasming or cramping up at the critical moment; she had quite enough problems without that, thanks. When she thought she felt as ready as she could feel, she curled her left fist loosely around the bedpost and slid it up and down until the sweat on her palm dried and the mahogany squeaked. Then she stretched out her arm and gripped the shelf again, It was time.
Got to be careful, though. The shelf moved, no question about that, and it'll move more, but it's going to take all my strength to get that glass in motion . . . if I can do it at all, that is. And when a person gets near the end of their strength, control gets spotty.
That was true, but it wasn't the kicker. The kicker was this: she had no feet for the shelf's tip-point. Absolutely none at all.
Jessie remembered seesawing with her sister Maddy on the playground behind Falmouth Grammar School — they had come back early from the lake one summer and it seemed to her she had spent that whole August going up and down on those paintpeeling teeterboards with Maddy as her partner — and how they had been able to balance perfectly whenever they felt like it. All it took was for Maddy, who weighed a little more, to move a butt's length in toward the middle. Long hot afternoons of practice, singing jump-rope songs to each other as they went up and own, had enabled them to find each seesaw's tip-point with an almost scientific exactitude; those half a dozen warped green boards standing in a row on the sizzling hot-top had seemed almost like living things to them. She felt none of that eager liveliness under her fingers now. She would simply have to try her best and hope it was good enough.
And whatever the Bible may say to the contrary, don't let your left hand forget what your right hand is supposed to be doing. Your left may be your ashtray-throwing hand, but your right had better be your glass-catching hand, Jessie. There's only a few inches of shelf where you'll have a chance to get hold of it. if it slides past that area, it won't matter if it stays up — it'll he as out of reach as it is right now.
Jessie didn't think she could forget what her right hand was doing — it hurt too much. Whether