by Stephen King
‘Yes. Yes! A little green ball that breathes!’
Like the rigged-up tennis ball you undoubtedly have either up your sleeve or in that big black lunchbox of yours, Rev, she thought.
And, as if she were controlling him with her mind (instead of just deducing where this sloppy little playlet would go next), Rideout said: ‘Mr Jensen, sir. There’s a lunchbox under the chair I was sitting in. Get it and open it and stand next to me. You need to do no more than that for the moment. Just—’
Kat MacDonald snapped. It was a snap she actually heard in her head. It sounded like Roger Miller snapping his fingers during the intro to ‘King of the Road’.
She stepped up beside Rideout and shouldered him aside. It was easy. He was taller, but she had been turning and lifting patients for nearly half her life, and she was stronger. ‘Open your eyes, Andy. Open them right now. Look at me.’
Startled, Newsome did as she said. Melissa and Jensen (now with the lunchbox in his hands) looked alarmed. One of the facts of their working lives – and Kat’s own, at least until now – was that you didn’t command the boss. The boss commanded you. You most certainly did not startle him.
But she’d had quite enough, thank you. In another twenty minutes she might be crawling after her headlights along stormy roads to the only motel in the vicinity, a place that looked like the avatar of all roach-traps, but it didn’t matter. She simply couldn’t do this any longer.
‘This is bullshit, Andy,’ she said. ‘Are you hearing me? Bullshit.’
‘I think you better stop right there,’ Newsome said, beginning to smile – he had several smiles, and this wasn’t one of the good ones. ‘If you want to keep your job, that is. There are plenty of other nurses in Vermont who specialise in pain therapy.’
She might have stopped there, but Rideout said, ‘Let her speak, sir.’ It was the gentleness in his tone that drove her over the edge.
She leaned forward, into his space, and the words spilled out in a torrent.
‘For the last sixteen months – ever since your respiratory system improved enough to allow meaningful physiotherapy – I’ve watched you lie in this goddamned expensive bed and insult your own body. It makes me sick. Do you know how lucky you are to be alive, when everyone else on that airplane was killed? What a miracle it is that your spine wasn’t severed, or your skull crushed into your brain, or your body burned – no, baked, baked like an apple – from head to toe? You would have lived four days, maybe even two weeks, in hellish agony. Instead you were thrown clear. You’re not a vegetable. You’re not a quadriplegic, although you choose to act like one. You won’t do the work. You look for some easier way. You want to pay your way out of your situation. If you died and went to Hell, the first thing you’d do is look for a tollgate.’
Jensen and Melissa were staring at her in horror. Newsome’s mouth hung open. If he had ever been talked to in such a fashion, it had been long ago. Only Rideout looked at ease. He was the one smiling now. The way a father would smile at his wayward four-year-old. It drove her crazy.
‘You could have been walking by now. God knows I’ve tried to make you understand that, and God knows I’ve told you – over and over – the kind of work it would take to get you up out of that bed and back on your feet. Dr Dilawar in San Francisco had the guts to tell you – he was the only one – and you rewarded him by calling him a faggot.’
‘He was a faggot,’ Newsome said pettishly. His scarred hands had balled themselves into fists.
‘You’re in pain, yes. Of course you are. It’s manageable, though. I’ve seen it managed, not once but many times. But not by a lazy rich man who tries to substitute his sense of entitlement for the plain old hard work and tears it takes to get better. You refuse. I’ve seen that, too, and I know what always happens next. The quacks and confidence men come, the way leeches come when a man with a cut leg wades into a stagnant pond. Sometimes the quacks have magic creams. Sometimes they have magic pills. The healers come with trumped-up claims about God’s power, the way this one has. Usually the marks get partial relief. Why wouldn’t they, when half the pain is in their heads, manufactured by lazy minds that only understand it will hurt to get better?’
She raised her voice to a wavering, childlike treble and bent close to him. ‘Daddy, it hurrr-rrrts! But the relief never lasts long, because the muscles have no tone, the tendons are still slack, the bones haven’t thickened enough to accommodate weight-bearing. And when you get this guy on the phone to tell him the pain’s back – if you can – do you know what he’ll say? That you didn’t have faith enough. If you used your brains on this the way you did on your manufacturing plants and various investments, you’d know there’s no little living tennis-ball sitting at the base of your throat. You’re too fucking old to believe in Santa Claus, Andy.’
