by Stephen King
4
“No,” Lisey murmured. Because—crazy as it seemed—Scott seemed to have been at work placing the stations of this bool hunt for her long before he died. Getting in touch with Dr. Alberness, for instance, who happened to have been such a puffickly huh-yooge fan. Somehow laying hands on Amanda’s medical records and bringing them to lunch, for heaven’s sake. And then the kicker: Mr. Landon said if I ever met you, I should ask you about how he fooled the nurse that time in Nashville.
And…when had he put Good Ma’s cedar box under the Bremen bed out in the barn? Because surely it had been Scott, she knew she had never put it there.
1996?
(hush)
In the winter of 1996, when Scott’s mind had broken and she had
(YOU HUSH NOW LISEY!)
All right…all right, she would hush about the winter of ’96—for now—but that felt about right. And…
A bool hunt. But why? To what purpose? To allow her to face in stages something she couldn’t face all at once? Maybe. Probably. Scott would know about such things, would surely sympathize with a mind that would want to hide its most terrible memories behind curtains or squirrel them away in sweet-smelling boxes.
A good bool.
Oh Scott, what’s good about this? What’s good about all this pain and sorrow?
A short bool.
If so, the cedar box was either the end or close to the end, and she had an idea that if she looked much further, there would be no going back.
Baby, he sighed…but only in her head. There were no ghosts. Only memory. Only the voice of her dead husband. She believed that; she knew it. She could close the box. She could draw the curtain. She could let the past be past.
Babyluv.
He would always have his say. Even dead, he would have his say.
She sighed—it was a wretched, lonely sound to her own ears—and decided to go on. To play Pandora after all.
5
The only other thing she’d squirreled away in here from their cut-rate, non-religious (but it had held for all that, had held very well) wedding day was a photograph taken at the reception, which had been held at The Rock—Cleaves Mills’s raunchiest, rowdiest, lowdown-and-dirtiest rock-and-roll bar. It showed her and Scott out on the floor as they began the first dance. She was in her white lace dress, Scott in a plain black suit—My undertaker’s suit, he’d called it—which he’d bought special for the occasion (and had worn again and again on the Empty Devils book-tour that winter). In the background she could see Jodotha and Amanda, both of them impossibly young and pretty, their hair up, their hands frozen in mid-clap. She was looking at Scott and he was smiling down at her, his hands on her waist, and oh God, look how long his hair had been, almost brushing his shoulders, she had forgotten that.
Lisey brushed the surface of the photograph with the tips of her fingers, slipping them across the people they’d been back at SCOTT AND LISEY, THE BEGINNING! and found she could even remember the name of the band from Boston (The Swinging Johnsons, pretty funny) and the song to which they had danced in front of their friends: a cover of “Too Late to Turn Back Now,” by Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose.
“Oh Scott,” she said. Another tear slipped down her cheek and she wiped it away absently. Then she put the photo on the sunny kitchen table and prospected deeper. Here was a thin stack of menus, bar-napkins, and matchbooks from motels in the Midwest, also a program from Indiana University in Bloomington, announcing a reading from Empty Devils, by Scott Linden. She remembered saving that one for the misprint, telling him it would be worth a fortune someday, and Scott replying Don’t hold your breath, babyluv. The date on the program was March 19th, 1980…so where were her souvenirs from The Antlers? Had she taken nothing? In those days she almost always took something, it was a kind of hobby, and she could have sworn—
She lifted out the “Scott Linden” program and there beneath it was a dark purple menu with The Antlers and Rome, New Hampshire stamped on it in gold. And she could hear Scott as clearly as if he were speaking in her ear: When in Rome, do as the Romans do. He’d said it that night in the dining room (empty except for them and a single waitress), ordering the Chef’s Special for both of them. And again, later, in bed, as he covered her naked body with his own.
“I offered to pay for this,” she murmured, holding the menu up to her sunny, empty kitchen, “and the guy said I could just take it. Because we were their only guests. And because of the snowstorm.”
