Gerald’s Game

How like a skull the house looks in the moonlight! she marvelled following her first wide-eyed, frantic look back. How very like askull! The door is its mouth, the windows are its eyes, the shadows ofthe trees are its hair…

Then another thought occurred, and it must have been amusing, because she screamed laughter into the windy night.

And the brain-don’t forget the brain. Gerald’s the brain, of course.The house’s dead and rotting brain.

She laughed again as she reached the car, louder than ever, and the dog howled in answer. My dog has fleas, they bite his knees, she thought. Her own knees buckled and she grabbed the doorhandle to keep from falling down in the driveway, and she never stopped laughing as she did it. Exactly why she was laughing was beyond her. She might understand if the parts of her mind which had shut down in self-defense ever woke up again, but that wasn’t going to happen until she got out of here. If she ever did.

“I imagine I’ll need a transfusion, too, eventually,” she said, and that caused another outburst of laughter. She reached clumsily across to her right pocket with her left hand, still laughing. She was feeling around for the key when she realized the smell was back, and that the creature with the wicker case was standing right behind her.

Jessie turned her head, laughter still in her throat and a grin still twitching her lips, and for a moment she did see those narrow cheeks and rapt, bottomless eyes. But she only saw them because of

(the eclipse)

how afraid she was, not because there was really anything there; the back stoop was still deserted, the screen door a tall rectangle of darkness.

But you better hurry, Goodwife Burlingame said. Yes, you bettermake like a hockey player while you still can, don’t you think?

“Going to make like an amoeba and split,” Jessie agreed, and laughed some more as she pulled the key out of her pocket. It almost slipped through her fingers, but she caught it by the oversized plastic fob. “You sexy thing,” Jessie said, and laughed hilariously as the door banged and the dead cowboy specter of love came charging out of the house in a dirty white cloud of bonedust, but when she turned (almost dropping the key again in spite of the oversized fob), there was nothing there. It was only the wind which had banged the door-only that and nothing more.

She opened the driver’s door, slid behind the wheel of the Mercedes, and managed to pull her trembling legs in after her. She slammed the door and, as she pushed down the master-lock which locked all the other doors (plus the trunk, of course; there was really nothing in the world quite like German efficiency), an inexpressible sense of relief washed over her. Relief and something else. That something else felt like sanity, and she thought she had never felt anything in her life which could compare with its sweet and perfect return… except for that first drink of water from the tap, of course. Jessie had an idea that was going to end up being the all-time champeen.

Haw close was I to going mad in there? How close, really?

That might not he a thing you ever want to know for sure, toots, Ruth Neary returned gravely.

No, maybe not. Jessie stuck the key in the ignition and turned it. Nothing happened.

The last of the laughter dried up, but she didn’t panic; she still felt sane and relatively whole. Think, Jessie. She did, and the answer came almost at once. The Mercedes was getting along in years (she wasn’t sure they ever really got anything so vulgar as old), and the transmission had started doing some annoying little tricks lately, German efficiency or no German efficiency. One of them was a failure to start sometimes unless the driver shoved up on the shift-lever poking out of the console between the bucket seats, and shoved up hard. Turning the ignition key while pushing up on the transmission lever was an operation which would take both hands, and her right was already throbbing horribly. The thought of using it to shove on the transmission lever made her cringe, and not just because of the pain. She was quite sure it would also cause the deep incision across her inner wrist to break open again.

“Please God, I need a little help here,” Jessie whispered, and turned the ignition key again. Still nothing. Not even a click. And now a new idea stole into her head like a nasty-tempered little burglar: her inability to start the car had nothing at all to do with the little glitch that had developed in the transmission. This was more of her visitor’s work. It had cut the telephone lines; it had also raised the hood of the Mercedes long enough to rip off the distributor cap and throw it into the woods.

The door banged. She glanced nervously in that direction, quite sure that she had seen its white, grinning face in the darkness of the doorway for just a moment. In another moment or two it would come out. It would grab a rock and smash the car window, then take one of the thick slivers of safety glass and-

Jessie reached across her waist with her left hand and shoved the knob of the transmission lever as hard as she could (although it did not, in truth, seem to move much at all). Then she reached clumsily through the lower arc of the steering wheel with her right hand, grasped the ignition key, and turned it again.

More nothing. Except for the silent, chuffing laughter of the monster that was watching her. That she could hear quite clearly, even if only in her mind.

“Please, God, can’t I have just one fucking break?” she screamed. The transmission lever wiggled a little under her palm, and when Jessie turned the key over to the Start position this time, the engine roared to life-Ja, mein Fuhrer! She sobbed with relief and turned on the headlights. A pair of brilliant orange- yellow eyes glared at her from the driveway. She screamed, feeling her heart trying to tear itself loose of its plumbing, cram itself into her throat, and strangle her. It was the dog, of course-the stray who had been, in a manner of speaking, Gerald’s last client.

The former Prince stood stock-still, momentarily dazzled by the glare of the headlights. If Jessie had dropped the transmission into drive just then, she probably could have driven forward and killed it. The thought even crossed her mind, but in a distant, almost academic way. Her hate and fear of the dog had gone. She saw how scrawny it was, and how the burdocks stuck in its matted coat-a coat too thin to offer much protection against the coming winter. Most of all she saw the way it cringed away from the light, its ears drooping, its hindquarters shrinking against the driveway.

I didn’t think it was possible, she thought, but I believe I’ve comeacross something that’s even more wretched than I am.

