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Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 385 из 425The boys in the basement spoke up then—murmured, at least—and I leaned over the seat to grab the mask by its elastic strap without the slightest idea of why I was doing so. I dropped it into the carry-bag, slammed the car door, then started down the railroad-tie steps to the lake. On the way I paused to duck under the deck, where we had always kept a few tools.
There was no pick, but I grabbed a spade that looked up to a piece of gravedigging. Then, for what I thought would be the last time, I followed the course of my dream down to The Street. I didn’t need Jo to show me the spot; the Green Lady had been pointing to it all along. Even had she not been, and even if Sara Tidwell did not still stink to the heavens, I think I would have known. I think I would have been led there by my own haunted heart.
There was a man standing between me and the place where the gray forehead of rock guarded the path, and as I paused on the last railroad tie, he hailed me in a rasping voice that I knew all too well.
“Say there, whoremaster, where’s your whore?”
He stood on The Street in the pouring rain, but his cutters’
outfit—green flannel pants, checked wool shirt—and his faded blue Union Army cap were dry, because the rain was falling through him rather than on him. He looked solid but he was no more real than Sara herself.
I reminded myself of this as I stepped down onto the path to face him, but my heart continued to speed up, thudding in my chest like a padded hammer.
He was dressed in Jared Devore’s clothes, but this wasn’t Jared Devore.
This was Jared’s great-grandson Max, who had begun his career with an act of sled-theft and ended it in suicide… but not before arranging for the murder of his daughter-in-law, who’d had the temerity to refuse him what he had so dearly wanted.
I started toward him and he moved to the center of the path to block me.
I could feel the cold baking off him. I am saying exactly what I mean, expressing what I remember as clearly as I can: I could feel the cold baking off him. And yes, it was Max Devore all right, but got up like a logger at a costume party and looking the way he must have around the time his son Lance was born. Old but hale. The sort of man younger men might well look up to. And now, as if the thought had called them, I could see the rest shimmer into faint being behind him, standing in a line across the path. These were the ones who had been with Jared at the Fryeburg Fair, and now I knew who some of them were.
There was no pick, but I grabbed a spade that looked up to a piece of gravedigging. Then, for what I thought would be the last time, I followed the course of my dream down to The Street. I didn’t need Jo to show me the spot; the Green Lady had been pointing to it all along. Even had she not been, and even if Sara Tidwell did not still stink to the heavens, I think I would have known. I think I would have been led there by my own haunted heart.
There was a man standing between me and the place where the gray forehead of rock guarded the path, and as I paused on the last railroad tie, he hailed me in a rasping voice that I knew all too well.
“Say there, whoremaster, where’s your whore?”
He stood on The Street in the pouring rain, but his cutters’
outfit—green flannel pants, checked wool shirt—and his faded blue Union Army cap were dry, because the rain was falling through him rather than on him. He looked solid but he was no more real than Sara herself.
I reminded myself of this as I stepped down onto the path to face him, but my heart continued to speed up, thudding in my chest like a padded hammer.
He was dressed in Jared Devore’s clothes, but this wasn’t Jared Devore.
This was Jared’s great-grandson Max, who had begun his career with an act of sled-theft and ended it in suicide… but not before arranging for the murder of his daughter-in-law, who’d had the temerity to refuse him what he had so dearly wanted.
I started toward him and he moved to the center of the path to block me.
I could feel the cold baking off him. I am saying exactly what I mean, expressing what I remember as clearly as I can: I could feel the cold baking off him. And yes, it was Max Devore all right, but got up like a logger at a costume party and looking the way he must have around the time his son Lance was born. Old but hale. The sort of man younger men might well look up to. And now, as if the thought had called them, I could see the rest shimmer into faint being behind him, standing in a line across the path. These were the ones who had been with Jared at the Fryeburg Fair, and now I knew who some of them were.