Desperation

by Stephen King

  "I feel very sorry for the Lushan brothers. And I feel like I know them a little. How they must have felt. How they must have been grateful, in a way, when the madness finally took them over completely and they didn't have to think anymore.

  "They could have stayed out there in the Desatoya foothills practically forever, I guess, but they were all Tak had, and Tak is always hungry. It sent them into town, because there was nothing else it could do. One of them, Shih, was killed right there in the Lady Day. Ch'an was hung two. days later, right about where those three bikes were turned upside down in the street ... remember those? He raved in Tak's language, the language of the unformed, right up until the end. He tore the hood right off his head, so they hung him barefaced."

  "Boy, that God of yours, what a guy!" Marinville said cheerfully. "Really knows how to repay a favor, doesn't he, David?"

  "God is cruel," David said in a voice almost too low to hear.

  "What?" Marinville asked. "What did you say?"

  "You know. But life is more than just steering a course around pain. That's something you used to know, Mr. Marinville. Didn't you?"

  Marinville looked off into the corner of the truck and said nothing.

  4

  The first thing Mary was aware of was a smell--sweetish, rank, nauseating. Oh Peter, dammit to hell, she thought groggily. It's the freezer, everything's spoiled!

  Except that wasn't right; the freezer had gone off during their trip to Majorca, and that had been a long time ago, before the miscarriage. A lot had happened since then. A lot had happened just recently, in fact. Most of it bad. But what?

  Central Nevada's full of intense people.

  Who said that? Marielle? In her head it certainly sounded like Marielle.

  Doesn't matter, if it's true. And it is, isn't it? She didn't know. Didn't want to know. What she mostly wanted was to go back into the darkness part of her was trying to come out of. Because there were voices

  (they're a dastardly bunch)

  and sounds

  (reek-reek-reek)

  that she didn't want to consider. Better to just lie here and--

  Something scuttered across her face. It felt both light and hairy. She sat up, pawing her cheeks with both hands. An enormous bolt of pain went through her head, bright dots flashed across her vision in sync with her suddenly elevated heartrate, and she had a similarly bright flash of recall, one even Johnny Marinville would have admired.

  I bumped my bad arm putting up another crate to stand on.

  Hold on, you'll be inside in a jiffy.

  And then she had been grabbed. By Ellen. No; by the thing (Tak)

  that had been wearing Ellen. That thing had slugged her and then boom, boom, out go the lights.

  And in a very literal sense, they were still out. She had to flutter her lids several times simply to assure herself that her eyes were open.

  Oh, they're open, all right. Maybe it's just dark in this place... but maybe you're blind. How about that for a lovely thought. Mare? Maybe she hit you hard enough to blind y--

  Something was on the back of her hand. It ran halfway across and then paused, seeming to throb on her skin. Mary made a sound of revulsion with her tongue pressed to the roof of her mouth and flapped her hand madly in the air, like a woman waving off some annoying person. The throbbing disappeared; the thing on the back of her hand was gone. Mary got to her feet, provoking another cymbal-crash of pain in her head which she barely noticed. There were things in here, and she had no time for a mere headache.

  She turned slowly around, breathing that sickish-sweet aroma that was so similar to the stench that had greeted her and Pete when they had returned home from their mini-vacation in the Balearic Islands. Pete's parents had given them the trip as a Christmas present the year after they had been married, and how great it had been ... until they'd walked back in, bags in hand, and the stench had hit them like a fist. They had lost everything: two chickens, the chops and roasts she'd gotten at the good discount meat-cutter's she'd found in Brooklyn, the venison-steaks Peter's friend Don had given them, the pints of strawberries they'd picked at the Mohonk Mountain House the previous summer. This smell ... so similar ...

  Something that felt the size of a walnut dropped into her hair.

  She screamed, at first beating at it with the flat of her hand. That did no good, so she slid her fingers into her hair and got hold of whatever it was. It squirmed, then burst between her fingers. Thick fluid squirted into her palm. She raked the bristly, deflating body out of her hair and shook it off her palm. She heard it hit something ... splat. Her palm felt hot and itchy, as if she had reached into poison ivy. She rubbed it against her jeans.

