Bag of Bones   ::   Кинг Стивен

Because they hadn’t been ordinary dreams, and my decision to go back to the lake after all this time hadn’t been an ordinary decision. I didn’t feel like a modern fin-de-millgnaire man on a spiritual quest to face his fears (I’m okay, you’re okay, let’s all have an emotional circle-jerk while William Acker-man plays softly in the background); I felt more like some crazy Old Testament prophet going out into the desert to live on locusts and alkali water because God had summoned him in a dream.

I was in trouble, my life was a moderate-going-on-severe mess, and not being able to write was only part of it. I wasn’t raping kids or running around Times Square preaching conspiracy theories through a bullhorn, but I was in trouble just the same. I had lost my place in things and couldn’t find it again. No surprise there; after all, life’s not a book.

What I was engaging in on that hot July evening was self-induced shock therapy, and give me at least this much credit—I knew it.

You come to Dark Score this way: 1-95 from Derry to Newport;

Route 2 from Newport to Bethel (with a stop in Rumford, which used to stink like hell’s front porch until the paper-driven economy pretty much ground to a halt during Reagan’s second term); Route 5 from Bethel to Waterford. Then you take Route 68, the old County Road, across Castle View, through Motton (where downtown consists of a converted barn which sells videos, beer, and second-hand rifles), and then past the sign which reads TR-90 and the one reading GAME WARDEN IS BEST ASSISTANCE IN EMERGENCY, DIAL 1-800-555-GAME OR *72 ON CELLULAR PHONE. To this, in spray paint, someone has added FUCK THE EAGLES.

Five miles past that sign, you come to a narrow lane on the right, marked only by a square of tin with the faded number 42 on it. Above this, like umlauts, are a couple of. 22 holes.

I turned into this lane just about when I had expected to—it was 7:16 P.M… EDT, by the clock on the Chevrolet’s dashboard.

And the feeling was coming home.

I drove in two tenths of a mile by the odometer, listening to the grass which crowned the lane whickering against the undercarriage of my car, listening to the occasional branch which scraped across the roof or knocked on the passenger side like a fist. At last I parked and turned the engine off. I got out, walked to the rear of the car, lay down on my belly, and began pulling all of the grass which touched the Chevy’s hot exhaust system. It had been a dry summer, and it was best to take precautions.