weight of the dolly will carry the crate to the bottom of the quarry,
and ... there are really no bodies, are there, Dex?'
'No,' Dexter Stanley said. 'No, I suppose there aren't.'
'But what are you going to do, Dex? What are you going to say?'
'Oh, I could tell a tale,' Dex said. 'And if I told it, I suspect I'd end
up in the state mental hospital. Perhaps accused of murdering the
janitor and Gereson, if not your wife. No matter how good your
cleanup was, a state police forensic unit could find traces of blood
on the floor and walls of that laboratory. I believe I'll keep my
mouth shut.'
'Thank you,' Henry said. 'Thank you, Dex.'
Dex thought of that elusive thing Henry had mentioned
companionship. A little light in the darkness. He thought of
playing chess perhaps twice a week instead of once. Perhaps even
three times a week... and if the game was not finished by ten,
perhaps playing until midnight if neither of them had any early
morning classes, instead of having to put the board away (and, as
likely as not, Wilma would just 'accidentally' knock over the
pieces 'while dusting,' so that the game would have to be started
all over again the following Thursday evening). He thought of his
friend, at last free of that other species of Tasmanian devil that
killed more slowly but just as surely--by heart attack, by stroke, by
ulcer, by high blood pressure, yammering and whistling in the ear
all the while.
Last of all, he thought of the janitor, casually flicking his quarter,
and of the quarter coming down and rolling under the stairs, where
a very old horror sat squat and mute, covered with dust and
cobwebs, waiting... biding its time...
What had Henry said? The whole thing was almost hellishly
perfect.
'No need to thank me, Henry,' he said.
Henry stood up. 'If you got dressed,' he said, 'you could run me
down to the campus. I could get my MG and go back home and
report Wilma missing.'
Dex thought about it. Henry was inviting him to cross a nearly
invisible line, it seemed, from bystander to accomplice. Did he
want to cross that line?
At last he swung his legs out of bed. 'All right, Henry.'
'Thank you, Dexter.'
Dex smiled slowly. 'That's all right,' he said. 'After all, what are
friends for?'
STEPHEN KING
The Revelations Of 'Becka Paulson
From Rolling Stone Magazine 1984
An excerpt from The Tommyknockers
What happened was simple enough at least, at the start. What
happened was that Rebecca Paulson shot herself in the head with her
husband Joe's .22-caliber pistol. This occurred during her annual
spring cleaning, which took place this year (as it did most years)