  Please God don't let me be next, she thought. Whatever happens don't let me end up like the cop. Like Ellen.

  She fought the urge to simply bolt into the black surrounding her. If she did that she might brain herself, disembowel herself, or impale herself, like an expendable character in a horror movie, on some grotesque piece of mining equipment. But even that wasn't the worst. The worst was that there might be something besides the scuttering things in here with her. Something that was just waiting for her to panic and run.

  Waiting with its arms held out.

  Now she had a sense--perhaps it was only her imagination, but she didn't think so--of stealthy movement all around her. A rustling sound from the left. A slithering from the right. There was a sudden low squalling from behind her, there and gone before she could scream.

  That last one wasn't anything alive, she told herself. At least I don't think so. I think it was a tumbleweed hitting metal and scraping along it. I think I'm in a little building somewhere. She put me in a little building for safekeeping and the fridge is out, just like the lights, and the stuff inside has spoiled.

  But if Ellen was Entragian in a new body, why hadn't he/she just put her back in the cell where he'd put her to start with? Because he/she was afraid the others would find her there and let her out again? It was as plausible a reason as any other she could think up, and there was a thread of hope in it, as well. Holding onto it, Mary began to shuffle slowly forward with her hands held out.

  It seemed she walked that way for a very long time-- years. She kept expecting something else to touch her, and at last something did. It ran across her shoe. Mary froze. Finally it went about its business. But what followed it was even worse: a low, dry rattle coming out of the darkness at roughly ten o'clock. So far as she knew, there was only one thing that rattled like that. The sound didn't really stop but seemed to die away, like the whine of a cicada on a hot August afternoon. The low squalling returned. This time she was positive it was a tumbleweed sliding along metal. She was in a mining building, maybe the Quonset where Steve and the girl with the wild hair, Cynthia, had seen the little stone statue that had frightened them so badly.

  Get moving.

  I can't. There's a rattlesnake in here. Maybe more than one. Probably more than one.

  That's not all that's in here, though. Better get moving, Mary.

  Her palm throbbed angrily where the thing in her hair had burst open. Her heart thudded in her ears. As slowly as she could, she began inching forward again, hands out. Terrible ideas and images went with her. She saw a snake as thick as a powerline dangling from a rafter just ahead of her, fanged jaws hinged wide, forked tongue dancing. She would walk right into it and wouldn't know until it battened on her face, injecting its poison straight into her eyes. She saw the closet-demon of her childhood, a bogey she had for some reason called Apple Jack, slumped in the corner with his brown fruit-face all pulled in on itself, grinning, waiting for her to wander into his deadly embrace; the last thing she'd smell would be his cidery aroma, which was for the time being masked by the stench of spoilage, as he hugged her to death, all the time covering her face with wet avid uncle-kisses. She saw a cougar, like the one that had killed poor old Tom Billingsley, crouched in a corner with its tail switching. She saw Ellen, holding a baling hook in one hand
and smiling a thin waiting smile which was like a hook itself, simply marking time until Mary got close enough to skewer.

  But mostly what she saw was snakes.

  Rattlers.

  Her fingers touched something. She gasped and almost recoiled, but that was just nerves; the thing was hard, unliving. A straight-edge at the height of her torso. A table? Covered with an oilcloth? She thought so. She walked her fingers across it, and forced herself to freeze when one of the scuttery things touched her. It crawled over the back of her hand and down to her wrist, almost surely a spider of some sort, and then was gone. She walked her hand on, and here was something else investigating her, more of what Audrey had called "wildlife." Not a spider. This thing, whatever it was, had claws and a hard surface.

  Mary forced herself to hold still, but couldn't keep entirely quiet; a low, desperate moan escaped her. Sweat ran down her forehead and cheeks like warm motor-oil, stung in her eyes. Then the thing on her hand gave her an obscene little squeeze and was gone. She could hear it click-dragging its way across the table. She moved her hand again, resisting the clamor of her mind to pull back. If she did, what then? Stand here trembling in the dark until the stealthy sounds around her drove her crazy, sent her running in panicked circles until she bashed herself unconscious again?