Tonya had come into the doorway and now stood beside Melissa, staring with wide eyes and a dishwiper hanging limp in one hand.
‘You’re fired,’ Newsome said, almost genially.
‘Yes,’ Kat said. ‘Of course I am. Although I must say that this is the best I’ve felt in almost a year.’
‘Don’t fire her,’ Rideout said. ‘If you do, I’ll have to take my leave.’
Newsome’s eyes rolled to the Reverend. His brow was knitted in perplexity. His hands now began to knead his hips and thighs, as they always did when his pain medication was overdue.
‘She needs an education, praise God’s Holy Name.’ Rideout leaned towards Newsome, his own hands clasped behind his back. He reminded Kat of a picture she’d seen once of Washington Irving’s schoolteacher, Ichabod Crane. ‘She’s had her say. Shall I have mine?’
Newsome was sweating more heavily, but he was smiling again. ‘Have at her, Rideout. I believe I want to hear this.’
Kat faced him. Those dark, socketed eyes were unsettling, but she met them. ‘So do I.’
Hands still clasped behind his back, pink skull shining mutedly through his thin hair, long face solemn, Rideout examined her. Then he said: ‘You’ve never suffered yourself, have you, miss?’
Kat felt an urge to flinch at that, or look away, or both. She suppressed it. ‘I fell out of a tree when I was eleven and broke my arm.’
Rideout rounded his thin lips and whistled: one tuneless, almost toneless note. ‘Broke an arm while you were eleven. Yes, that must have been excruciating.’
She flushed. She felt it and hated it but couldn’t stop the heat. ‘Belittle me all you want. I based what I said on years of experience dealing with pain patients. It is a medical opinion.’
Now he’ll tell me he’s been expelling demons, or little green gods, or whatever they are, since I was in rompers.
But he didn’t.
‘I’m sure,’ he soothed. ‘And I’m sure you’re good at what you do. I’m sure you’ve seen your share of fakers and posers. You know their kind. And I know yours, miss, because I’ve seen it many times before. They’re usually not as pretty as you—’ Finally a trace of accent, pretty coming out as purty. ‘—but their condescending attitude towards pain they have never felt themselves, pain they can’t even conceive of, is always the same. They work in sickrooms, they work with patients who are in varying degrees of distress, from mild pain to deepest, searing agony. And after awhile, it all starts to look either overdone or outright fake to them, isn’t that so?’
‘That’s not true at all,’ Kat said. What was happening to her voice? All at once it was small.
‘No? When you bend their legs and they scream at fifteen degrees – or even at ten – don’t you think, first in the back of your mind, then more and more towards the front, that they are lollygagging? Refusing to do the hard work? Perhaps even fishing for sympathy? When you enter the room and their faces go pale, don’t you think, ‘Oh, now I have to deal with this lazy thing again?’ Haven’t you – who once fell from a tree and broke your arm, for the Lord’s sake – become more and more disgusted when they beg to be put back into bed and be given more morphine or w
hatever?’
‘That’s so unfair,’ Kat said … but now her voice was little more than a whisper.
‘Once upon a time, when you were new at this, you knew agony when you saw it,’ Rideout said. ‘Once upon a time you would have believed in what you are going to see in just a few minutes, because you knew in your heart that malignant outsider god was there. I want you to stay so I can refresh your memory … and the sense of compassion that’s gotten lost somewhere along the way.’
‘Some of my patients are whiners,’ Kat said, and looked defiantly at Rideout. ‘I suppose that sounds cruel, but sometimes the truth is cruel. Some are malingerers. If you don’t know that, you’re blind. Or stupid. I don’t think you’re either.’
He bowed as if she had paid him a compliment – which, in a way, she supposed she had. ‘Of course I know. But now, in your secret heart, you believe all of them are malingerers. You’ve become inured, like a soldier who’s spent too long in battle. Mr Newsome here has been infested, I tell you, invaded. There’s a demon inside him so strong it has become a god, and I want you to see it when it comes out. It will improve matters for you considerably, I think. Certainly it will change your outlook on pain.’ To Newsome: ‘Can she stay, sir?’
