Needful Things - Stephen King [63]
Which was just as fine as paint with Wilma, since she found real estate the world's most boring subject. After dinner, he would clear up without being asked, and she would read the paper. All of these services would be performed by him because he had forgotten one minor chore. She didn't mind taking in the wash at all-in fact, she was fond of the feel and smell of clothes which had spent a happy afternoon drying in the sun-but she had no intention of letting Pete in on that.
It was her little secret.
She had many such secrets, and kept them all for the same reason: in a war, you held onto every advantage. Some nights she would come home and there might be an hour or even two hours of skirmishing before she was finally able to prod Peter into a fullscale retreat, replacing his white pins on her interior battle-map with her red ones. Tonight the engagement had been won less than two minutes after she stepped inside the door, and that was just fine with Wilma.
She believed in her heart that marriage was a lifetime adventure in aggression, and in such a long campaign, where ultimately no prisoners could be taken, no quarter given, no patch of marital landscape left unscorched, such easy victories might eventually lose their savor. But that time had not yet come, and so she went out to the clotheslines with the basket under her left arm and her heart light beneath the swell of her bosom.
She was halfway across the yard before coming to a puzzled stop.
Where in the hell were the sheets?
She should have seen them easily, big rectangular white shapes floating in the dark, but they weren't there. Had they blown away?
Ridiculous! There had been a breeze that afternoon, but hardly a gale. Had someone stolen them?
Then a gust of wind kicked through the air and she heard a large, lazy flapping sound. Okay, they were there somewhere.
When you were the oldest daughter in a sprawling Catholic clan of thirteen children, you knew what a sheet sounded like when it flapped on the line. But it still wasn't right, that sound. It was too heavy.
Wilma took another step forward. Her face, which always wore the faintly shadowed look of a woman who expects trouble, grew darker. Now she could see the sheets or shapes that should have been the sheets. But they were dark.
She took another, smaller step forward, and the breeze whisked through the yard again. The shapes flapped toward her this time, belling out, and before she could get her hand up, something heavy and slimy struck her. Something gooey splattered her cheeks; something thick and soggy pressed against her. It was almost as if a cold, sticky hand were trying to grasp her.
She was not a woman who cried out easily or often, but she cried out now, and dropped the laundry-basket. That sloppy flapping sound came again and she tried to twist away from the shape looming before her. Her left ankle struck the wicker laundry-basket and she stumbled to one knee, missing a full-length tumble only by a combination of luck and quick reflexes.
A heavy, wet thing slobbered its way up her back; thick wetness drooled down the sides of her neck. Wilma cried out again and crawled away from the lines on her hands and knees. Some of her hair had escaped the kerchief she wore and hung against her cheeks, tickling.
She hated that feeling but she hated that drooling, clammy caress from the dark shape hung on her clothesline even more.
The kitchen door banged open, and Pete's alarmed voice carried across the yard: "Wilma? Wilma, are you all right?"
Flapping from behind her-a nasty sound, like a chuckle from vocal cords clotted with dirt. In the next yard the Haverhills' mutt began to bellow hysterically in its high, unpleasant voice-yark! yark! yark!-and this did nothing to improve Wilma's state of mind.
She got to her feet and saw Pete cautiously descending the back steps. "Wilma? Did you fall