That weird October snowstorm. They had stayed two nights instead of just the one that had been in the plan, and on the second she had remained awake long after Scott had gone to sleep. Already the cold front that had brought the unusual snow was moving out and she could hear it melting, dripping from the eaves. She had lain there in that strange bed (the first of so many strange beds she’d shared with Scott), thinking about Andrew “Sparky” Landon, and Paul Landon, and Scott Landon—Scott the survivor. Thinking about bools. Good bools and blood-bools.
Thinking about the purple. Thinking about that, too.
At some point the clouds had broken open and the room had been flooded with windy moonlight. In that light she had at last fallen asleep. The next day, a Sunday, they had driven through countryside that was reverting back from winter to fall, and less than a month later they had been dancing to The Swinging Johnsons: “Too Late to Turn Back Now.”
She opened the gold-stamped menu to see what the Chef’s Special had been that long-ago night, and a photograph fell out. Lisey remembered it at once. The owner of the place had taken it with Scott’s little Nikon. The guy had scrounged up two pairs of snowshoes (his cross-country skis were still in storage up in North Conway, he said, along with his four snowmobiles), and insisted that Scott and Lisey take a hike along the trail behind the inn. The woods are magical in the snow, Lisey remembered him telling them, and you’ll have them all to yourselves—not a single skier or snow machine. It’s the chance of a lifetime.
He had even packed them a picnic lunch with a bottle of red wine on the house. And here they were, togged out in snowpants and parkas and the earmuffs which the guy’s amiable wife had found for them (Lisey’s parka comically too big, the hem drooping all the way to her knees), standing for their portrait outside a country bed-and-breakfast in what looked like a Hollywood special-effects blizzard, wearing snowshoes and grinning like a couple of cheerful nitwits. The pack Scott wore to hold their lunch and the bottle of vino was another loaner. Scott and Lisey, bound for the yum-yum tree, although neither had known it then. Bound for a trip down Memory Lane. Only for Scott Landon, Memory Lane was Freak Alley, and it was no wonder he didn’t choose to go there often.
Still, she thought, skating the tips of her fingers over this photograph as she had over the one of their wedding-dance, you must have known you’d have to go there at least once before I married you, like it or not. You had something to tell me, didn’t you? The story that would back up your one non-negotiable condition. You must have been looking for the right spot for weeks. And when you saw that tree, that willow so drooped over with snow it made a grotto inside, you knew you’d found it and you couldn’t put it off any longer. How nervous were you, I wonder? How afraid that I’d hear you out and then tell you I didn’t want to marry you after all?
Lisey thought he’d been nervous, all right. She could remember his silence in the car. Hadn’t she thought even then that something was on his mind? Yes, because Scott was usually so talkative.
“But you must have known me well enough by then…” she began, then trailed off. The nice thing about talking to yourself was that mostly you didn’t have to finish what you were saying. By October of 1979 he must have known her well enough to believe she’d stick. Hell, when she didn’t tell him to take a hike after he cut his hand to ribbons on a pane of Parks Greenhouse glass, he must have believed she was in for the long haul. But had he been nervous about exposing those old memories, touching those ancient live wires? She guessed about that he’d been
more than nervous. She guessed about that he’d been scared to smucking death.
All the same he had taken her gloved hand in one of his, pointed, and said, “Let’s eat there, Lisey—let’s go under that
6
“Let’s eat under that willow,” he says, and Lisey is more than willing to fall in with this plan. For one thing, she’s hugely hungry. For another, her legs—especially her calves—are aching from the unaccustomed exercise involved in using the snowshoes: lift, twist, and shake…lift, twist, and shake. Mostly, though, she wants a rest from looking at the ceaselessly falling snow. The walk has been every bit as gorgeous as the innkeeper promised, and the quiet is something she thinks she’ll remember for the rest of her life, the only sounds the crunch of their snowshoes, the sound of their breathing, and the restless tackhammer of a far-off woodpecker. Yet the steady downpour (there is really no other word) of huge flakes has started to freak her out. It’s coming so thick and fast that it’s messed up her ability to focus, and that’s making her feel disoriented and a little dizzy. The willow sits on the edge of a clearing, its still-green fronds weighted down with thick white frosting.
Do you call them fronds? Lisey wonders, and thinks she will ask Scott over lunch. Scott will know. She never asks. Other matters intervene.