  Here was a plate--no, a bowl--with something in it. Congealed soup? Her fingers fumbled beside it and felt a spoon. Yes, soup. She felt beyond it, touched what could have been a salt-or pepper-shaker, then something soft and flabby. She suddenly remembered a game they had played at slumber-parties when she was a girl in Mamaroneck. A game made to be played in the dark. You'd pass around spaghetti and intone These are the dead man's guts, pass around cold Jell-O and intone These are the dead man's brains.

  Her hand struck something hard and cylindrical. It fell over with a rattle she recognized at once ... or hoped she did: batteries in the tube of a flashlight.

  Please, God, she thought, groping for it. Please God let it be what it feels like.

  The squalling from outside came again, but she barely heard it. Her hand touched a cold piece of meat (this is the dead man's face)

  but she barely felt it. Her heart was hammering in her chest, her throat, even in her sinuses.

  There! There!

  Cold, smooth metal, it tried to squitter out of her grip, but she squeezed it tight. Yes, a flashlight; she could feel the switch lying against the web of skin between her thumb and forefinger.

  Now let it work, God. Please, okay?

  She pressed the switch. Light sprang out in a widening cone, and her yammering heartbeat stopped dead in her ears for a moment. Everything stopped dead.

  The table was long, covered with lab equipment and rock samples at one end, covered with a checked piece of tablecloth at the other. This end had been set, as for dinner, with a soup-bowl, a plate, silverware, and a waterglass. A large black spider had fallen into the waterglass and couldn't get out; it writhed and scratched fruitlessly. The red hourglass on its belly showed in occasional flickers. Other spiders, most also black widows, preened and strutted on the table. Among them were rock-scorpions, stalking back and forth like parliamentarians, their stingers furled on their backs. Sitting at the end of the table was a large bald man in a Diablo Mining Corporation tee-shirt. He had been shot in the throat at close range. The stuff in the soup-bowl, the stuff she had touched with her fingers, wasn't soup but this man's clotted blood.

  Mary's heart re-started itself, sending her own blood crashing up into her head like a piston, and all at once the flashlight's yellow fan of light began to look red and shimmery. She heard a high, sweet singing in her ears.

  Don't you faint, don't you dare--

  The flashlight beam swung to the left. In the corner, under a poster which read GO AHEAD, BAN MINING, LET THE BASTARDS FREEZE IN THE DARK!, was a roiling nest of rattlesnakes. She slid the beam along the metal wall, past congregations of spiders (some of the black widows she saw were as big as her hand), and in the other corner were more snakes. Their daytime torpor was gone, and they writhed together, flowing through sheetbends and clove hitches and double diamonds, occasionally shaking their tails.

  Don't faint, don't faint, don't faint--

  She turned around with the light, and when it happened upon the other three bodies that were in here with her, she understood several things at once. The fact that she had discovered the source of the bad smell was only the least of them.

  The bodies at the foot of the wall were in an advanced state of decay, delirious with maggots, but they hadn't been simply dumped. They were lined up ... perhaps even laid out. Their puffy, blackening hands had been laced together on their chests. The man in the middle really was black, she thought, although it was impossible to tell for sure. She didn't know him or the one on his right, but the one on the black guy's left she did know, in spite of the toiling maggots and the decomposition. In her mind she heard him mixing I'm going to kill you into the Miranda warning.

  As she watched, a spider ran out of Collie Entragian's mouth.

  The beam of the light shook as she ran it along the line of corpses again. Three men. Three big men, not a one of the three under six-feet-five.

  I know why I'm here instead of in jail, she thought. And I know why I wasn't killed. I'm next. When it's through with Ellen... I'm next.

  Mary began to scream.

  5

  The an tak chamber glowed with a faint red light that seemed to come from the air itself. Something which still looked a bit like Ellen Carver walked across it, accompanied by a retinue of scorpions and fiddlebacks. Above it, around it, the stone faces of the can taks peered down. Across from it was the pirin moh, a jutting facade that looked a bit like the front of a Mexican hacienda. In front of it was the pit--the ini, well of the worlds. The light could have been coming from here, but it was impossible to tell for sure. Sitting in a circle around the mouth of the ini were coyotes and buzzards. Every now and then one of the birds would rustle its feathers or one of the coyotes would flick an ear; if not for these moves, they might have been stones themselves.

