JК
Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 397 из 425She was looking at Sara, who had materialized into a lunatic’s hallucination—a monstrous greenish-black thing that slipped with every step it tried to walk along The Street.
She had left the birch behind yet assumed its vitality somehow—the actual tree huddled behind her, black and shrivelled and dead. The creature born of it looked like the Bride of Frankenstein as sculpted by Picasso. In it, Sara’s face came and went, came and went. The Shape, I thought coldly. It was always real… and if it was always me, it was always her, too. Jo was dressed in the white shirt and yellow slacks she’d had on the day she died. I couldn’t see the lake through her as I had been able to see it through Devore and Devore’s young friends; she had materialized herself completely. I felt a curious draining sensation at the back of my skull and thought I knew how. “Git out, bitch!” the Sara-thing snarled. It raised its arms toward Jo as it had raised them to me in my worst nightmares. “Not at all.” Jo’s voice remained calm.
She turned toward me. “Hurry, Mike. You have to be quick. It’s not really her anymore. She’s let one of the Outsiders in, and they’re very dangerous.”
“Jo, I love you.”
“I love you t—” Sara shrieked and then began to spin. Leaves and branches blurred together and lost coherence; it was like watching something liquefy in a blender. The entity which had only looked a little like a woman to begin with now dropped its masquerade entirely. Something elemental and grotesquely inhuman began to form out of the maelstrom. It leaped at my wife. When it struck her, the color and solidity left Jo as if slapped away by a huge hand. She became a phantom struggling with the thing which raved and shrieked and clawed at her. “Hurry, Mike!” she screamed. “Hurry/” I bent to the job.
The spade struck something that wasn’t dirt, wasn’t stone, wasn’t wood.
I scraped along it, revealing a filthy mold-crusted swatch of canvas.
Now I dug like a madman, wanting to clear as much of the buried object as I could, wanting to fatten my chances of success as much as I could.
Behind me, the Shape screamed in fury and my wife screamed in pain. Sara had given up part of her discorporate self in order to gain her revenge, had let in something Jo called an Outsider. I had no idea what that might be and never wanted to know. Sara was its conduit, I knew that much. And if I could take care of her in time-I reached into the dripping hole, slapping wet earth from the ancient canvas. Faint stencilled letters appeared when I did: j. M. MCCUTDIE SAWMILL.
She had left the birch behind yet assumed its vitality somehow—the actual tree huddled behind her, black and shrivelled and dead. The creature born of it looked like the Bride of Frankenstein as sculpted by Picasso. In it, Sara’s face came and went, came and went. The Shape, I thought coldly. It was always real… and if it was always me, it was always her, too. Jo was dressed in the white shirt and yellow slacks she’d had on the day she died. I couldn’t see the lake through her as I had been able to see it through Devore and Devore’s young friends; she had materialized herself completely. I felt a curious draining sensation at the back of my skull and thought I knew how. “Git out, bitch!” the Sara-thing snarled. It raised its arms toward Jo as it had raised them to me in my worst nightmares. “Not at all.” Jo’s voice remained calm.
She turned toward me. “Hurry, Mike. You have to be quick. It’s not really her anymore. She’s let one of the Outsiders in, and they’re very dangerous.”
“Jo, I love you.”
“I love you t—” Sara shrieked and then began to spin. Leaves and branches blurred together and lost coherence; it was like watching something liquefy in a blender. The entity which had only looked a little like a woman to begin with now dropped its masquerade entirely. Something elemental and grotesquely inhuman began to form out of the maelstrom. It leaped at my wife. When it struck her, the color and solidity left Jo as if slapped away by a huge hand. She became a phantom struggling with the thing which raved and shrieked and clawed at her. “Hurry, Mike!” she screamed. “Hurry/” I bent to the job.
The spade struck something that wasn’t dirt, wasn’t stone, wasn’t wood.
I scraped along it, revealing a filthy mold-crusted swatch of canvas.
Now I dug like a madman, wanting to clear as much of the buried object as I could, wanting to fatten my chances of success as much as I could.
Behind me, the Shape screamed in fury and my wife screamed in pain. Sara had given up part of her discorporate self in order to gain her revenge, had let in something Jo called an Outsider. I had no idea what that might be and never wanted to know. Sara was its conduit, I knew that much. And if I could take care of her in time-I reached into the dripping hole, slapping wet earth from the ancient canvas. Faint stencilled letters appeared when I did: j. M. MCCUTDIE SAWMILL.