Scott approaches the willow and Lisey follows, lifting her feet and twisting them to shake off the snowshoes, walking in her fiancé’s tracks. When he reaches the tree, Scott parts the snow-covered—fronds, branches, whatever they are—like a curtain, and peers inside. His bluejeaned butt is sticking out invitingly in her direction.
“Lisey!” he says. “This is pretty neat! Wait ’til you s—”
She raises Snowshoe A and applies it to BlueJeaned Butt B. Fiancé C promptly disappears into Snow-Covered Willow D (with a surprised curse). It’s amusing, quite amusing indeed, and Lisey begins to giggle as she stands in the pouring snow. She is coated with it; even her eyelashes are heavy.
“Lisey?” From inside the drooping white umbrella.
“Yes, Scott?”
“Can you see me?”
“Nope,” she says.
“Come a little closer, then.”
She does, stepping in his tracks, knowing what to expect, but when his arm shoots out through the snow-covered curtain and his hand seizes her wrist, it’s still a surprise and she shrieks with laughter because she’s a bit more than startled; she’s actually a little frightened. He pulls her forward and cold whiteness dashes across her face, blinding her for a moment. The hood of her parka is back and snow slides down her neck, freezing on her warm skin. Her earmuffs are pulled askew. She hears a muffled flump as heavy clots of snow fall off the tree behind her.
“Scott!” she gasps. “Scott, you scared m—” But here she stops.
He’s on his knees before her, the hood of his own parka pushed back to reveal a spill of dark hair that’s almost as long as hers. He’s wearing his earmuffs around his neck like headphones. The pack is beside him, leaning against the tree-trunk. He’s looking at her, smiling, waiting for her to dig it. And Lisey does. She digs it bigtime. Anybody would, she thinks.
It’s a little like being allowed in the clubhouse where her big sister Manda and her friends played at being girl pirates—
But no. It’s better than that, because it doesn’t smell of ancient wood and damp magazines and moldy old mouseshit. It’s as if he’s taken her into an entirely different world, pulled her into a secret circle, a white-roofed dome that belongs to nobody but them. It’s about twenty feet across. In the center is the trunk of the willow. The grass growing out from it is still the perfect green of summer.
“Oh, Scott,” she says, and no vapor comes out of her mouth. It’s warm in here, she realizes. The snow caught on the drooping branches has insulated the space beneath. She unzips her jacket.
“Neat, isn’t it? Now listen to the quiet.”
He falls silent. So does she. At first she thinks there’s no sound at all, but that’s not quite right. There’s one. She can hear a slow drum muffled in velvet. It’s her heart. He reaches out, strips off her gloves, takes her hands. He kisses each palm, deep in the center of the cup. For a moment neither of them says anything. It’s Lisey who breaks the silence; her stomach rumbles. Scott bursts into laughter, falling back against the trunk of the tree and pointing at her.
“Me too,” he says. “I wanted to skin you out of those snowpants and screw in here, Lisey—it’s warm enough—but after all that exercise, I’m too hungry.”
“Maybe later,” she says. Knowing that later she’ll almost certainly be too full for screwing, but that’s okay; if the snow keeps up, they’ll almost certainly be spending another night here at The Antlers, and that’s fine with her.
She opens the pack and lays out lunch. There are two thick chicken sandwiches (lots of mayo), salad, and two hefty slices of what proves to be raisin pie. “Yum,” he says as she hands him one of the paper plates.
“Of course yum,” she says. “We’re under the yum-yum tree.”
He laughs. “Under the yum-yum tree. I like it.” Then his smile fades and he looks at her solemnly. “It’s nice here, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Scott. Very nice.”
He leans over the food; she leans to meet him; they kiss above the salad. “I love you, little Lisey.”
“I love you, too.” And at that moment, hidden away from the world in this green and secret circle of silence, she has never loved him more. This is now.
