by Stephen King
Norman blew out a breath, took in another one, opened his eyes. Spaghetti sauce, yes. A red smell, like blood. But spaghetti sauce was really all it was.
"Sorry, got a little flaky there for a minute, " he said.
"Yup, but who wouldn't?" Ferd said, and now his empty eyes seemed to express both sympathy and understanding. "This is where Circe turns men into pigs, after all." The mask swivelled on Norman's wrist, scanning with its blank eyes. "Yas, dis be de place. "
"What are you talking about?"
"Nothing. Never mind. "
"I don't know where to go, " Norman said, also looking around. "I've got to hurry, but Christ, the place is so big! There must be twenty rooms, at least. "
The bull pointed its horns at a door across the kitchen. "Try that one. "
"Hell, that's probably just the pantry. "
"I don't think so, Norm. I don't think they'd put a sign that says PRIVATE on the pantry, do you?"
It was a point. Norman crossed the room, stuffing the bullmask back into his pocket as he did (and noticing the spaghetti colander which had been left to drip-dry in the rack beside the sink), then rapped on the door. Nothing. He tried the knob. It turned easily. He opened the door, felt inside on the right, and flipped a switch.
The overhead fixture illuminated a dinosaur of a desk heaped high with clutter Balanced atop one pile was a gold plaque which read ANNA STEVENSON and BLESS THIS MESS. On the wall was a framed picture of two women Norman recognized. One was the late great Susan Day. The other was the white-haired bitch from the newspaper photo, the one who looked like Maude. They had their arms around each other and were smiling into each other's eyes like true lesbos.
The side of the room was lined with filing cabinets. Norman walked over to them, dropped to one knee, started to reach for the cabinet labelled D-E, then stopped. She wasn't using Daniels anymore. He couldn't remember if that was something Ferdinand had told him or something he'd either found out or intuited for himself, but he knew it was true. She had gone back to her maiden name.
"You'll be Rose Daniels until the day you die, " he said, and reached for the M cabinet instead. He tugged. Nothing. It was locked.
A problem, but not a big one. He'd get something in the kitchen to pry it open with. He turned, meaning to go back out, then stopped, his eye caught by a wicker basket standing on the corner of the desk. There was a card hanging from the basket's handle. GO THEN, LITTLE LETTER was written on it in Old English script. There was a small stack of what looked like outgoing mail in the basket, and below a billpayer envelope addressed to Lakeland Cable TV, he saw this poking out:
--endon
--renton Street
--endon?
McClendon?
He snatched the letter up, overturning the basket and dumping most of the outgoing mail on the floor, his eyes wide and greedy.
Yes, McClendon, by God-Rosie McClendon! And right below it, firmly and legibly printed, the address he'd gone through hell to get: 897 Trenton Street.
There was a long, chrome-plated letter-opener lying half under a stack of leftover Swing into Summer fliers. Norman grabbed it, slit the letter open, and shoved the opener into his back pocket without even thinking about it. He pulled out the mask again at the same time and slid it onto his hand. The single sheet of paper bore an embossed letterhead which read ANNA STEVENSON in big letters and Daughters and Sisters in slightly smaller ones.
Norman gave this small ego-signal a quick glance, then began to cruise the mask over the paper, letting Ferdinand read it for him. Anna Stevenson's handwritten script was large and elegant--arrogant, some might have termed it. Norman's sweaty fingers shook and tried to clench inside Ferdinand's head, sending the rubber mask through a series of convulsive winces and leers as it moved.
Dear Rosie:
I just wanted to send you a note in your new "digs" (I know how important those first few letters can be!), telling you how glad I am that you came to us at Daughters and Sisters, and how glad I am we could help you. I also want to say how pleased I am with your new job--I have an idea you won't be living on Trenton Street for long!
