Neat. Very neat.
Except we know that Annie picked up some of the poisoned bait in the cellar and hand-fed it to the cat, and if old Peter Gunn didn't want to eat it, she probably rammed it down his gullet with a stick. When he was dead she put him on the stairs and hoped it would work. Maybe she had a pretty good idea her roommate would come home tiddly. I wouldn't be a bit surprised. A dead cat, a heap of clothes. Same M.O., as Tom Twyford would say. But why, Annie? These clippings tell me everything but that. WHY?
In an act of self-preservation, part of his imagination had, over the last few weeks, actually become Annie, and it was now this Annie-part that spoke up in its dry and uncontradictable voice. And while what it said was perfectly mad, it also made perfect sense.
I killed her because she played her radio late at night.
I killed her because of the dumb name she gave the cat.
I killed her because I got tired of seeing her soul-kissing her boyfriend on the couch, him with his hand shoved so far up her skirt he looked like he was prospecting for gold.
I killed her because I caught her cheating.
I killed her because she caught me cheating.
The specifics don't matter, do they? I killed her because she was a cockadoodie brat, and that was reason enough.
“And maybe because she was a Missus Smart Guy,” Paul whispered. He threw back his head and donkeyed another shrill and frightened laugh. So this was Memory Lane, was it? Oh, what a variety of strange and poisonous flowers grew beside Annie's version of that quaint old path!
No one ever put those two freak falls together? First her father, then her roommate? Are you seriously telling me that?
Yes, he was seriously telling himself that. The accidents had happened almost five years apart, in two different towns. They had been reported by different papers in a populous state where people were probably always falling downstairs and breaking their necks.
And she was very, very clever.
Almost as clever as Satan himself, it seemed. Only now she was starting to lose it. It would be precious little consolation to him, however, if Annie were to be finally brought to bay for the murder of Paul Sheldon.
He turned the page and discovered another clipping from the Bakersfield Journal - the last, as it turned out. The headline read MISS WILKES IS NURSING SCHOOL GRADUATE. Home-town girl makes good. May 17th, 1966. The photo was of a younger, startlingly pretty Annie Wilkes, wearing a nurse's uniform and cap, smiling into the camera. It was a graduation photograph, of course. She had graduated with honors. Only had to kill one roommate to do it, too, Paul thought, and donkeyed his shrill, frightened laugh. The wind gusted around the side of the house as if in answer. Mom's picture chattered briefly on the wall.
The next cutting was from the Manchester, New Hampshire, Union-Leader. March 2nd, 1969. It was a simple obituary which seemed to have no connection with Annie Wilkes at all. Ernest Gonyar, age seventy-nine, had died in Saint Joseph's Hospital. No exact cause of death given. “After a long illness,” the obit said. Survived by his wife, twelve children, and what looked like about four hundred grandchildren and great-grandchildren. There was nothing like the rhythm method for producing all descendants great and small, Paul thought, and donkeyed again.
She killed him. That's what happened to good old Ernie. Why else is his obituary here?This is Annie's Book of the Dead, isn't it?
Why, for God's sake? WHY?
With Annie Wilkes that is a question which has no sane answer. As you well know.
Another page, another Union-Leader obit. March 19th, 1969. The lady was identified as Hester “Queenie” Beaulifant, eighty-four. In the picture she looked like something whose bones might have been exhumed from the La Brea Tar Pits. The same thing that had gotten Ernie had gotten “Queenie” seemed like that long-illness shit was going around. Like Ernie, she had expired at Saint Joe's. Viewings at 2:00 and 6:00 P.M. on March 20th at Foster's Funeral Home. Interment at Mary Cyr Cemetery on March 21st at 4.00 P.M.
Ought to've had a special rendition of “Annie, Won't You Come by Here”, sung by the Mormon Tabersnackle Choir, Paul thought, and did the Donkey some more.
There were three more Union-Leader obits on the following pages. Two old men who had died of that perennial favorite, Long Illness. The third was a woman of forty-six named Paulette Simeaux. Paulette had died of that common runner-up, Short Illness. Although the picture accompanying the obit was even grainier and fuzzier than usual, Paul saw that Paulette Simeaux made “Queenie” Beaulifant look like Thumbelina. He thought her illness might have been short indeed - a thunderclap coronary, say, followed by a trip to Saint Joe's, followed by… followed by what? Exactly what?
He really didn't want to think about the specifics… but all three obits identified Saint Joseph's as the place of expiration.
And if we looked at the nurses” register for March 1969, would we find the name WILKES? Friends, does a bear go cockadoodie in the woods?
This book, dear God, this book was so big.
No more, please. I don't want to look at any more. I've got the idea. I'm going to put this book down exactly where I found it. Then I am going into my room. I guess I don't want to write after all; I think I'll just take an extra pill and go to bed. Call it nightmare insurance. But no farther down Annie's Memory Lane, if you please. Please, if you please.
But his hands seemed to have a mind and a will of their own; they kept on turning the pages, faster and faster.
Two more brief death notices in the Union-Leader, one in late September of 1969, one in early October.
March 19th, 1970. This one was from the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Herald. A back page. NEW HOSPITAL STAFF ANNOUNCED. There was a photo of a balding, bespectacled man who looked to Paul like the type of fellow who might eat boogers in secret. The article noted that in addition to the new publicity director (the balding, bespectacled fellow), twenty others had joined the staff of Riverview Hospital: two doctors, eight R.N.”s, assorted kitchen staff, orderlies, and a janitor.
Annie was one of the R.N.”s.