7
Despite his profession of hunger, Scott eats only half his sandwich and a few bites of salad. The raisin pie he doesn’t touch at all, but he drinks more than his share of the wine. Lisey eats with better appetite, but not quite as heartily as she thought she would. There’s a worm of unease gnawing at her. Whatever has been on Scott’s mind, the telling will be hard for him and maybe even harder for her. What makes her most uneasy is that she can’t think what it might be. Some kind of trouble with the law back in the rural western Pennsylvania town where he grew up? Did he perhaps father a child? Was there maybe even some kind of teenage marriage, a quickie job that ended in a divorce or an annulment two months later? Is it Paul, the brother who died? Whatever it is, it’s coming now. Sure as rain follows thunder, Good Ma would have said. He looks at his slice of pie, seems to think about taking a bite, then pulls out his cigarettes instead.
She remembers his saying Families suck and thinks, It’s the bools. He brought me here to tell me about the bools. She isn’t surprised to find the thought scares her badly.
“Lisey,” he says. “There’s something I have to explain. And if it changes your mind about marrying m—”
“Scott, I’m not sure I want to hear—”
His grin is both weary and frightened. “I bet you’re not. And I know I don’t want to tell. But it’s like getting a shot at the doctor’s office…no, worse, like getting a cyst opened up or a carbuncle lanced. But some things just have to be done.” His brilliant hazel eyes are fixed on hers. “Lisey, if we get married, we can’t have kids. That’s flat. I don’t know how badly you want them right now, but you come from a big family and I guess it’d be natural for you to want to fill up a big house with a big family of your own someday. You need to know that if you’re with me, that can’t happen. And I don’t want you to be facing me across a room somewhere five or ten years down the line and screaming ‘You never told me this was part of the deal.’”
He draws on his cigarette and jets smoke from his nostrils. It rises in a blue-gray fume. He turns back to her. His face is very pale, his eyes enormous. Like jewels, she thinks, fascinated. For the first and only time she sees him not as handsome (which he is not, although in the right light he can be striking) but as beautiful, the way some women are beautiful. This fascinates her, and for some reason horrifies her.
“I love you too much to lie to you, Lisey. I love you with all that passes for my heart. I suspect that kind of all-out love becomes a burden to a woman in time, but
it’s the only kind I have to give. I think we’re going to be quite a wealthy couple in terms of money, but I’ll almost certainly be an emotional pauper all my life. I’ve got the money coming, but as for the rest I’ve got just enough for you, and I won’t ever dirty it or dilute it with lies. Not with the words I say, not with the ones I hold back.” He sighs—a long, shuddering sound—and places the heel of the hand holding the cigarette against the center of his brow, as if his head hurts. Then he takes it away and looks at her again. “No kids, Lisey. We can’t. I can’t.”
“Scott, are you…did a doctor…”
He’s shaking his head. “It’s not physical. Listen, babyluv. It’s here.” He taps his forehead, between the eyes. “Lunacy and the Landons go together like peaches and cream, and I’m not talking about an Edgar Allan Poe story or any genteel Victorian we-keep-auntie-in-the-attic ladies’ novel; I’m talking about the real-world dangerous kind that runs in the blood.”
“Scott, you’re not crazy—” But she’s thinking about his walking out of the dark and holding the bleeding ruins of his hand out to her, his voice full of jubilation and relief. Crazy relief. She’s remembering her own thought as she wrapped that ruin in her blouse: that he might be in love with her, but he was also half in love with death.
“I am,” he says softly. “I am crazy. I have delusions and visions. I write them down, that’s all. I write them down and people pay me to read them.”
For a moment she’s too stunned by this (or maybe it’s the memory of his mangled hand, which she has deliberately put away from her, that has stunned her) to reply. He is speaking of his craft—that is always how he refers to it in his lectures, never as his art but as his craft—as delusion. And that is madness.
“Scott,” she says at last, “writing’s your job.”
“You think you understand that,” he says, “but you don’t understand the gone part. I hope you stay lucky that way, little Lisey. And I’m not going to sit here under this tree and give you the history of the Landons, because I only know a little. I went back three generations, got scared of all the blood I was finding on the walls, and quit. I saw enough blood—some of it my own—when I was a kid. Took my Daddy’s word for the rest. When I was a kid, Daddy said that the Landons—and the Landreaus before them—split into two types: gomers and bad-gunky. Bad-gunky was better, because you could let it out by cutting. You had to cut, if you didn’t want to spend your life in the bughouse or the jailhouse. He said it was the only way.”