Every woman who comes to Daughters and Sisters renews the lives of all the others--those there with her during her first period of healing and all those who come after she's left, for each one leaves a bit of her experience, strength, and hope behind. My hope is to see you here often, Rosie, not just because your recovery is a long way from complete and because you have many feelings (chiefly anger, I should surmise) which you haven't yet dealt with, but because you have an obligation to pass on what you've learned here. I probably don't need to tell you these things, but--
A click, not much of a sound but loud in the silence. This was followed by another sound: meep-meep-meep-meep.
The burglar alarm.
Norman had company.
6
Anna never noticed the green Tempo parked by the curb a block and a half down from Daughters and Sisters. She was deep in a private fantasy, one she had never told anyone, not even her therapist, the necessary fantasy she saved for horrible days like today. In it she was on the cover of Time magazine. It wasn't a photo but a vibrant oil painting which showed her in a dark blue shift (blue was her best color, and a shift would obscure the depressing way she had been thickening around the middle these last two or three years). She was looking over her left shoulder, giving the artist her good side to work with, and her hair spilled over her right shoulder in a snowdrift. A sexy snowdrift.
The caption beneath the picture read simply: AMERICAN WOMAN.
She turned into the driveway, reluctantly putting the fantasy away (she had just reached the point where the writer was saying, "Although she has reclaimed the lives of over fifteen hundred battered women, Anna Stevenson remains surprisingly, even touchingly, modest ..."). She turned off the engine of her Infiniti and just sat there for a moment, delicately rubbing at the skin beneath her eyes.
Peter Slowik, whom she had usually referred to at the time of their divorce as either Peter the Great or Rasputin the Mad Marxist, had been a promiscuous babbler when alive, and his friends had seemed determined to remember him in that same spirit. The talk had gone on and on, each "remembrance bouquet" (she thought that she could cheerfully machine-gun the politically correct buttholes who spent their days thinking such smarmy phrases up) seemingly longer than the last, and by four o'clock, when they'd finally gotten up to eat the food and drink the wine--domestic and dreadful, just what Peter would have picked if he'd been the one doing the shopping--she was sure the shape of the folding chair on which she'd been sitting must have been tattooed into her ass. The idea of leaving early--perhaps slipping out after one finger-sandwich and a token sip of wine--had never crossed her mind, however. People would be watching, evaluating her behavior. She was Anna Stevenson, after all, an important woman in the political structure of this town, and there were certain people she had to speak to after the formal ceremonies were over. People she wanted other people to see her talking to, because that was how the carousel turned.
And, just to add to the fun, her pager had gone off three times in a space of forty-five minutes. Weeks went by when it sat mutely in her purse, but this afternoon, during a meeting where there were long periods of silence broken by people who seemed incapable of speaking above a tearful mutter, the gadget had gone crazy. After the third time she got tired of the swivelling heads and turned the Christing thing off. She hoped nobody had gone into labor at the picnic, that nobody's kid had taken a thrown horseshoe in the head, and most of all she hoped Rosie's husband hadn't shown up. She doubted that he had, though; he would know better. In any case, anyone who'd called her pager would have called D & S first, and she'd make the answering machine in her study stop number one. She could listen to the messages while she peed. In most cases, that would be fitting.
She got out of the car, locked it (even in a good neighborhood like this you couldn't be too careful), and went up the porch steps. She used her keycard a
nd silenced the meep-meep-meep of the security system without even thinking of it; sweet shreds of her daydream
(only woman of her time to be loved and respected by all factions of the increasingly divergent women's movement)
still swirled in her head.
"Hello, the house!" she called, walking down the hall.
Silence replied, which was what she'd expected ... and, let's face it, hoped for. With any luck, she might have two or even three hours of blessed silence before the commencement of that night's giggling, hissing showers, slamming doors, and cackling sitcoms.
She walked into the kitchen, wondering if maybe a long leisurely bath, Calgon and all, wouldn't smooth off the worst of the day. Then she stopped, frowning across at her study door. It was standing ajar.
"Goddammit," she muttered. "God damn it!"