Newsome considered. ‘If you want her to.’
‘And if I choose to leave?’ Kat challenged him.
Rideout smiled. ‘No one will hold you here, Miss Nurse. Like all of God’s creatures, you have free will. I would not ask others to constrain it, or constrain it myself. But I don’t believe you’re a coward, merely calloused. Case-hardened.’
‘You’re a fraud,’ Kat said. She was furious, on the verge of tears.
‘No,’ Rideout said, once more speaking gently. ‘When we leave this room – with you or without you – Mr Newsome will be relieved of the agony that’s been feeding on him. There will still be pain, but once the agony is gone, he’ll be able to deal with the pain. Perhaps even with your help, miss, once you’ve had the necessary lesson in humility. Do you still intend to leave?’
‘I’ll stay,’ she said, then said: ‘Give me the lunchbox.’
‘But—’ Jensen began.
‘Give it over,’ Rideout said. ‘Let her inspect it, by all means. But no more talk. If I am meant to do this, it’s time to begin.’
Jensen gave her the long black lunchbox. Kat opened it. Where a workman’s wife might have packed her husband’s sandwiches and a little Tupperware container of fruit, she saw an empty glass bottle with a wide mouth. Inside the domed lid, held by a wire clamp meant to secure a Thermos, was a green aerosol can. There was nothing else. Kat turned to Rideout. He nodded. She took the aerosol out and looked at the label, nonplussed. ‘Pepper spray?’
‘Pepper spray,’ Rideout agreed. ‘I don’t know if it’s legal in Vermont – probably not would be my guess – but where I come from, most hardware stores stock it.’ He turned to Tonya. ‘You are—?’
‘Tonya Marsden. I cook for Mr Newsome.’
‘Very nice to make your acquaintance, ma’am. I need one more thing before we begin. Do you have a baseball bat? Or any sort of club?’
Tonya shook her head. The wind gusted again; once more the lights flickered and the generator burped in its shed behind the house.
‘What about a broom?’
‘Oh, yes, sir.’
‘Fetch it, please.’
Tonya left. There was silence except for the wind. Kat tried to think of something to say and couldn’t. Droplets of clear perspiration were trickling down Newsome’s narrow cheeks, which had also been scarred in the accident. He had rolled and rolled, while the wreckage of the Gulfstream burned in the rain behind him. I never said he wasn’t in pain, she told herself. Just that he could manage it, if he’d only muster half the will he showed during the years he spent building his empire.
But what if she was wrong?
That still doesn’t mean there’s some sort of living tennis ball inside him, sucking his pain the way a vampire sucks blood.
There were no vampires, and no gods of agony … but when the wind blew hard enough to make the big house shiver in its bones, such ideas almost seemed plausible.
Tonya came back with a broom that looked like it had never swept so much as a single pile of floor-dirt into a dustpan. The bristles were bright blue nylon. The handle was painted wood, about four feet long. She held it up doubtfully. ‘This what you want?’
‘I think it will do,’ Rideout said, although to Kat he didn’t sound entirely sure. It occurred to her that Newsome might not be the only one in this room who had slipped a few cogs lately. ‘I think you’d better give it to our sceptical nurse. No offence to you, Mrs Marsden, but younger folks have quicker reflexes.’
Looking not offended in the slightest – looking relieved, in fact – Tonya held out the broom. Melissa took it and handed it to Kat.
‘What am I supposed to do with it?’ Kat asked. ‘Ride it?’
Rideout smiled, briefly showing the stained and eroded pegs of his teeth. ‘You’ll know when the time comes, if you’ve ever had a bat or raccoon in the room with you. Just remember: first the bristles. Then the stick.’
‘To finish it off, I suppose. Then you put it in the specimen bottle.’
‘As you say.’
‘So you can put it on a shelf somewhere with the rest of your dead gods, I suppose.’
He smiled without humour. ‘Hand the spray-can to Mr Jensen, please.’
Kat did so. Melissa asked, ‘What do I do?’
‘Watch. And pray, if you know how. On my behalf, as well as Mr Newsome’s. For my heart to be strong.’
