Chapter 24 twenty four

In New York City, broadcasts of today's show have been declared over.On the NBC-affiliated station for southern and western Maine, it was replaced by a local talk show (a tall woman in a checkered apron demonstrating how to cook beans easily with a literati), followed by an entertainment program called Jokes were told on the show, and people screamed loudly with ecstasy as contestants won cars, boats and bright red Dust Killer vacuum cleaners.At his home in Burlingame on the shores of Lake Mark in scenic Cashwick, the new imprisoned widow fell asleep in a restless sleep and began to dream again.The wrong sleeper was in a light sleep, which made the dream more active and more convincing.

In the dream, Jesse was lying in the dark again.A man—or something like a man—was standing in the corner opposite her again.This man was not her father, not her husband, this was a stranger.This stranger haunts our most morbid, paranoid imaginations, and our deepest fears.It had a monstrous face that the persuasive, good-natured, business-like Nora Calligan would never have dreamed of.No expert in such-and-such a subject could magically exorcise this black thing.It's a cosmic unknown. But you do know me.said the stranger with the long pale face.It bent down and grabbed the handle of the box.Jesse noticed without surprise that the handle was a jawbone and the case itself was made of human skin.The stranger lifted the box, untied the straps with a snap, and opened the box.She saw bones and jewels again.It reached into the pile of things again, and began to turn them slowly round and round, making inhuman clicks, clangs, snaps, and taps.

No, I don't know.I do not know who you are.I don't know, I don't know! Of course, I am death.I'm coming back tonight.I thought, just tonight, I have something else to do besides stand in the corner.Tonight, I think I'm going to jump out and pounce on you, like... like this! It leaped forward, dropped the box (bones, pendants, earrings, necklace spread out toward where Gerald lay. Gerald lay sprawled, broken arm pointing toward the hall), and held out his hands.She saw long, dirty nails on its fingertips, so long they were really claws.She was out of breath and struggled to wake up.Her hands were still in a resisting posture, and the chains of the handcuffs shook and made a clanging sound.She muttered the tedious word "no" over and over again in a low voice.

It's a dream!Stop it, Jesse, it's just a dream! She lowered her hands slowly, allowing them to hang loose again in the handcuffs.Of course, it was a dream - just a twist on last night's nightmare.And yet it's true -- my God, yes.When you pay attention to its details, it's far worse than that dream at the croquet party, or even worse than recalling that sneaky, unpleasant episode with Dad during the eclipse.It was strange that she had spent so much time this morning thinking about that dream, and about something worse.In fact, she hadn't thought about the guy with the weird long arms and the creepy collectible box until she'd dreamed about it while she was dozing off.

She remembered a lyric from a song from the Latter Psvchedelic Age: "Somebody called me a space cowboy... hee hee...someone called me a love robber..." Jesse's heart skipped a beat.Space Cowboy?Anyway, it's apt.An outsider, someone who has nothing to do with anything, an unknown, a— "A stranger," Jesse whispered.She suddenly remembered the way it wrinkled its face when it started grinning.Once that detail becomes clear, so do the other details surrounding it.Inside the gaping mouth, gold teeth gleamed.The lips are pursed, the eyebrows are black and blue, and the wings of the nose are flaring.And of course there was the suitcase, as you'd expect from traveling salesmen who always have something to bump against their legs when they're catching a train.

Stop, Jesse—stop letting yourself be scared, stop worrying about that monster, don't you have enough problems already? There are really many problems.But she found that once the dream entered her mind, she couldn't seem to stop the car.Worse than that, the more she thought about it, the less dreamlike it became. So what if I was awake?she thought suddenly.Once she said that thought, she was horrified to find that some part of her always believed it.That idea is waiting for other parts of her to rush to agree. No, ah, no, it was just a dream.That's it- But what if not?If not so what?

die.The pale-faced stranger agreed.You see death.I'll be back tonight, Jessie, and tomorrow night I'll put your earrings with my favorites--my collection. Jesse found himself shaking violently, as if he had caught a cold.Her wide eyes looked helplessly at the empty corner of the room where it had stood.The corner of the house was now flooded with the morning sun, bright and bright.But tonight will be dark again, full of ghosts and shadows.Goosebumps began to rise on her skin, and the inescapable fact returned: maybe she was going to die here. Someone will find you eventually, Jesse.However, that would take a long time.People's first guess will be that the two of you are on vacation, indulging in a frenzy of romantic pleasure.why not?Don't you and Gerald seem to be enjoying the joys of your second decade of marriage?After all, you understand in your own hearts.As long as you're handcuffed to the bed, Gerald can get a secure erection.It kind of surprises you, did someone play tricks on him on the day of the eclipse, right?

"Stop talking." She muttered, "Shut up, all of you." But sooner or later people will get nervous and start looking for you.Perhaps Gerald's colleagues have started searching, don't you think?I mean, there are some women you call friends in Portland.But you never really let them into your life, did you?They're really just your acquaintances, the ladies you drink tea with and exchange contacts with.None of them would be very worried if you disappeared for a week or ten days.But Gerald has some appointments, and when he doesn't show up at noon on Friday, I think some of his guys will start calling and asking.Yes, maybe he'll turn his face away when he gets the spare blanket out of the closet to cover you with, Jesse.He doesn't want to see you—fingers sticking out of the handcuffs, stiff as pencils, pale as candles.He doesn't want to see your stiff mouth and the dry kiss on your lips, and the last thing he wants to see is the look of terror in your eyes.So when he covers you, he turns his eyes away.