  Ellen's body walked slowly: Ellen's head sagged. Pain pulsed deep in her belly. Blood ran down her legs in thin, steady streams. It had stuffed a torn cotton tee-shirt into Ellen's panties and that had helped for awhile, but now the shirt was soaked through. Bad luck it had had, and not just once. The first one had had prostate cancer--undiagnosed--and the rot had started there, spreading through his body with such unexpected speed that it had been lucky to get to Josephson in time. Josephson had lasted a little longer, Entfagian--a nearly perfect specimen--longer still. And Ellen? Ellen had been suffering from a yeast infection. Just a yeast infection, nothing at all in the ordinary scheme of things, but it had been enough to start the dominoes falling, and now ...

  Well, there was Mary. It didn't quite dare take her yet, not until it knew what the others were going to do. If the writer won out and took them back to the highway, it would jump to Mary and take one of the ATVs (loaded down with as many can tahs as it could transport) up into the hills. It already knew where to go: Alphaville, a vegan commune in the Desatoyas.

  They wouldn't be vegans for long after Tak arrived.

  If the wretched little prayboy prevailed and they came south, Mary might serve as bait. Or as a hostage. She would serve as neither, however, if the prayboy sensed she was no longer human.

  It sat down on the edge of the ini and stared into it. The ini was shaped like a funnel, its rough walls sliding in toward each other until, twenty-five or thirty feet down, nothing was left of the mouth's twelve-foot diameter but a hole less than an inch across. Baleful scarlet light, almost too bright to look at, stormed out of this hole in pulses. It was a hole like an eye.

  One of the buzzards tried to lay its head in Ellen's bloodstinking lap; it pushed the bird away. Tak had hoped looking into the ini would be calming, would help it decide what to do next (for the ini was where it really lived; Ellen Carver was just an outpost), but
it only seemed to increase its disquiet.

  Things were on the verge of going badly wrong. Looking back, it saw clearly that some other force had perhaps been working against it from the start.

  It was afraid of the boy, especially in its current weakness. Most of all it was terrified of being completely shut up beyond the narrow throat of the ini again, like a genie in a bottle. But that didn't have to be. Even if the boy brought them, it didn't have to be. The others would be weakened by their doubts, the boy would be weakened by his human concerns--especially his concern for his mother--and if the boy died, it could close the door to the outside again, close it with a bang, and then take the others. The writer and the boy's father would have to die, but the two younger ones it would try to sedate and save. Later, it might very well want to use their bodies.

  It rocked forward, oblivious to the blood squelching between Ellen's thighs, as it had been oblivious of the teeth falling out of Ellen's head or the three knuckles that had exploded like pine-knots in a fireplace when it had clipped Mary on the chin. It looked into the funnel of the well, and the constricted red eye at the bottom.

  The eye of Tak.

  The boy could die.

  He was, after all, only a boy ... not a demon, a god, or a savior.

  Tak leaned farther over the funnel with its jagged crystal sides and murky reddish light. Now it could hear a sound, very faint--a kind of low, atonal humming. It was an idiot sound ... but it was also wonderful, compelling. It closed its stolen eyes and breathed deeply, sucking at the force it felt, trying to get as much inside as it could, wanting to slow--at least temporarily--this body's degeneration. It would need Ellen awhile longer. And besides, now it felt the ini's peace. At last.

  "Tak, " it whispered into the darkness. "Tak en tow ini, tak ah lah, tak ah wan. "

  Then it was silent. From below, deep in the humming red silence of the ini, came the wet-tongue sound of something slithering.

  CHAPTER 2

  1

  David said, "The man who showed me these things--the man who guided me--told me to tell you that none of this is destiny." His arms were clasped around his knees and his head was bent; he seemed to be speaking to his sneakers. "In a way, that's the scariest part. Pie's dead, and Mr. Billingsley, and everyone else in Desperation, because one man hated the Mining Safety and Health Administration and another was too curious and hated being tied to his desk. That's all."