If there was one think she disliked above all others--except maybe for touchy-huggy-feely people--it was having her privacy invaded. She had no lock on her study door because she did not believe she should be reduced to that. This was her place, after all; the girls and women who came here came through her generosity and at her sufferance. She shouldn't need a lock on that door. Her desire that they should stay out unless invited in ought to have been enough.
Mostly it was, but every now and then some woman would decide she really needed some piece of her documentation, that she really needed to use Anna's photocopier (which warmed up faster than the one downstairs in the rec room), that she really needed a stamp, and so this disrespectful person would come in, she'd track through a place that wasn't hers, maybe look at things that weren't hers to look at, junk up the air with the smell of some cheap drugstore perfume ...
Anna paused with one hand on the study doorknob, looking into the dark room which had been a pantry when she was a little girl. Her nostrils flared slightly and the frown on her face deepened. There was a smell, all right, but it wasn't quite perfume. It was something that reminded her of the Mad Marxist. It was ...
All my men wear English Leather or they wear nothing at all.
Jesus! Jesus Christ!
Her arms crawled with gooseflesh. She was a woman who prided herself on her practicality, but suddenly it was all too easy to imagine Peter Slowik's ghost waiting for her inside her study, a shade as insubstantial as the stink of that ludicrous cologne he'd worn ...
Her eyes fixed on a light in the darkness: the answering machine. The little red lamp was stuttering madly, as if everyone in the city had called today.
Something had happened. All at once she knew it. It explained the pager, too ... and like a dummy she'd turned it off so people would stop staring at her. Something had happened, probably at Ettinger's Pier. Someone hurt. Or, God forbid--
She stepped into the office, feeling for the light-switch beside the door, then stopped, puzzled by what her fingers had found. The switch was already up, which meant the overhead light should be on, but it wasn't.
Anna flipped the switch up and down twice, started to do it a third time, and then a hand dropped on her right shoulder.
She screamed at that settling touch, the sound coming out of her throat as full and frantic as any scream ever voiced by a horror-movie heroine, and as another hand clamped on her upper left arm and turned her around on her heels, as she saw the shape silhouetted against the flooding light from the kitchen she screamed again.
The thing which had been standing behind the door and waiting for her wasn't human. Horns sprouted from the top of its head, horns which appeared to be swollen with strange, tumorous growths. It was--
"Viva ze bool," a hollow voice said, and she realized it was a man, a man wearing a mask, but that didn't make her feel any better because she had a very good idea of who the man was.
She tore out of his grip and backed toward the desk. She could still smell English Leather, but she could smell other things now, as well. Hot rubber. Sweat. And urine. Was it hers? Had she wet herself? She didn't know. She was numb from the waist down.
"Don't touch me," she said in a trembling voice utterly unlike her usual calm and authoritative tone. She reached behind her and felt for the button that summoned the police. It was there someplace, but buried under drifts of paper. "Don't you dare touch me, I'm warning you."
"Anna-Anna-bo-Banna, banana-fanna-fo-Fanna," the creature in the homed mask said in a tone of deep meditation, and then swept the door shut behind it. Now they were in total darkness.
"Stay away," she said, moving along the desk, sliding along the desk. If she could get into the bathroom, lock the door--
"Fee-fi-mo-Manna ..."
From her left. And close. She lunged to the right, but not soon enough. Strong arms enfolded her. She tried to scream again, but the arms tightened, and her breath came out in a silent rush.
If I were Misery Chastain, I'd--she thought, and then Norman's teeth were on her throat, he was nuzzling her like a horny kid parked on Lovers' Lane, and then his teeth were in her throat, and something was spraying warm all down the front of her, and she thought no more.
7
By the time the final questions were asked and the final statement was signed, it was long past dark. Rosie's head spun, and she felt a little unreal to herself, as she had after those occasional all-day tests they threw at you in high school.
Gustafson went off to file his paperwork, bearing it before him as if it were the Holy Grail, and Rosie got to her feet. She began moving toward Bill, who was also getting up. Gert had gone in search of the ladies' room.
"Ms. McClendon?" Hale asked from her elbow.
