JК
Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 401 из 425The red belt stirred restlessly and the rusty buckle rose like the head of a snake.
“Mike/” Jo screamed. “Quick, quick/”
I pulled the sack out of the carry-bag and grabbed the plastic bottle which had been inside. Lye stille, the Magnabet letters had said; another little word-trick. Another message passed behind the unsuspecting guard’s back. Sara Tidwell was a fearsome creature, but she had underestimated Jo… and she had underestimated the telepathy of long association, as well. I had gone to Slips ’n Greens, I had bought a bottle of lye, and now I opened it and poured it, smoking, over the bones of Sara and her son.
There was a hissing sound like the one you hear when you open a beer or a bottled soft drink. The belt-buckle melted. The bones turned white and crumpled like things made out of sugar—I had a nightmare image of Mexican children eating candy corpses off long sticks on the Day of the Dead. The eyesockets of Sara’s skull widened as the lye filled the dark hollow where her mind, her prodigious talent, and her laughing soul had once resided. It was an expression that looked at first like surprise and then like sorrow.
The jaw fell off; the nubs of the teeth sizzled away.
The top of the skull caved in.
Spread fingerbones jittered, then melted.
“Ohhhhhh…”
It whispered through the soaking trees like a rising wind… only the wind had died as the wet air caught its breath before the next onslaught. It was a sound of unspeakable grief and longing and surrender. I sensed no hate in it; her hate was gone, burned away in the corrosive I had bought in Helen Auster’s shop. The sound of Sara’s going was replaced by the plaintive, almost human cry of a bird, and it awakened me from the place where I had been, brought me finally and completely out of the zone. I got shakily to my feet, turned around, and looked at The Street. Jo was still there, a dim form through which I could now see the lake and the dark clouds of the next thundersquall coming over the mountains. Something flickered beyond her—that bird venturing out of its safe covert for a peek at the re-arranged environment, perhaps—but I barely registered that. It was Jo I wanted to see, Jo who had come God knew how far and suffered God knew how much to help me. She looked exhausted, hurt, in some fundamental way diminished. But the other thing—the Outsider—was gone. Jo, standing in a ring of birch leaves so dead they looked charred, turned to me and smiled. “Jo! We did it!” Her mouth moved. I heard the sound, but the words were too distant to make out.
“Mike/” Jo screamed. “Quick, quick/”
I pulled the sack out of the carry-bag and grabbed the plastic bottle which had been inside. Lye stille, the Magnabet letters had said; another little word-trick. Another message passed behind the unsuspecting guard’s back. Sara Tidwell was a fearsome creature, but she had underestimated Jo… and she had underestimated the telepathy of long association, as well. I had gone to Slips ’n Greens, I had bought a bottle of lye, and now I opened it and poured it, smoking, over the bones of Sara and her son.
There was a hissing sound like the one you hear when you open a beer or a bottled soft drink. The belt-buckle melted. The bones turned white and crumpled like things made out of sugar—I had a nightmare image of Mexican children eating candy corpses off long sticks on the Day of the Dead. The eyesockets of Sara’s skull widened as the lye filled the dark hollow where her mind, her prodigious talent, and her laughing soul had once resided. It was an expression that looked at first like surprise and then like sorrow.
The jaw fell off; the nubs of the teeth sizzled away.
The top of the skull caved in.
Spread fingerbones jittered, then melted.
“Ohhhhhh…”
It whispered through the soaking trees like a rising wind… only the wind had died as the wet air caught its breath before the next onslaught. It was a sound of unspeakable grief and longing and surrender. I sensed no hate in it; her hate was gone, burned away in the corrosive I had bought in Helen Auster’s shop. The sound of Sara’s going was replaced by the plaintive, almost human cry of a bird, and it awakened me from the place where I had been, brought me finally and completely out of the zone. I got shakily to my feet, turned around, and looked at The Street. Jo was still there, a dim form through which I could now see the lake and the dark clouds of the next thundersquall coming over the mountains. Something flickered beyond her—that bird venturing out of its safe covert for a peek at the re-arranged environment, perhaps—but I barely registered that. It was Jo I wanted to see, Jo who had come God knew how far and suffered God knew how much to help me. She looked exhausted, hurt, in some fundamental way diminished. But the other thing—the Outsider—was gone. Jo, standing in a ring of birch leaves so dead they looked charred, turned to me and smiled. “Jo! We did it!” Her mouth moved. I heard the sound, but the words were too distant to make out.