The Stake

mattress.

Just a quick nap, he thought.

He woke up, gasping for air and drenched with sweat. The clock on the nightstand showed 2:15.

Eighteen

Larry toweled himself dry and stepped into his shorts. They were still damp, but they felt cool. In the kitchen he poured himself a glass of iced tea. He put salami and cheese on a few crackers and took them along with his drink to the work room.

Just stick with it for a couple of hours, he thought. Then have a nice, cool shower, get dressed, and head on over to Pete and Barbara’s.

It would be wonderful. Sit out in back with them like yesterday, have a few cocktails...

He read the last few sentences on the screen, and added a new one. Then another. Then it was flowing again, the words in his mind rushing ahead of his typing fingers.

He was in the story. He was living it.

The iced tea and crackers disappeared. He smoked his pipe. He had another glass of tea. After that was gone, he couldn’t force himself away from the story to get another. He wrote and wrote. He rubbed the sweat off his face with slick forearms. Drops dribbled down his chest and sides, tickling until they stopped at the waist band of his shorts. Later, a breeze cooled his wet skin. Dried him. His mouth was parched. He told himself he would quit soon and go over to Pete and Barbara’s and drink up a storm. After this page. Or after the next.

Suddenly he noticed that his room was dark except for the amber glow of the words on the computer screen. Dark and cold. A chill night breeze blew through the open window. He realized that he was sitting rigid, shivering, teeth clenched as the breeze scurried over his bare skin.

Feeling disoriented, he squinted up at the dim face of the clock.

Ten after seven.

Impossible. What had happened to the time? He knew he’d been deeply involved in the story, but he could hardly believe he’d been so immersed that he’d allowed himself to miss the cocktails and dinner.

He hadn’t even been aware for the past hour that he’d been writing in the dark, nearly naked and freezing.

He read the final sentence.

“It was with a strange mixture of sadness and expectation that I watched the car vanish around the corner, carrying my wife and daughter away from me for the weekend.”

He muttered, “Good God.”

He scrolled upward to the start of the chapter. It was labeled Chapter Six. No page number. How many pages hadhe written today? Seventy? Eighty?

His normal output was seven to ten pages.

The most he’d everdone before in a single day was thirty. That was on a piece-of-garbage romance novel a few years ago when money was short and his agent had lined up a lousy deal for two romances at a thousand bucks a whack.

This was more than twice his record.

And I’m not done yet, he thought.

Holy smoke.

He folded his arms across his chest for warmth and shook his head.

Well, he thought, this is a true story. I’m just more or less reporting what happened.

It was astonishing, anyway.

If he’d gone over to Pete and Barbara’s... He realized he ought to give them a call and apologize. He left his work room and wandered through the house, turning on a few lights. In the bedroom he got rid of the shorts and put on his sweatsuit and socks. As if his skin resented the loss of cold, it tingled and itched. Larry rubbed himself through the soft fabric while he walked to the kitchen.

Tacked to a bulletin board beside the wall phone was a card on which Jean had written emergency numbers along with those of repair people and friends. Larry found the number for Pete and Barbara.

Do I really want to call them? he wondered. It had been an open invitation, not the kind of thing that required much of an apology. No big deal that I didn’t show up.

They’re sure to ask me over.

I’ll probably go. And that’ll be the end of today’s writing.

For godsake, I’ve written enough for one day. Enough for a week.

But if I stick with it, I can bring the story all the way up to the present. And be done with it. Nothing more to tell, once I get to where we hid the coffin in the garage. Tomorrow I’ll be able to finish the corrections on Madhouse, get it into the mail on Monday, and spend next week finishing Night Stranger. Then start on The Box.

Only if I don’t go over to Pete and Barbara’s tonight.

He wondered if Barbara was in her nightgown. And he realized that he didn’t much care.

He stepped away from the telephone and opened the refrigerator’s freezer compartment. His eyes roamed its contents. A lot to choose from. The lasagna would be easy. Just throw it in the microwave for a few minutes.

Too much trouble.

He shut the freezer door and checked the refrigerator. There he found a pack of hot dogs. He opened it, slid out a wet frank, and poked it into his mouth. Holding it there like a pink cigar, he put away the package. He took out a bottle of Michelob beer, twisted off its cap and returned to his work room.

He wrote. The hot dog and beer distracted him for a few minutes, but when they were gone he sank deeply into the story. He was there, over at Pete and Barbara’s, first on their patio and then in their house, telling it all just as it had happened. Almost. Censoring, as if by reflex, every mention of Barbara’s appearance and his own reactions to her. Then he was in the van with Pete. Then in the gully behind Holman’s.

As he tapped out, “ ‘I’ve got to take a leak,’ ” he realized that he did need to do exactly that. He went to the bathroom. As he urinated he thought about what would come next in the story.

Finding the campfire of the coyote eater.

Shivers crawled up his back.

He flushed the toilet, walked to his work room and stared through the doorway at his waiting chair.

I’m not sure I want to write about that tonight, he thought. Not about the coyote eater, not about what happened in the hotel.

He turned away from the work room. He wandered into the kitchen and looked at the clock. A quarter past ten.

That’s no time of night to be writing scary shit, he told himself.

I’m so close to the finish, though.

Hang in there for a couple more hours, you’ll be done with it.

Right, hang in there.

With a little help.

He dropped a few ice cubes into a glass, filled the glass with vodka, and added a touch of Rose’s Lime Juice. He took a sip. Sighed with pleasure. Drank some more. Then carried the glass to his room, slumped against the back of the chair and gazed at the screen.

Once this stuff hits the system, you won’t be able to write.

Hell, this isn’t writing. This is typing.

The beer had been enough to turn his typing a trifle sloppy. This should really mess it up.

Who cares? he asked himself. Just fix it when you revise. Or don’t. Give the copy editor something constructive to do for a change. If she has to correct real errors, maybe she won’t mess with the good stuff.

He took a few more swallows, then set the glass down and faced the dead campfire, the bones, the severed eyeless head of the coyote.