Gerald’s Game

off.Men and women alone in the dark are like open doors, Jessie, and if they call out or screamfor help, who knows what dread things may answer? Who knows whatsome men and women have seen in the hour of their solitary deaths? Is itso hard to believe that some of them may have died of fear, no matterwhat the words on the death certificates say?

“I don’t believe that,” she said in a blurry, wavering voice. She spoke louder, striving for a firmness she didn’t feel. “You’re not my father! I don’t think you’re anyone! I think you’re only made of moonlight!”

As if in answer, the figure bent forward in a kind of mocking bow, and for one moment its face-a face which seemed too real to doubt-slipped out of the shadows. Jessie uttered a rusty shriek as the pallid rays falling through the skylight painted its features with tawdry carnival gilt. It wasn’t her father; compared with the evil and the lunacy she saw in the face of her visitor, she would have welcomed her father, even after twelve years in a cold coffin. Red-rimmed, hideously sparkling eyes regarded her from deep eye-sockets wrapped in wrinkles. Thin lips twitched upward in a dry grin, revealing discolored molars and jagged canines which seemed almost as long as the stray dog’s fangs.

One of its white hands lifted the object she had half-seen and half-intuited sitting by its feet in the darkness. At first she thought it had taken Gerald’s briefcase from the little room he used as a study down here, but when the creature lifted the box-shaped thing into the light, she saw it was a lot bigger than Gerald’s briefcase and much older. It looked like the sort of old-fashioned sample case travelling salesmen had once carried.

“Please,” she whispered in a strengthless, wheezing little voice. “Whatever you are, please don’t hurt me. You don’t have to let me go if you don’t want to, that’s all right, but please don’t hurt me.

Its grin grew, and she saw tiny twinkles far back in its mouth-her visitor apparently had gold teeth or gold fillings in there, just like Gerald. It seemed to laugh soundlessly, as if gratified by her terror. Then its long fingers were unsnapping the catches of its bag

(I am dreaming, I think, now it does feel like a dream, oh thankGod it does)

and holding it open to her. The case was full of bones and jewelry. She saw finger-bones and rings and teeth and bracelets and ulnae and pendants; she saw a diamond big enough to choke a rhino, glittering milky trapezoids of moonlight from within the stiff, delicate curves of an infant’s ribcage. She saw these things and wanted them to be a dream, yes, wanted them to be, but if it was, it was like no dream she’d ever had before. It was the situation-handcuffed to the bed while a half-seen maniac silently showed off his treasures-that was dreamlike. The feeling, however…

The feeling was reality. There was no getting around it. Thefeeling was reality.

The thing standing in the corner held the open case out for her inspection, one hand supporting the bottom. It plunged its other hand into the tangle of bones and jewelry and stirred it, producing a tenebrous click and rustle that sounded like dirt-clogged castanets. It stared at her as it did this, and somehow unformed features of its strange face wrinkled upward in amusement, its mouth gawping in that silent grin, its slumped shoulders rising and falling in strangled chums of laughter.

No! Jessie screamed, but no sound came out.

Suddenly she felt someone-most likely the Goodwife, and boy, had she ever underestimated the intestinal fortitude of that lady-running for the switches which governed the circuitbreakers in her head. Goody had seen tendrils of smoke starting to seep out through the cracks in the closed doors of those panels, had understood what they meant, and was making a final, desperate effort to shut down the machinery before the motors overheated and the bearings froze.

The grinning figure across the room reached deeper into the case and held out a handful of bones and gold to Jessie in the moonlight.

There was an intolerably bright flash inside her head and then the lights went out. She did not faint prettily, like the heroine in a florid stage play, but was snapped brutally backward like a condemned murderer who has been strapped into the hotseat and has just gotten his first jolt of the juice. All the same it was an end to the horror, and for the time being that was enough. Jessie Burlingame went into the darkness without a murmur of protest.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

She struggled briefly back to consciousness some time later, aware of only two things: the moon had made it around to the west windows, and she was terribly afraid… of what she at first didn’t know. Then it came to her: Daddy had been here, was perhaps here still. The creature hadn’t looked like him, that was true, but that was only because Daddy had been wearing his eclipse face.

Jessie struggled up, pushing with her feet so hard she shoved the coverlet down beneath her. She wasn’t able to do much with her arms, however. The Littering pins and needles had stolen away while she’d been unconscious, and they had no more feeling than a couple of chair-legs. She stared into the corner by the bureau with wide, moon-silvered eyes. The wind had died and the shadows were, at least for the time being, still. There was nothing in the corner. Her dark visitor had gone.

Maybe not, Jess-maybe he’s just changed location. Maybe he’s hidingander the bed, how’s that for a thought? If he is, he, could reach up atany second and put one of his handf on your hip,

The wind stirred-only a puff, not a gust-and the back door banged weakly. Those were the only sounds. The dog had fallen silent, and it was this more than anything else which convinced her that the stranger was gone. She had the house to herself.

