Gerald’s Game

Woods by a man who had gone back home whistling the theme from Born Free, and now it was starving. If the bitchmaster tried to take away its meal now, it would fight.

It shot one final glance at her, saw she was making no move to get off her bed, and turned away. It carried the meat into the entry and settled down with it caught firmly between its paws. The wind gusted briefly, first breezing the door open and then banging it shut. The stray glanced briefly in that direction and ascertained in its doggy, not-quite-thinking way that it could push the door open with its muzzle and escape quickly if the need arose. With this last piece of business taken care of, it began to eat.

CHAPTER NINE

The urge to vomit passed slowly, but it did pass. Jessie lay on her back with her eyes pressed tightly shut, now beginning to really feel the painful throbbing in her shoulders. It came in slow, peristaltic waves, and she had a dismaying idea that this was only the beginning.

I want to go to sleep, she thought. It was the child’s voice again. Now it sounded shocked and frightened. It had no interest in logic, no patience for cans and can’ts. I was almost asleep when thebad dog came, and that’s what I want now-to go to sleep.

She sympathized wholeheartedly. The problem was, she didn’t really feel sleepy anymore. She had “ust seen a dog tear a chunk out of her husband, and she didn’t feel sleepy at all.

What she felt was thirsty.

Jessie opened her eyes and the first thing she saw was Gerald, lying on his own reflection in the highly polished bedroom floor like some grotesque human atoll. His eyes were still open, still staring furiously up at the ceiling, but his glasses now hung askew with one bow sticking into his ear instead of going over it. His head was cocked at such an extreme angle that his plump left cheek lay almost against his left shoulder. Between his right shoulder and right elbow there was nothing but a dark red smile with ragged white edges.

“Dear Jesus,” Jessie muttered. She looked quickly away, out the west window. Golden light-it was almost sunset light now-dazzled her, and she shut her eyes again, watching the ebb and flow of red and black as her heart pushed membranes of blood through her closed lids. After a few moments of this, she noticed that the same darting patterns repeated themselves over and over again. It was almost like looking at protozoa under a microscope, protozoa on a slide which had been tinted with a red stain. She found this repeating pattern both interesting and soothing. She supposed you didn’t have to be a genius to understand the appeal such simple repeating shapes held, given the circumstances. When all the normal patterns and routines of a person’s life fell apart and with such shocking suddenness-you had to find something you could hold onto, something that was both sane and predictable. If the organized swirl of blood in the thin sheaths of skin between your eyeballs and the last sunlight of an October day was all you could find, then you took it and said thank you very much. Because if you couldn’t find something to hold onto, something that made at least some sort of sense, the alien elements of the new world order were apt to drive you quite mad.

Elements like the sounds now coming from the entry, for instance. The sounds that were a filthy, starving stray eating part of the man who had taken you to see your first Bergman film, the man who had taken you to the amusement park at Old Orchard Beach, coaxed you aboard that big Viking ship that swung back and forth in the air like a pendulum, then laughed until tears squirted out of his eyes when you said you wanted to go again. The man who had once made love to you in the bathtub until you were literally screaming with pleasure. The man who was now sliding down that dog’s gullet in gobs and chunks.

Alien elements like that.

“Strange days, pretty mamma,” she said. “Strange days indeed.” Her speaking voice had become a dusty, painful croak. She supposed she would do well to just shut up and give it a rest, but when it was quiet in the bedroom she could hear the panic, still there, still creeping around on the big soft pads of its feet, looking for an opening, waiting for her to let down her guard. Besides, there was no real quiet. The chainsaw guy had packed it in for the day, but the loon still voiced its occasional cry and the wind was rising as night approached, banging the door more loudly and more frequently-than ever.

Plus, of course, the sound of the dog dining on her husband. While Gerald had been waiting to collect and pay for their sub sandwiches in Amato’s, Jessie had stepped next door to Michaud’s Market. The fish at Michaud’s was always good-almost fresh enough to flop, as her grandmother would have said. She had bought some lovely fillet of sole, thinking she would pan-broil it if they decided to stay overnight. Sole was good because Gerald, who would live on a diet of nothing but roast beef and fried chicken if left to his own devices (with the occasional order of deep-fried mushrooms thrown in for nutritional purposes), actually claimed to like sole. She had bought it without the slightest premonition that he would be eaten before he could cat.

“It’s a jungle out there, baby,” Jessie said in her dusty, croaky voice, and realized she was now doing more than just thinking in Ruth Neary’s voice; she actually sounded like Ruth, who in their college days would have lived on a diet of nothing but Dewar’s and Marlboros, if left to her own devices.

That tough no-bullshit voice spoke up then, as if Jessie had rubbed a magic lamp. Remember that Nick Lowe song you heard onWBLM when you were coming home from your pottery class one day lastwinter? The one that made you laugh?

She did. She didn’t want to, but she did. It had been a Nick Lowe tune she believed had been titled “She Used to Be a Winner (Now She’s just the Doggy’s Dinner)', a cynically amusing pop meditation on loneliness set to an incongruously sunny beat. Amusing as hell last winter, yes, Ruth was right about that, but not so amusing now.