Kat, who saw a fake heart attack coming, said nothing. She simply moved away from the bed, holding the handle of the broom in both hands. Rideout sat down beside Newsome with a grimace. His knees popped like pistol-shots. ‘You, Mr Jensen.’
‘Yes?’
‘You’ll have time – it will be stunned – but be quick, just the same. As quick as you were on the football field, all right?’
‘You want me to Mace it?’
Rideout once more flashed his brief smile, but now there was sweat on his brow as well as his client’s. ‘It’s not Mace – that is illegal where I come from – but that’s the idea, yes. Now I’d like silence, please.’
‘Wait a minute.’ Kat propped the broom against the bed and ran her hands first up Rideout’s left arm, then his right. She felt only plain cotton cloth and the man’s scrawny flesh beneath.
‘Nothing up my sleeve, Miss Kat, I promise you.’
‘Hurry up,’ Newsome said. ‘This is bad. It always is, but the goddam stormy weather makes it worse.’
‘Hush,’ Rideout said. ‘All of you, hush.’
They hushed. Rideout closed his eyes. His lips moved silently. Twenty seconds ticked past on Kat’s watch, then thirty. Her hands were damp with perspiration. She wiped them one at a time on her sweater, then took hold of the broom again. We look like people gathered at a deathbed, she thought.
Outside, the wind howled along the gutters.
Rideout said, ‘For Jesus’ sake I pray,’ then opened his eyes and leaned close to Newsome.
‘God, there is an evil outsider in this man. An outsider feeding on his flesh and bones. Help me cast it out, as Your Son cast out the demons from the possessed man of the Gadarenes. Help me speak to the little green god of agony inside Andrew Newsome in your own voice of command.’
He leaned closer. He curled the long fingers of one arthritis-swollen hand around the base of Newsome’s throat, as if he intended to strangle him. He leaned closer still, and inserted the first two fingers of his other hand into the billionaire’s mouth. He curled them, and pulled down the jaw.
‘Come out,’ he said. He had spoken of command, but his voice was soft. Silky. Almost cajoling. It made the skin on Kat’s back and arms prickle. ‘Come out in the name of Jesus. Come out in the names of all the saints and martyrs. Come out in the name of God, who gave you leave to enter and now commands
you to leave. Come out into the light. Leave off your meal and come out.’
There was nothing. He began again.
‘Come out in the name of Jesus. Come out in the names of the saints and martyrs.’ His hand flexed slightly, and Newsome’s breath began to rasp. ‘No, don’t go deeper. You can’t hide, thing of darkness. Come out into the light. Jesus commands you. The saints and martyrs command you. God commands you to leave your meal and come out.’
A cold hand gripped Kat’s upper arm and she almost screamed. It was Melissa. Her eyes were huge. Her mouth hung open. In Kat’s ear, the housekeeper’s whisper was as harsh as bristles. ‘Look.’
A bulge like a goitre had appeared in Newsome’s throat just above Rideout’s loosely grasping hand. It began to move slowly mouthwards. Kat had never seen anything like it in her life.
‘That’s right,’ Rideout almost crooned. His face was streaming with sweat; the collar of his shirt had gone limp and dark. ‘Come out. Come out into the light. You’ve done your feeding, thing of darkness.’
The wind rose to a scream. Rain that was now half-sleet blasted the windows like shrapnel. The lights flickered and the house creaked.
‘The God that let you in commands you to leave. Jesus commands you to leave. All the saints and martyrs—’
He let go of Newsome’s mouth, pulling his hand back the way a man does when he’s touched something hot. But Newsome’s mouth stayed open. More: it began to widen, first into a gape and then into a soundless howl. His eyes rolled back in his head and his feet began to jitter. His urine let go and the sheet over his crotch went as dark as Rideout’s collar.
‘Stop,’ Kat said, starting forward. ‘He’s having a seizure. You have to st—’
Jensen yanked her back. She turned to him and saw his normally ruddy face had gone as pale as a linen napkin.
Newsome’s jaw had dropped all the way to his breastbone. The lower half of his face disappeared into a mighty yawn. Kat heard temporomandibular tendons creak as knee-tendons did during strenuous physical therapy: a sound like dirty hinges. The lights in the room stuttered off, on, off, then on again.