Thinner - Stephen King [116]
The old Gypsy man with the rotting nose smiled. The black lines of rot under his left cheek dipped and wavered. The park was nearly empty now. The sun was nearing the horizon. The shadows covered them. Suddenly the knife was in Lemke's hand again, the blade out.
He's going to stab me, Billy thought dreamily. Going to stab me in the heart and run away with his strawberry pie under his arm.
'Unwrap your hand,' Lemke said.
Billy looked down.
'Yes - where she shot you.'
Billy pulled the clamps out of the elastic bandage and slowly unwrapped it. Underneath, his hand looked too white, fishlike. In contrast, the edges of the wound were dark, dark red - a liverish color. The same color as those things inside his pie, Billy thought. The strawberries. Or whatever they are. And the wound had lost its almost perfect circularity as the edges puffed together. Now it looked like
Like a slit, Billy thought, his eyes drifting back to the pie.
Lemke handed Billy the knife.
How do I know you haven't coated this blade with curare or cyanide or D-Con Rat-Prufe? he thought about asking, and then didn't. Ginelli was the reason. Ginelli and the Curse of the White Man from Town.
The pocketknife's worn bone handle fitted comfortably into his hand.
'If you want to be rid of the purpurfargade ansiktet, first you give it to the pie and then you give the pie with the curse-child inside it to someone else. But it has to be soon, or it come back on you double. You understand?'
'Yes,' Billy said.
'Then do it if you will,' Lemke said. His thumbs tightened again. The darkish slit in the pie crust spread open.
Billy hesitated, but only for a second - then his daughter's face rose in his mind. For a moment he saw her with all the clarity of a good photograph, looking back at him over her shoulder, laughing, her pom-poms held in her hands like big silly purple-and-white fruits.
You're wrong about the push, old man, he thought. Heidi for Linda. My wife for my daughter. That's the push.
He pushed the blade of Taduz Lemke's knife into the hole in his hand. The scab broke open easily. Blood spattered into the slit in the pie. He was dimly aware that Lemke was speaking very rapidly in Rom, his black eyes never leaving Billy's white, gaunt face.
Billy turned the knife in the wound, watching as its puffy lips parted and it regained its former circularity. Now the blood came faster. He felt no pain.
'Enkelt! Enough.'
Lemke plucked the knife from his hand. Billy suddenly felt as if he had no strength at all. He collapsed back against the park bench, feeling wretchedly nauseated, wretchedly empty - the way a woman who has just given birth must feel, he imagined. Then he looked down at his hand and saw that the bleeding had already stopped.
No - that's impossible.
He looked at the pie in Lemke's lap and saw something else that was impossible - only this time the impossibility happened before his eyes. The old man's thumbs relaxed, the slit closed again and then there simply was no slit. The crust was unbroken except for two small steam vents in the exact center. Where the slit had been was something like a zigzag wrinkle in the crust.
He looked back at his hand and saw no blood, no scab, no open flesh. The wound there had now healed completely, leaving only a short white scar - it also zigzagged, crossing lifeand heartlines like a lightning bolt.
'This is yours, white man from town,' Lemke said, and he put the pie in Billy's lap. His first, almost ungovernable impulse was to dump it off, to get rid. of it the way he would have gotten rid of a large spider someone had dropped in his lap. The pie was loathsomely warm, and it seemed to pulse inside its cheap aluminum plate like something alive.
Lemke stood up and looked down at him. 'You feel better?' he asked.
Billy realized that aside from the way he felt about the thing he was holding in his lap, he did. The weakness had passed. His heart was beating normally.
'A little,' he said cautiously.
Lemke nodded. 'You take weight now. But in a week, maybe two, you start to fall