She hit the Mercedes’s horn-ring with the heel of her left hand. It uttered a single brief sound, more burp than beep, but it was enough to get the dog started. It turned and vanished into the woods without so much as a single look back.

Follow its example, Jess. Get out of here while you still can.

Good idea. In fact, it was the only idea. She reached across her body again with her left hand, this time to pull the transmission lever down into Drive. It caught with its usual reassuring little hitch and the car began rolling slowly up the paved driveway. The wind-driven trees shimmied like shadow-dancers on either side of it, sending the fall’s first tornado-funnels of leaves whirling up into the night sky. I’m doing it, Jessie thought with wonder. I’m actually doing it, actually getting the puck out of here.

She was rolling up the driveway, rolling toward the unnamed wheel-track which would take her to Bay Lane, which would in its turn take her to Route 117 and civilization. As she watched the house (it looked more than ever like a huge white skull in the windy October moonlight) shrink in the rearview mirror, she thought: Why is it letting me go? And is it? Is it really?

Part of her-the fear-maddened part which would never entirely escape the handcuffs and the master bedroom of the house on the upper bay of Kashwakamak Lake- assured her that it wasn’t; the creature with the wicker case was only playing with her, as a cat plays with a wounded mouse. Before she got much farther, certainly before she got to the top of the driveway, it would come racing after her, using its long cartoon legs to close the distance between them, stretching out its long cartoon arms to seize the rear bumper and bring the car to a halt. German efficiency was fine, but when you were dealing with something which had come back from the dead… well…

But the house continued to dwindle in the rearview mirror, and nothing came out of the back door. Jessie reached the top of the driveway, turned right, and began to follow her high beams down the narrow wheelruts toward Bay Lane, guiding the car with her left hand. Every second or third August a volunteer crew of summer residents, fueled mostly by beer and gossip, cut back the underbrush and trimmed the overhanging branches along the way out to Bay Lane, but this had been an off-year and the lane was much narrower than Jessie liked. Each time a wind-driven branch tapped at the car’s roof or body, she cringed a little.

Yet she was escaping. One by one the landmarks she had learned over the years made their appearance in the headlights and then dwindled behind her: the huge roc with the split top, the overgrown gate with the faded sign reading RIDEOUT’s HIDEOUT nailed to it, the uprooted spruce leaning amid a stand of smaller spruces like a large drunk being carried home by his smaller, livelier friends. The drunk spruce was only three-tenths of a mile from Bay Lane, and it was only two miles to the highway from there.

“I can handle it if I take it easy,” she said, and pushed the radio ON button with her right thumb, doing it very carefully. Bach mellow, stately, and above all, rational-flooded the car from four directions. Better and better. “Take it easy,” she repeated, speaking a little louder. “Go greasy.” Even the last shock-the stray dog’s glaring orange eyes-was fading a little now, although she could feel herself beginning to shake. “No problems whatsoever, if I just take it easy.”

She was doing that, all right-maybe a little too easy, in fact. The speedometer needle was barely touching the 10 MPH mark. Being safely locked in the familiar surroundings of one’s own car was a wonderful restorative-already she had begun to wonder if she hadn’t been jumping at shadows all along-but this would be a very bad time to begin taking things for granted. If there had been someone in the house, he (it, some deeper voice-the UFO of all UFOs-insisted) might have used one of the other doors to leave the house. He might be following her right now. It was even possible that, were she to continue puddling along at a mere ten miles an hour, a really determined follower might catch up.

Jessie flicked her eyes up to the rearview mirror, wanting to reassure herself that this idea was only paranoia induced by shock and exhaustion, and felt her heart fall dead in her chest. Her left hand dropped from the wheel and thumped into her lap on top of the right. That should have hurt like hell, but there was no pain-absolutely none at all.

The stranger was sitting in the back seat with its eerily long hands pressed against the side of its head, like the monkey that hears no evil. Its black eyes stared at her with sublimely empty interest.

You see…me see…WE see.nothing but shadows! Punkin cried, but this cry was more than distant; it seemed to have originated at the other end of the universe.

And it wasn’t true. It was more than shadows she saw in the mirror. The thing sitting back there was tangled in shadows, yes, but not made of them. She saw its face: bulging brow, round black eyes, blade-thin nose, plump, misshapen lips.

“Jessie!” the space cowboy whispered ecstatically. “Nora! Ruth! My-oh-my! Punkin Pie!”

Her eyes, frozen on the mirror, saw her passenger lean slowly forward, saw its swollen forehead nodding toward her right ear as if the creature intended to tell her a secret. She saw its pudgy lips slide away from its jutting, discolored teeth in a grimacing, vapid smile. It was at this point that the final breakup of Jessie Burlingame’s mind began.

No! her own voice cried in a voice as thin as the voice of a vocalist on a scratchy old 78-rpm record. No, please no! It’s not fair!

“Jessie!” Its stinking breath as sharp as a rasp and as cold as air inside a meat-locker. “Nora! Jessie! Ruth! Jessie! Punkin! Goodwife! Jessie! Mommy!”

Her bulging eyes noted that the long white face was now half-hidden in her hair and its grinning mouth was almost kissing her ear as it whispered its delicious secret over and over and over: Jessie! Nora! Goody! Punkin! Jessie! Jessie! Jessie!”

There was a white airburst inside her eyes, and what it left behind was a big dark hole. As Jessie dove into it, she had one final coherent thought: I shouldn’t have looked-it burned my eyesafter all.

Then she fell forward toward the wheel in a faint. As the Mercedes struck one of the large pines which bordered this section of the road, the seatbelt locked and