“Stop it, Ruth,” she croaked. “If you’re going to freeload in my head, at least have the decency to quit teasing me.”

Teasing you? Jesus, tootsie, I’m not teasing you; I’m trying to wakeyou up!

“I am awake!” she said querulously. On the take the loon cried out again, as if to back her up on that. “Partly thanks to you!”

No, you’re not. You haven’t been awake-really awake-for a longtime. When something bad happens, Jess, do you know what you do? You tell yourself, “Oh, this is nothing to worry about, this is just a baddream, I get them every now and then, they’re no big deal, and as soonas I roll over on my back again I’ll be fine.” And that’s what you do, youpoor sap. That’s just what you do.

Jessie opened her mouth to reply-such canards should not go unanswered, dry mouth and sore throat or not-but Goodwife Burlingame had mounted the ramparts before Jessie herself could do more than begin to organize her thoughts.

How can you say such awful things? You’re horrible! Go away!

Ruth’s no-bullshit voice uttered its cynical bark of laughter again, and Jessie thought how disquieting-how horribly disquieting-it was to hear part of your mind laughing in the make-believe voice of an old acquaintance who was long gone to God knew where.

Go away? You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Tootsie-Wootsie, Puddin” “n” Pie, Daddy’s little girl. Any time the truth gets too close, any time youstart to suspect the dream is maybe not just a dream, you run away.

That’s ridiculous.

It is? Then what happened to Nora Callighan?

For a moment that shocked Goody’s voice-and her own, the one that usually spoke both aloud and in her mind as “I'-to silence, but in that silence a strange, familiar image formed: a circle of laughing, pointing people-mostly women-standing around a young girl with her head and hands in stocks. She was hard to see because it was very dark-it should still have been full daylight but was for some reason very dark, just the same but the girl’s face would have been hidden even if the day had been bright. Her hair hung over it like a penitent’s shroud, although it was hard to believe she could have done anything too horrible; she was clearly no more than twelve or so. Whatever it was she was being punished for, it couldn’t be for hurting her husband. This particular daughter of Eve was too young to have even begun her monthly courses, let alone have a husband.

No, that’s not true, a voice from the deeper ranges of her mind suddenly spoke up. This voice was both musical yet frighteningly powerful, like the cry of a whale. She started when she was only tenand a half. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he smelled blood, justlike that dog out in the entry. Maybe it made him frantic.

Shut up! Jessie cried. She felt suddenly frantic herself Shut up,we don’t talk about that!

And speaking of smells, what’s that other one? Ruth asked. Now the mental voice was harsh and eager… the voice of a prospector who has finally stumbled onto a vein of ore he has long suspected but has never been able to find. That mineral smell, like salt andold pennies-

We don’t talk about that, I said!

She lay on the coverlet, her muscles tense beneath her cold skin, both her captivity and her husband’s death forgotten-at least for the time being-in the face of this new threat. She could feel Ruth, or some cut-off part of her for which Ruth spoke, debating whether or not to pursue the matter. When it decided not to (not directly, at least), both Jessie and Goodwife Burlingame breathed a sigh of relief.

All right-let’s talk about Nora instead, Ruth said. Nora, your therapist? Nora, your counsellor? The one you started to go seearound the time you stopped painting because some of the paintingswere scaring you? Which was also the time, coincidentally or not,when Gerald’s sexual interest in you seemed to evaporate and youstarted sniffing the collars of his shirts for perfume? You rememberNora, don’t you?

Nora Callighan was a prying bitch! the Goodwife snarled.

“No,” Jessie muttered. “She was well-intentioned, I don’t doubt that a bit, she just always wanted to go one step too far. Ask one question too many.”

You said you liked her a lot. Didn’t I hear you say that?

“I want to stop thinking,” Jessie said. Her voice was wavery and uncertain. “I especially want to stop hearing voices, and talking back to them, too. It’s nuts.”

Well, you better listen just the same, Ruth said grimly, because youcan’t run away from this the way you ran away from Noratheway you ran away from me, for that matter.

I never ran away from you, Ruth! Shocked denial, and not very convincing. She had done just that, of course. Had simply packed her bags and moved out of the cheesy but cheerful dorm suite she and Ruth shared. She hadn’t done it because Ruth had started asking her too many of the wrong questions-questions about Jessie’s childhood, questions about Dark Score Lake, questions about what might have happened there during the summer just after Jessie started to menstruate. No, only a bad friend would have moved out for such reasons. Jessie hadn’t moved out because Ruth started asking questions; she moved out because Ruth wouldn’t stop asking them when Jessie asked her to do so. That, in Jessie s opinion, made Ruth a bad friend. Ruth had seen the lines Jessie had drawn in the dust… and had then deliberately stepped over them anyway. As Nora Callighan had done, years later.

Besides, the idea of running away under these conditions was pretty ludicrous, wasn’t it? She was, after all, handcuffed to the bed.

Don’t insult my intelligence, cutie-Pie, Ruth said. Your mind isn’thandcuffed to the bed, and we both know it. You can still ran if youwant to, but my advice-my strong advice-is don’t you do it,