Gerald's Game - Stephen King [64]
This time the thought — Monster! Boogeymonster! — rose from the lower levels of her mind to the more brightly lit stage of her consciousness. She denied it again, but she could feel her terror returning, just the same. The creature on the far side of the room might be a man, but even if it was, she was becoming more and more sure that there was something very wrong with its face. If only she could see it better!
You wouldn't want to, a whispery, ominous UFO voice advised her.
But I have to talk to it — have to establish contact, Jessie thought, and immediately responded to herself in a nervous, scolding voice that felt like Ruth and Goody mixed together: Don't think of it as an it, Jessie — think of it as a he. Think of it as a man, someone who's maybe been lost in the woods, someone who's as scared as you are.
Good advice, perhaps, but Jessie found she couldn't think of the figure in the corner as a he, any more than she was able to think of the stray as a he. Nor did she think the creature in the shadows was either lost or frightened. What she felt coming from the corner were long, slow waves of malevolence.
That's stupid! Talk to it, Jessie! Talk to him!
She tried to clear her throat and discovered there was nothing to clear — it was as dry as a desert and as smooth as a soapstone. Now she could feel her heart pounding in her chest, its beat very light, very fast, very irregular.
The wind gusted. The shadows blew white-and-black patterns across the walls and the ceiling, making her feel like a woman trapped inside a kaleidoscope for the colorblind. For just a moment she thought she saw a nose — thin and long and white — below those black, motionless eyes.
'Who — '
At first she could manage only that one tiny whisper which couldn't have been heard on the far side of the bed, let alone across the room. She stopped, licked her lips, and tried again. She was aware that her hands were clamped into painfully tight balls, and she forced her fingers to loosen.
'Who are you?' Still a whisper, but a little better than before.
The figure didn't answer, only stood there with its narrow white hands dangling by its knees, and Jessie thought: Its knees? Knees? Not possible, Jess — when a person's hands are hanging at his sides, they stop at the upper thighs.
Ruth responded, her voice so hushed and fearful Jessie almost didn't recognize it. A normal person's hands stop at the upper thighs, isn't that what you mean? But do you think a normal person would creep into someone's house in the middle of the night, then just stand in the corner, watching, when he finds the lady of the manor chained to the bed? Just stand there and nothing more?
Then it did move one leg . . . or perhaps it was only the distracting motion of the shadows again, this time picked up by the lower quadrant of her vision. The combination of shadows and moonlight and wind lent a terrible ambiguity to this entire episode, and again Jessie found herself doubting the visitor's reality. The possibility that she was still sleeping occurred to her, that her dream of Will's birthday party had simply veered off in some strange new direction . . . but she didn't really believe it. She was awake, all right.
Whether or not the leg actually did move (or even if there was a leg), Jessie's gaze was momentarily drawn downward. She thought she saw some black object sitting on the floor between the creature's feet. It was impossible to tell what it might be because the bureau's shadow rendered that the darkest part of the room, but her mind suddenly returned to that afternoon, when she had been trying to persuade Gerald that she really meant what she was saying. The only sounds had been the wind, the banging door, the barking dog, the loon, and . . .
The thing sitting on the floor between her visitor's feet was a chainsaw.
Jessie was instantly sure of this. Her visitor had been using it earlier, but not to cut firewood. It was people he had been cutting up, and the dog had run because it had smelled the approach of this madman, who had come up