Gerald’s Game

breath, held it, and yanked. One hard tug was enough to tell her that way was also blocked; it was like trying to pull a steel retaining rod out of a concrete wall. She could nor feel even a millimeter’s worth of give.

I could yank on that bastard for ten years and not even move it, letalone pull it off the bedposts, she thought, and let her hands fall back to their former slack, chain-supported position above the bed. A despairing little cry escaped her. To her it sounded like the caw of a thirsty crow.

“What am I going to do?” she asked the shimmers on the ceiling, and at last gave way to desperate, frightened tears. “Just what in the hell am I going to do?”

As if in answer, the dog began to bark again, and this time it was so close it scared her into a scream. It sounded, in fact, as if it was right outside the east window, in the driveway.

CHAPTER FIVE

The dog wasn’t in the driveway; it was even closer than that. The shadow stretching up the asphalt almost to the front bumper of the Mercedes meant it was on the back porch. That long, trailing shadow looked as if it belonged to some twisted and monstrous freakshow dog, and she hated it on sight.

Don’t he so damned silly, she scolded herself. The shadow only looksthat way because the sun’s going down. Now open your mouth and makesome noise, girl-it doesn’t have to be a stray, after all.

True enough; there might be a master in the picture somewhere, but she didn’t hold out much hope for the idea. She guessed that the dog had been drawn to the back deck by the wire-covered garbage bin just outside the door. Gerald had sometimes called this tidy little construction, with its cedar shingles on top and its double latches on the lid, their raccoon-magnet. This time it had drawn a dog instead of a coon, that was all-a stray, almost certainly. An ill-fed, down-on-its-luck mutt.

Still, she had to try.

“Hey!” she screamed. “Hey! Is anyone there? I need some help if you are! Is anyone there?”

The dog stopped barking instantly. Its spidery, distorted shadow jerked, turned, started to move… and then stopped again. She and Gerald had eaten sub sandwiches on the ride up from Portland, big oily salami-and-cheese combos, and the first thing she’d done when they arrived was to gather up the scraps and wrappings and dump them into the garbage bin. The rich smell of oil and meat was probably what had drawn the dog in the first place, and it was undoubtedly the smell which kept it from bolting back into the woods at the sound of her voice. That smell was stronger than the impulses of its feral heart.

“Help!” Jessie screamed,-and part of her mind tried to warn her that screaming was probably a mistake, that she would only scrape her throat raw and make herself thirstier, but that rational, cautioning voice never had a chance. She had caught the stink of her own fear, it was as strong and compelling to her as the smell of the sandwich leftovers was to the dog, and it quickly carried her into a state that was not just panic but a kind of temporary insanity.

“HELP ME! SOMEBODY HELP ME! HELP! HELP!

HELLLLLLP!”

Her voice broke at last and she turned her head as far to the right as it would go, her hair plastered to her cheeks and forehead in sweaty licks and tangles, her eyes bulging. The fear of being found chained up naked with her husband lying dead on the floor beside her had ceased to be even a casual factor in her thinking. This new panic-attack was like some weird mental eclipse-it filtered out the bright light of reason and hope and allowed her to see the most awful possibilities of all: starvation, thirst-induced madness, convulsions, death. She was not Heather Locklear or Victoria Principal, and this was not a made-for-TV suspense movie on the USA cable network. There were no cameras, no lights, no director to call cut. This was happening, and if help didn’t come, it might well go on happening until she ceased to exist as a life-form. Far from worrying about the circumstances of her detention, she had reached a point where she would have welcomed Maury Povich and the entire film crew of A Current Affair with tears of gratitude.

But no one answered her frantic cries-no caretaker, down here to check on his places by the lake, no curious local out rambling with his dog (and perhaps trying to discover which of his neighbors might be growing a little marijuana among the whispering pines), and certainly not Maury Povich. There was only that long, queerly unpleasant shadow, which made her think of some weird dogspider balancing on four thin and febrile legs. Jessie took a deep, shuddery breath and tried to re-establish control over her skittish mind. Her throat was hot and dry, her nose uncomfortably wet and plugged with tears.

What now?

She didn’t know. Disappointment throbbed in her head, temporarily too large to allow anything like constructive thought. The only thing of which she was completely sure was that the dog meant nothing; it was only going to stand out there on the back porch for awhile and then go away when it realized that what had drawn it was out of reach. Jessie made a low, unhappy cry and closed her eyes. Tears oozed out from beneath her lashes and spilled slowly down her cheeks. In the late-afternoon sun, they looked like drops of gold.

What now? she asked again. The wind gusted outside, making the pines whisper and the loose door bang. What now, Goodwife? What now, Ruth? What now, all you assorted UFOs and hangers-on? Any of you-any of as-got any ideas? I’m thirsty, I need to pee, myhusband is dead, and my only company is a woods-dog whose idea ofheaven is the leftovers of a Three-Cheese Genoa Salami sub from Amato’sin Gorham. Pretty soon it’s going to decide that the smell is as closeto heaven as it’s going to get, and then it will bug out. So…whatnow?