Jesse slowly turned his head from side to side in a gesture of resignation. Bill would call the police and they would come here with the forensic team and the town coroner.They'll be standing around the bed, smoking a cigarette (Du Rory will no doubt be wearing that nasty white trench coat. He'll be standing outside with his camera crew, of course).When coroners pulled back the blanket, they frowned.Yes—even the strongest of them would frown a little, I suppose.Some people may even leave the house.The companions will laugh at them for it in the future.Those who did not leave would nod their heads and tell each other how badly the person on the bed died. "You just have to look at her to tell," they'd say.But they don't even know half of it.They won't know that the main reason your eyes and mouth froze in screaming is because you saw something at the end, you saw something from the dark.Jesse, your dad may have been your first lover, but your last will be that stranger with the long pale face and the human leather trunk.

"Oh please, can't you just leave?" Jessie moaned. "Please don't make any more noises, please don't make any more noises." However, the voice refused to stop, or even acknowledge her.It just kept talking and talking, whispering directly into her mind from somewhere deep in her core.Listening to this sound is like gently rubbing back and forth on the face with a piece of silk soaked in mud. They'll ship you to Augusta, and the state medical examiner will open your abdominal cavity so he can examine your internal organs, which is the rule when dealing with unattended or suspicious deaths.Your death will fall under both of the above circumstances.He'll take a look at your last meal -- a salami and cheese sandwich -- and then take a look at it under a microscope with the snack machine.In the end he would call it an unfortunate death event. "The lady and gentleman are playing a harmless ordinary game," he will say, "except that the gentleman has had an unseemly heart attack at the crucial moment, leaving the lady . . . Investigated. Unless there is a special need, it's best not to bother with this matter. Suffice it to say that this lady died a terrible death-you can see it at a glance." Jesse, things will be Get rid of that.Maybe someone will notice that your wedding ring is gone, but they won't be looking for long, if they are.Nor will the coroner notice that one of your bones -- an unimportant bone, say, the third phalanx of your right foot -- is missing.But we all know that, don't we, Jesse?In fact, we already know that.We'll know it took it.That cosmic stranger, the space cowboy.we shall know-

Jesse slammed his head against the headboard, hard.Enough to burst a school of great white fish in her immediate field of vision.It hurt from the headbutt—very painful, but the voices in her head stopped like a radio in a blackout.That's what makes headbutting worthwhile. "Listen," she said, "if you talk again, I'll do it again. I'm not joking. I'm tired of hearing—" It was her own voice now—the voice speaking loudly and unconsciously in the empty room, cut off like a radio in a blackout.When the great white fish in front of her eyes began to recede, she saw the morning sun shining brightly on something.The thing was about eighteen inches from Gerald's outstretched hand.It was a small white object with a thin gold wire curved through the center, making it look like a yin-yang symbol.Jessie thought it was her ring at first, but it was too small to be a ring.Those are not rings, but pearl earrings.This fell to the floor when her visitor stirred the contents of the box and showed it to her. "No," she whispered, "no, it's impossible." But there it is.Glittering in the summer sun, as real as the dead man.The dead man seemed to be pointing at it: a pearl earring with an attached length of delicate, glittering gold wire. It's one of my earrings, it's out of my jewelry bowl.It's been there since summer and I'm just noticing it now! Only she had only one pair of pearl earrings, and they weren't threaded, and then they were in Portland, not here. Just after Labor Day the floor shop workers came to wax the floor and if there was an earring on the floor at that time one of them would pick it up and either put it on the dresser or put it in their own pocket inside. Just something else! No, no, no, do you expect anything else? It's just over there from the lone earring. Even if there is something, I don't want to look at it. But she couldn't help but look.Her eyes fell involuntarily over the earrings and onto the floor inside the door leading to the vestibule.There was a small spot of dried blood there, and it belonged to Gerald.The blood was nothing, it was the footprints next to it that disturbed her. If there's a trace there, it was there before! As much as Jesse wished he could believe that, the trace hadn't been there before.There wasn't a single mark on the floor yesterday, let alone footprints.Nor was that mark left by her or Gerald.It was a shoe-shaped circle of dry mud that might have come from the overgrown trail that wound along the lakeshore for a mile or so before turning into the woods and heading south toward Morton. After all, someone seemed to have been in the bedroom with her last night. Jess screamed again as the thought relentlessly crept into her overwrought mind.Outside, the wild dog on the back porch lifted its muzzle from its paws and paused for a moment.It set up its sensitive ears, and then lowered its head uninterestedly.After all, the sound didn't seem to be made by anything dangerous, but the voice of the shrew master.Moreover, now she has the smell of that black thing that came in at night, which is very familiar to wild dogs, and it is the breath of death. The former prince closed his eyes and went back to sleep.