Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King [216]
“And I wanted to get away from the chimes. They kept getting louder. My eyes started to water. My ears hurt. I was glad I still had eyes and ears, but the chimes made any gratitude I might have felt pretty academic.
“I thought, I have to get into the light, and I lunged for it. I…”
Eighteen
He opens his eyes, but even before he does, he is aware of a smell. It’s the smell of hay, but very faint, almost exhausted. A ghost of its former self, you might say. And he? Is he a ghost?
He sits up and looks around. If this is the afterlife, then all the holy books of the world, including the one from which he himself used to preach, are wrong. Because he’s not in heaven or hell; he’s in a stable. There are white wisps of ancient straw on the floor. There are cracks in the board walls through which brilliant light streams. It’s the light he followed out of the darkness, he thinks. And he thinks, It’s desert light. Is there any concrete reason to think so? Perhaps. The air is dry when he pulls it into his nostrils. It’s like drawing the air of a different planet.
Maybe it is, he thinks. Maybe this is the Planet Afterlife.
The chimes are still there, both sweet and horrible, but now fading…fading…and gone. He hears the faint snuffle of hot wind. Some of it finds its way through the gaps between the boards, and a few bits of straw lift off from the floor, do a tired little dance, then settle back.
Now there is another noise. An arrhythmic thudding noise. Some machine, and not in the best of shape, from the sound. He stands up. It’s hot in here, and sweat breaks immediately on his face and hands. He looks down at himself and sees his fine new Grand River Menswear clothes are gone. He is now wearing jeans and a blue chambray shirt, faded thin from many washings. On his feet is a pair of battered boots with rundown heels. They look like they have walked many a thirsty mile. He bends and feels his legs for breaks. There appear to be none. Then his arms. None. He tries snapping his fingers. They do the job easily, making little dry sounds like breaking twigs.
He thinks: Was my whole life a dream? Is this the reality? If so, who am I and what am I doing here?
And from the deeper shadows behind him comes that weary cycling sound: thud-THUD-thud-THUD-thud-THUD.
He turns in that direction, and gasps at what he sees. Standing behind him in the middle of the abandoned stable is a door. It’s set into no wall, only stands free. It has hinges, but as far as he can see they connect the door to nothing but air. Hieroglyphs are etched upon it halfway up. He cannot read them. He steps closer, as if that would aid understanding. And in a way it does. Because he sees that the doorknob is made of crystal, and etched upon it is a rose. He has read his Thomas Wolfe: a stone, a rose, an unfound door; a stone, a rose, a door. There’s no stone, but perhaps that is the meaning of the hieroglyph.
No, he thinks. No, the word is UNFOUND. Maybe I’m the stone.
He reaches out and touches the crystal knob. As though it were a signal
(a sigul, he thinks)
the thudding machinery ceases. Very faint, very distant—far and wee—he hears the chimes. He tries the knob. It moves in neither direction. There’s not even the slightest give. It might as well be set in concrete. When he takes his hand away, the sound of the chimes ceases.
He walks around the door and the door is gone. Walks the rest of the way around and it’s back. He makes three slow circles, noting the exact point at which the thickness of the door disappears on one side and reappears on the other. He reverses his course, now going widder-shins. Same deal. What the hell?
He looks at the door for several moments, pondering, then walks deeper into the stable, curious about the machine he heard. There’s no pain when he walks, if he just took a