His face began to turn black. Blue smoke began to pour from
his hair. His finger appeared nailed to the Zenith's ON button. A
picture popped up on the TV. It showed Joe and Nancy Voss
screwing on the post office floor in a litter of catalogues and
Congressional newsletters and sweepstakes announcements from
Publishers' Clearing House.
'No!' 'Becka screamed, and the picture changed. Now she saw
Moss Harlingen behind a fallen pine, slightly down the barrel of a
.30-.30. the picture changed and she saw Darla Gaines and her
boyfriend doing the horizontal bop in Darla's upstairs bedroom while
Rick Springfield stared at them from the wall.
Joe Paulson's clothes burst into flames.
The living room was filled with the hot smell of cooking beer.
A moment later, the 3-D picture of Jesus exploded.
'No!' 'Becka shrieked, suddenly understanding that it had been
her all along, her, her, her, she had thought everything up, she had
read their thoughts, somehow read their thoughts, it had been the hole
in her head and it had done something to her mind had suped it up
somehow. The picture on the TV changed again and she saw herself
backing down the stepladder with the .22 pistol in her hand, pointed
toward her she looked like a woman bent on suicide rather than on
cleaning.
Her husband was turning black before her very eyes.
She ran to him, seized his shredded, wet hand and ... and was
herself galvanized by electricity. She was no more able to let go than
Brer Rabbit had been after he slapped the tar baby for insolence.
Jesus oh Jesus, she thought as the current slammed into her,
driving her up on her toes.
And a mad, cackling voice, the voice of her father, rode in her
brain: Fooled you, 'Becka! Fooled you, didn't I? Fooled you good!
The back of the television, which she had screwed back on after
she had finished with her alterations (on the off-chance that Joe might
look back there), exploded backward in a mighty blue flash of light.
Joe and 'Becka Paulson tumbled to the carpet. Joe was already dead.
And by the time the smouldering wallpaper behind the TV had
ignited the, 'Becka was dead, too.
STEPHEN
KING
THE ROAD VIRUS HEADS NORTH
Appears in novel
999
published in 1999
Richard Kinnell wasn't frightened when he first saw the picture at
the yard sale in Rosewood.
He was fascinated by it, and he felt he'd had the good luck to find
something which might be very special, but fright? No. It didn't
occur to him until later ('not until it was too late,' as he might
have written in one of his own numbingly successful novels) that
he had felt much the same way about certain illegal drugs as a
young man.
