Bag of Bones   ::   Кинг Стивен

Ilay on my side, the shivers slowly subsiding, thinking of her coffin there in the driveway, think ’ that it made a kind of mad sense—Jo had loved Sara, and if she were haunt anyplace, it would be there. But why would she want to hurt Why would my Jo ever want to hurt me? I could think of no reason. Somehow the time passed, and there came a moment when I realized the air had turned a dark shade of gray; the shapes of the furniture in it like sentinels in fog. That was a little better. That was more it. I would light the kitchen woodstove, I decided, and make strong Begin the work of getting this behind me. I swung my legs out of bed and raised my hand to brush my sweat-hair off my forehead. I froze with the hand in front of my eyes. I have scraped it while I was crawling, disoriented, in the dark and to find my way back to bed. There was a shallow, clotted cut across the back, just below the knuckles.



CHAPTER 3

Oace, when I was sixteen, a plane went supersonic directly over my head.

I was walking in the woods when it happened, thinking of some story I was going to write, perhaps, or how great it would be if Doreen Fournier weakened some Friday night and let me take off her panties while we were parked at the end of Cushman Road.

In any case I was travelling far roads in my own mind, and when that boom went off, I was caught totally by surprise. I went flat on the leafy ground with my hands over my head and my heart drumming crazily, sure I’d reached the end of my life (and while I was still a virgin). In my forty years, that was the only thing which equalled the final dream of the “Manderley series” for utter terror.

I lay on the ground, waiting for the hammer to fall, and when thirty seconds or so passed and no hammer did fall, I began to realize it had just been some jet-jockey from the Brunswick Naval Air Station, too eager to wait until he was out over the Atlantic before going to Mach 1.

But, holy shit, who ever could have guessed that it would be so loud?

I got slowly to my feet and as I stood there with my heart finally slowing down, I realized I wasn’t the only thing that had been scared witless by that sudden clear-sky boom. For the first time in my memory, the little patch of woods behind our house in Prout’s Neck was entirely silent. I stood there in a dusty bar of sunlight, crumbled leaves all over my tee-shirt and jeans, holding my breath, listening. I had never heard a silence like it. Even on a cold day in January, the woods would have been full of conversation.

At last a finch sang.