On the next page, Paul thought, I am going to see a brief death notice for an elderly man or woman who expired at Riverview Hospital in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Correct. An old duffer who had died of that all-time favorite” Long Illness.
Followed by an elderly man who had died of that perennial bridesmaid, Short Illness.
Followed by a child of three who had fallen down a well, sustained grievous head injuries, and been brought to Riverview in a coma.
Numbly, Paul continued to turn the pages while the wind and rain drove against the house. The pattern was inescapable. She got a job, killed some people, and moved on.
Suddenly an image came, one from a dream his conscious mind had already forgotten, which thus gained the delphic resonance of deja vu. He saw Annie Wilkes in a long aproned dress, her hair covered with a mobcap, an Annie who looked like a nurse in London's Bedlam Hospital. She held a basket over one arm. She dipped into it. Brought out sand and flung it into the upturned faces she passed. This was not the soothing sand of sleep but poisoned sand. It was killing them. When it struck them their faces went white and the lines on the machines monitoring their precarious fives went flat.
Maybe she killed the Krenmitz kids because they “were brats… and her roommate… maybe even her own father. But these others?
But he knew. The Annie in him knew. Old and sick. All of them had been old and sick except Mrs Simeaux, and she must have been nothing but a vegetable when she came in. Mrs Simeaux and the kid who had fallen down the well. Annie had killed them because - “Because they were rats in a trap,” he whispered.
Poor things. Poor poor things.
Sure. That was it. In Annie's view all the people in the world were divided into three groups: brats, poor poor things… and Annie.
She had moved steadily westward. Harrisburg to Pittsburgh to Duluth to Fargo. Then, in 1978, to Denver. In each case the pattern was the same: a “welcome aboard” article in which Annie's name was mentioned among others (she had missed the Manchester “welcome aboard” probably because, Paul guessed, she hadn't known that local newspapers printed such things), then two or three unremarkable deaths. Following these, the cycle would start again.
Until Denver, that was.
At first, it seemed the same. There was the NEW ARRIVALS article, this time clipped from the in-house newspaper of Denver's Receiving Hospital, with Annie's name mentioned. The in-house paper was identified, in Annie's neat hand, as The Gurney. “Great name for a hospital paper,” Paul told the empty room. “Surprised no one thought of calling it The Stool Sample.” He donkeyed more terrified laughter, all unaware. Turned the page, and here was the first obit, cut from the Rocky Mountain News. Laura D. Rothberg. Long illness. September 21st, 1978. Denver Receiving Hospital.
Then the pattern broke wide open.
The next page announced a wedding instead of a funeral. The photo showed Annie, not in her uniform but in a white dress frothing with lace. Beside her, holding her hands in his, was a man named Ralph Dugan. Dugan was a physical therapist. DUGAN-WILKES NUPTIALS, the clipping was headed. Rocky Mountain News, January 2nd, 1979. Dugan was quite unremarkable save for one thing: he looked like Annie's father. Paul thought if you shaved off Dugan's singles-bar moustache - which she had probably gotten him to do as soon as the honeymoon was over - the resemblance would be just short of uncanny.
Paul thumbed the thickness of the remaining pages in Annie's book and thought Ralph Dugan should have checked his horoscope whoops, make that horrorscope - the day he proposed to Annie.
I think the chances are very good that somewhere up ahead in these untumed pages I am going to find a brief article about you. Some people have appointments in Samarra; I think you may well have had one with a pile of laundry or a dead cat on a flight of stairs. A dead cat with a cute name.
But he was wrong. The next clipping was a NEW ARRIVALS from the Nederland newspaper. Nederland was a small town just west of Boulder. Not all that far from here, Paul judged. For a moment he couldn't find Annie in the short, name-filled clipping, and then realized he was looking for the wrong name. She was here, but had become part of a socio-sexual corporation called “Mr and Mrs Ralph Dugan”.
Paul's head snapped up. Was that a car coming? No… just the wind. Surely the wind. He looked back down at Annie's book.
Ralph Dugan had gone back to helping the lame, the halt, and the blind at Arapahoe County Hospital; presumably Annie went back to that time-honored nurse's job of giving aid and comfort to the grievously wounded.
Now the killing starts, he thought. The only real question is about Ralph: does he come at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end?
But he was wrong again. Instead of an obit, the next clipping showed a Xerox of a realtor's one-sheet. In the upper left corner of the ad was a photo of a house. Paul recognized it only by the attached barn - he had, after all, never seen the house itself from the outside.
Beneath, in Annie's neat firm hand: Earnest money paid March 3rd, 1979. Papers passed March 18th, 1979.
Retirement home? Paul doubted it. Summer place? No; they couldn't afford the luxury. So…?
Well, maybe it was just a fantasy, but try this. Maybe she really loves old Ralph Dugan. Maybe a year has passed and she still can't smell cockadoodie on him. Something has sure changed; there have been no obituaries since - He flicked back to see.
Since Laura Rothberg in September 1978. She stopped killing around the same time she met Ralph. But that was then and this is now; now the pressure is starting to build up again. The depressive interludes are coming back. She looks at the old people… the terminally ill… and she thinks about what poor poor things they are, and maybe she thinks, It's this environment that's depressing me. The miles of tiled corridor and the smells and the squeak of crepe-soled shoes and the sounds of people in pain. If I could get out of this place I'd be all right.
So Ralph and Annie had apparently gone back to the land.
He turned the page and blinked.
Slashed into the bottom of the page was AUG 43rd 1880 FUCK YOU!