Rosie's weariness was supplanted by a sudden, horrid premonition. It was just the two of them; Bill was too far away to overhear anything Hale might say to her, and when he began to speak, he would do so in a low, confidential voice. He would tell her that she would stop all this foolishness about her husband right now, while there was still time, if she knew what was good for her. That she should keep her mouth shut around cops from here on out, unless one of them either (a) asked her a question, or (b) unzipped his fly. He would remind her that this was a family thing, that--
"I am going to bust him," Hale said mildly. "I don't know if I can completely convince you of that no matter what I say, but I need you to hear me say it, anyway. I am going to bust him. It's a promise."
She looked at him with her mouth open.
"I'm going to do it because he's a murderer, and crazy, and dangerous. I'm also going to do it because I don't like the way you look around the squadroom and jump every time a door slams somewhere. Or the way you cringe a little every time I move one of my hands."
"I don't . "
"You do. You can't help it and you do. That's all right, though, because I understand why you do. If I was a woman and I'd been through what you've been through ..." He trailed off, looking at her quizzically. "Has it ever occurred to you how magic-goddam-lucky you are just to be alive?"
"Yes," Rosie said. Her legs were trembling. Bill was standing at the gate, looking at her, clearly concerned. She forced a smile for him and raised a single finger--one more minute.
"You bet you are," Hale said. He glanced around the squadroom, and Rosie followed his eyes. At one desk, a cop was writing up a weeping teenager in a high-school letter-jacket. At another, this one by the chickenwired floor-to-ceiling windows, a uniformed cop and a detective with his jacket off so you could see the .38 Police Special clipped to his belt were examining a stack of photos, their heads close together. At a row of VDT screens all the way across the room, Gustafson was discussing his reports with a young bluesuit who looked no older than sixteen to Rosie.
"You know a lot about cops," Hale said, "but most of what you know is wrong."
She didn't know how to answer that, but it was okay; he didn't seem to require an answer.
"You want to know what my biggest motivation for busting him is, Ms. McClendon? Numero uno on the old hit parade?"
She nodded.
"I'm going to bust him because he's a cop. A h
ero cop, for God's sake. But the next time his puss is on the front page of the old hometown paper, he's either going to be the late Norman Daniels or he's going to be in legirons and an orange tracksuit."
"Thank you for saying that," Rosie said. "It means a lot."
He led her over to Bill, who opened the gate and put his arms around her. She hugged him tight, her eyes shut.
Hale asked, "Ms. McClendon?"
She opened her eyes, saw Gert come back into the room, and waved. Then she looked at Hale shyly but not fearfully. "You can call me Rosie, if you want."
He smiled briefly at that. "Would you like to hear something that'll maybe make you feel a little better about your first less-than-enthusiastic reaction to this place?"
"I ... I guess so."
"Let me guess," Bill said. "You're having problems with the cops back in Rosie's hometown."
Hale smiled sourly. "Indeed we are. They're being shy about faxing us what they know about Daniel's blood-medicals, even his prints. We're already dealing with police lawyers. Cop-shysters!"
"They're protecting him," Rosie said. "I knew they would."
"So far, yes. It's an instinct, like the one that tells you to drop everything and go after the killer when a cop gets gunned down. They'll stop trying to throw sand in the gears when they finally get it through their heads that this is real."
"Do you really believe that?" Gert asked.
He thought this over, then nodded. "Yes. I do."
"What about police protection for Rosie until this is over?" Bill asked.
Hale nodded again. "There's already a black-and-white outside your place on Trenton Street, Rosie."
She looked from Gert to Bill to Hale, dismayed and frightened all over again. The situation kept sandbagging her. She'd start to feel she was getting a handle on it, and then it would whop her flat all over again, from some new direction.
"Why? Why? He doesn't know where I live, he can't know where I live! That's why he came to the picnic, because he thought I'd be there. Cynthia didn't tell him, did she?"
"She says not." Hale accented the second word, but so lightly Rosie didn't catch it. Gert and Bill did, and they exchanged a look.