JК
Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 65 из 425I waited… and nothing… waiting still…and then there it was, right where the center of my gaze had been trained. At one moment there was only the fading sky (with indigo just starting to rise up from the edges like an infusion of ink), and at the next Venus was glowing there, bright and steady. People talk about watching the stars come out, and I suppose some people do, but I think that was the only time in my life that I actually saw one appear. I wished on it, too, but this time it was real time, and I did not wish for Jo. “Help me,” I said, looking at the star. I would have said more, but I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what kind of help I needed.
That’s enough, a voice in my mind said uneasily. That’s enough, now. Go on back and get your car. Except that wasn’t the plan. The plan was to go down the driveway, just as I had in the final dream, the nightmare.
The plan was to prove to myself that there was no shroud-wrapped monster lurking in the shadows of the big old log house down there. The plan was pretty much based on that bit of New Age wisdom which says the word “fear” stands for Face Everything And Recover. But, as I stood there and looked down at that spark of porch light (it looked very small in the growing darkness), it occurred to me that there’s another bit of wisdom, one not quite so good-morning-starshine, which suggests fear is actually an acronym for Fuck Everything And Run. Standing there by myself in the woods as the light left the sky, that seemed like the smarter interpretation, no two ways about it. I looked down and was a little amused to see that I had taken one of the balloons—untied it without even noticing as I thought things over. It floated serenely up from my hand at the end of its string, the words printed on it now impossible to read in the growing dark. Maybe it’s all moot, anyway; maybe I won’t be able to move. Maybe that old devil writer’s walk has got hold of me again, and I’ll just stand here like a statue until someone comes along and hauls me away. But this was real time in the real world, and in the real world there was no such thing as writer’s walk. I opened my hand.
As the string I’d been holding floated free, I walked under the rising balloon and started down the driveway. Foot followed foot, pretty much as they had ever since I’d first learned this trick back in 1959. I went deeper and deeper into the clean but sour smell of pine, and once I caught myself taking an extra-big step, avoiding a fallen branch that had been in the dream but wasn’t here in reality.
That’s enough, a voice in my mind said uneasily. That’s enough, now. Go on back and get your car. Except that wasn’t the plan. The plan was to go down the driveway, just as I had in the final dream, the nightmare.
The plan was to prove to myself that there was no shroud-wrapped monster lurking in the shadows of the big old log house down there. The plan was pretty much based on that bit of New Age wisdom which says the word “fear” stands for Face Everything And Recover. But, as I stood there and looked down at that spark of porch light (it looked very small in the growing darkness), it occurred to me that there’s another bit of wisdom, one not quite so good-morning-starshine, which suggests fear is actually an acronym for Fuck Everything And Run. Standing there by myself in the woods as the light left the sky, that seemed like the smarter interpretation, no two ways about it. I looked down and was a little amused to see that I had taken one of the balloons—untied it without even noticing as I thought things over. It floated serenely up from my hand at the end of its string, the words printed on it now impossible to read in the growing dark. Maybe it’s all moot, anyway; maybe I won’t be able to move. Maybe that old devil writer’s walk has got hold of me again, and I’ll just stand here like a statue until someone comes along and hauls me away. But this was real time in the real world, and in the real world there was no such thing as writer’s walk. I opened my hand.
As the string I’d been holding floated free, I walked under the rising balloon and started down the driveway. Foot followed foot, pretty much as they had ever since I’d first learned this trick back in 1959. I went deeper and deeper into the clean but sour smell of pine, and once I caught myself taking an extra-big step, avoiding a fallen branch that had been in the dream but wasn’t here in reality.