No answers. All the interior voices had fallen silent. That was bad-they were company, at least-but the panic had also gone, leaving only its heavy-metal aftertaste, and that was good.

I’ll sleep for awhile, she thought, amazed to find she could actually do just that if she wanted to. I’ll sleep for awhile, and when Iwake up, maybe I’ll have an idea. At the very least, I can get away fromthe fear for awhile.

The tiny strain-lines at the corners of her closed eyes and the two more noticeable ones between her brows began to smooth out. She could feel herself beginning to drift. She let herself go toward that refuge from self-regard with feelings of relief and gratitude. When the wind gusted this time, it seemed distant, and the restless sound of the door was even farther away: bang-bang,bang-bang, bang.

Her breathing, which had been deepening and slowing as she slipped into a doze, suddenly stopped. Her eyes sprang open. The only emotion she was aware of in that first moment of sleepsnatched-away disorientation was a kind of puzzled pique: she had almost made it, damn it all, and then that damned door-

What about that damned door? Just what about it?

The damned door hadn’t finished its usual double bang, that was what about it. As if this thought-had brought them into being, Jessie now heard the distinctive click of a dog’s toenails on the floor of the entryway. The stray had come in through the unlatched door. It was in the house.

Her reaction was instant and unequivocal. “You get out!” she screamed at it, unaware that her overstrained voice had taken on a hoarse foghorn quality. “Get out, motherfucker! Do youhear me? YOU GET THE HELL OUT OF MY HOUSE!”

She stopped, breathing fast, eyes wide. Her skin seemed woven through with copper wires carrying a low electrical charge; the top two or three layers buzzed and crawled. She was distantly aware that the hairs on the nape of her neck were standing as erect as porcupine quills. The idea of sleep had disappeared right off the map.

She heard the initial startled scrabble of the dog’s nails on the entry floor… then nothing. I must have scared it away. It probablyscatted right out the door again. I mean, it’s got to be afraid of peopleand houses, a stray like that.

I dunno, toots, Ruth’s voice said. It sounded uncharacteristically doubtful. I don’t see its shadow in the driveway.

Of course you don’t. It probably went right around the other side of thehouse and back into the woods. Or down by the lake. Scared to death andrunning like hell. Doesn’t that make sense?

Ruth’s voice didn’t answer. Neither did Goody’s, although at this point Jessie would have welcomed either one of them.

“I did scare it away,” she said. “I’m sure I did.”

But still she lay there, listening as hard as she could, hearing nothing but the hush-thump of blood in her ears. At least, not yet.

CHAPTER SIX

She hadn’t scared it away.

It was afraid of people and houses, Jessie had been right about that, but she had underestimated its desperate condition. Its former name- Prince-was hideously ironic now. It had encountered a great many garbage bins just like the Burlingames” in its long, starving circuit of Kashwakamak Lake this fall, and it had quickly dismissed the smell of salami, cheese, and olive oil coming from this one. The aroma was tantalizing, but bitter experience had taught the former Prince that the source of it was beyond its reach.

There were other smells, however; the dog got a whiff of them each time the wind lazed the back door open. These smells were fainter than the ones coming from the box, and their source was inside the house, but they were too good to ignore. The dog knew it would probably be driven off by shouting masters who chased and kicked with their strange, hard feet, but the smells were stronger than its fear. One thing might have countered its terrible hunger, but it as yet knew nothing of guns. That would change if it lived until deer-season, but that was still two weeks away and the shouting masters with their hard, hurtful feet were the worst things it could imagine for now.

It slipped through the door when the wind opened it and trotted into the entryway… but not too far. It was ready to beat a hasty retreat the instant danger threatened.

Its ears told it that the inhabitant of this house was a bitchmaster, and she was clearly aware of the dog because she had shouted at it, but what the stray heard in the bitchmaster’s raised voice was fear, not anger. After its initial-backward jerk of fright, the dog stood its ground. It waited for some other master to join its cries to those of the bitchmaster or to come running, and when this didn’t happen, the dog stretched its neck forward, sniffing at the slightly stale air of the house.

At first it turned to the right, in the direction of the kitchen. It was from this direction that the puffs of scent dispersed by the flapping door had come. The smells were dry but pleasant: peanut butter, Ry-Krisp crackers, raisins, cereal (this latter smell was drifting from a box of Special K in one of the cupboards-a hungry fieldmouse had gnawed a hole in the bottom of the box).

The dog took a step in that direction, then swung its head back the other way to make sure no master was creeping up on it masters most frequently shouted, but they could be sly, too. There was no one in the halfway leading down to the left, but the dog caught a much stronger scent coming from that direction, one that caused its stomach to cramp with terrible longing.