Jessie’s gaze dropped to the large dark blob on the floor.

Correction, she thought. There’s Gerald. Can’t forget about him.

She put her head back and closed her eyes, aware of a steady low pulse in her throat, not wanting to wake up enough for that pulse to transform itself into what it really was: thirst. She didn’t know if she could go from black unconsciousness to ordinary sleep or not, but she knew that was what she wanted; more than anything else-except perhaps for someone to drive down here and rescue her-she wanted to sleep.

There was no one here, Jessie-you know that, don’t you? It was, absurdity of absurdities, Ruth’s voice. Tough-talking Ruth, whose stated motto, cribbed from a Nancy Sinatra song, was “One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.” Ruth, who had been reduced to a pile of quivering jelly by the shape in the moonlight.

Go ahead, toots, Ruth said. Make fun of me all you want-maybeI even deserve it-but don’t kid yourself. There was no one here. Yourimagination put on a little slide-show, that’s all. That’s all there wasto it.

You’re wrong, Ruth, Goody responded calmly. Someone was here,all right, and Jessie and I both know who it was. It didn’t exactly looklike Daddy, but that was only because he had his eclipse face on, Theface wasn’t the important part, though, or how tall he looked-be mighthave had on hoots with special high heels, or maybe he was wearing shoeswith lifts in them. For all I know, be could have been on stilts.

Stilts! Ruth cried, amazed. Oh dear God, now I’ve heard evvverything! Never mind the fact that the man died before Reagan’s Inauguration Day tux got back from the cleaners; Tom Mahout was so clumsy beshould have had walking-downstairs insurance. Stilts? Oh babe, youhave got to be putting me on!

That part doesn’t matter, Goody said with a kind of serene stubbornness. It was him. I’d know that smell anywhere-that thick,bloodwarm smell. Not the smell of oysters or pennies. Not even the smellof blood. The smell of…

The thought broke up and drifted away.

Jessie slept.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

She ended up alone with her father at Sunset Trails on the afternoon of July 20th, 1963, for two reasons. One was a cover for the other. The cover was her claim that she was still a little frightened of Mrs Gilette, even though it had been at least five years (and probably closer to six) since the incident of the cookie and the slapped hand. The real reason was simple and uncomplicated: it was her Daddy she wanted to be with during such a special, once-in-a-lifetime event.

Her mother had suspected as much, and being moved around like a chesspiece by her husband and her ten-year-old daughter hadn’t pleased her, but by then the matter was practically afaitaccompli. Jessie had gone to her Daddy first. She was still four months away from her eleventh birthday, but that didn’t make her a fool. What Sally Mahout suspected was true: Jessie had launched a conscious, carefully thought-out campaign which would allow her to spend the day of the eclipse with her father. Much later Jessie would think that this was yet another reason to keep her mouth shut about what had happened on that day; there might be those-her mother, for instance-who would say that she had no right to complain; that she had in fact gotten about what she deserved.

On the day before the eclipse, Jessie had found her father sitting on the deck outside his den and reading a paperback copy of Profilesin Courage while his wife, son, and elder daughter laughed and swam in the lake below. He smiled at her when she took the seat next to him, and Jessie smiled back. She had brightened her mouth with lipstick for this interview-Peppermint Yum-Yum, in fact, a birthday present from Maddy. Jessie hadn’t liked it when she first tried it on- she thought it a baby shade, and that it tasted like Pepsodent-but Daddy had said he thought it was pretty, and that had transformed it into the most valuable of her few cosmetic resources, something to be treasured and used only on special occasions like this one.

He listened carefully and respectfully as she spoke, but he made no particular attempt to disguise the glint of amused skepticism in his eyes. Do you really mean to tell me you’re still afraid of AdrienneGilette? he asked when she had finished rehashing the oft-told tale of how Mrs Gilette had slapped her hand when she had reached for the last cookie on the plate. That must have been back in…Idon’t know, but I was still working for Dunninger, so it must have beenbefore 1959. And you’re still spooked all these years later? How absolutelyFreudian, my dear!

Well-Ill…you know…just a little. She widened her eyes, trying to communicate the idea that she was saying a little but meaning a lot. In truth she didn’t know if she was still scared of old Pooh-pooh Breath or not, but she did know she considered Mrs Gilette a boring old blue-haired booger, and she had no intention of spending the only total eclipse of the sun she’d probably ever see in her company if she could possibly work things around so she could watch it with her Daddy, whom she adored beyond the power of words to tell.

She evaluated his skepticism and concluded with relief that it was friendly, perhaps even conspiratorial. She smiled and added: But I also want to stay with you.

He raised her hand to his mouth and kissed her fingers like a French monsieur. He hadn’t shaved that day -he often didn’t when he was at camp-and the rough scrape of his whiskers sent a pleasurable shiver of goosebumps up her arms and back.