Later

by Stephen King

  I thought I wouldn’t ask him anything if I ran across him. I thought I would just punch him in the mouth.

  “On the other hand, maybe it came from nowhere. I grew up in this little New Jersey town and there was a family down the street from us, the Joneses. Husband, wife, and five kids in this little shacky trailer. The parents were dumb as stone boats and so were four of the kids. The fifth was a fucking genius. Taught himself the guitar at six, skipped two grades, went to high school at twelve. Where did that come from? You tell me.”

  “Maybe Mrs. Jones had sex with the mailman,” I said. This was a line I’d heard at school. It made Liz laugh.

  “You’re a hot sketch, Jamie. I wish we could still be friends.”

  “Then maybe you should have acted like one,” I said.

  59

  The tar ended abruptly, but the dirt beyond was actually better: hard-packed, oiled down, smooth. There was a big orange sign that said PRIVATE ROAD NO TRESPASSING.

  “What if there are guys there?” I asked. “You know, like bodyguards?”

  “If there were, they really would be guarding a body. But the body’s gone, and the guy he had minding the gate will also be gone. There was no one else except for the gardener and the housekeeper. If you’re imagining some action movie scenario with men in black suits and sunglasses and semi-autos guarding the kingpin, forget about it. The guy at the gate was the only one who was armed, and even if Teddy still happens to be there, he knows me.”

  “What about Mr. Marsden’s wife?”

  “No wife. She left five years ago.” Liz snapped her fingers. “Gone with the wind. Poof.”

  We swung around another turn. A mountain all shaggy with fir trees loomed ahead, blotting out the western half of the sky. The sun shone through a valley notch but would soon be gone. In front of us was a gate made out of iron stakes. Closed. There was an intercom and a keypad on one side of it. On the other, inside the gate, was a little house, presumably where the gatekeeper spent his time.

  Liz stopped, turned off the car, and pocketed the keys. “Sit still, Jamie. This will be over before you know it.”

  Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were bright. A trickle of blood ran from one of her nostrils and she wiped it away. She got out and went to the intercom, but the car windows were closed and I couldn’t tell what she was saying. Then she went to the gatehouse side and this time I could hear her, because she raised her voice. “Teddy? Are you in there? It’s your buddy Liz. Hoping to pay my respects, but I need to know where!”

  There was no answer and no one came out. Liz walked back to the other side of the gate. She took a piece of paper from her back pocket, consulted it, then punched some numbers into the keypad. The gate trundled slowly open. She came back to the car, smiling. “Looks like we’ve got the place to ourselves, Jamie.”

  She drove through. The driveway was tar, smooth as glass. There was another S-curve, and as Liz piloted through it, electric torches lit up on either side of the driveway. Later on I found out you call those kind of lights flambeaux. Or maybe that’s only for torches like the mob waves when they’re storming the castle in the old Frankenstein movies.

  “Pretty,” I said.

  “Yeah, but look at that fucking thing, Jamie!”

  On the other side of the S, Marsden’s house came into view. It was like one of those Hollywood Hills mansions you see in the movies: big and jutting out over the drop. The side facing us was all glass. I imagined Marsden drinking his morning coffee and watching the sun rise. I bet he could see all the way to Poughkeepsie, maybe even beyond. On the other hand…a view of Poughkeepsie? Maybe not one to kill for.

  “The house that heroin built.” Liz sounded vicious. “All the bells and whistles, plus a Mercedes and a Boxster in the garage. The stuff I lost my job for.”

  I thought of saying you had a choice, which is what my mom always said to me when I screwed up, but kept my mouth shut. She was wired like one of Thumper’s bombs, and I didn’t want to set her off.

  There was one more curve before we came to the paved yard in front of the house. Liz drove around it and I saw a man standing in front of the double garage where Marsden’s fancy cars were (they sure hadn’t taken Donnie Bigs to the morgue in his Boxster). I opened my mouth to say it must be Teddy, the gatekeeper—the guy was thin, so it sure wasn’t Marsden—but then I saw his mouth was gone.

  “The Boxster’s in there?” I asked, hoping my voice was more or less normal. I pointed at the garage and the man standing in front of it.

  She took a look. “Yup, but if you were hoping for a ride, or even a look, you’re going to be disappointed. We must be about our business.”

  She didn’t see him. Only I saw him. And given the red hole where his mouth had been, he hadn’t died a natural death.

  Like I said, this is a horror story.

  60

  Liz killed the engine and got out. She saw me still sitting in the passenger seat, my feet planted amid a bunch of snack wrappers, and gave me a shake. “Come on, Jamie. Time to do your job. Then you’re free.”

  I got out and followed her to the front door. On the way I snuck another glance at the man in front of the double garage. He must have known I was seeing him, because he raised a hand. I checked to make sure Liz wasn’t looking at me and lifted my own in return.

  Slate steps led to a tall wooden door with a lion’s head knocker. Liz didn’t bother with that, just took the piece of paper out of her pocket and punched more numbers into a keypad. The red light on it turned green and there was a thud as the door unlocked.

  Had Marsden given those numbers to a lowly transporter? I didn’t think so, and I didn’t think whoever she’d heard about the pills from would have known them. I didn’t like that she had them, and for the first time I thought of Therriault…or the thing that now lived in what remained of him. I had bested that thing in the Ritual of Chüd, and maybe it would come if I called, always supposing it had to honor the deal we’d made. But that was yet to be proven. I would only do it as a last resort in any case, because I was terrified of it.

  “Go on in.” Liz had put the piece of paper in her back pocket, and the hand that had been holding it went into the pocket of her duffle coat. I took one more glance at the man—Teddy, I assumed—standing by the garage. I looked at the bloody hole where his mouth had been and thought of the smears on Liz’s sweatshirt. Maybe those had come from wiping her nose.

  Or not.

  “I said go in.” Not an invitation.

  I opened the door. There was no foyer or entrance hall, just a huge main room. In the middle was a sunken area furnished with couches and chairs. I later found out that sort of thing is called a conversation pit. There was more expensive-looking furniture placed around it (maybe so folks could spectate on the conversations going on below), a bar that looked like it was on wheels, and stuff on the walls. I say stuff because it didn’t look like art to me, just a bunch of splats and squiggles, but the splats were framed so I guess it was art to Marsden. There was a chandelier over the conversation pit that looked like it weighed at least five hundred pounds, and I wouldn’t have wanted to sit under it. Beyond the conversation pit, on the far side of the room, was a swooping double staircase. The only one remotely like it I’d seen in real life, as opposed to in the movies or on TV, was at the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue.

  “Quite the joint, isn’t it?” Liz said. She shut the door—THUD—and bammed the heel of her hand on the bank of light switches beside it. More flambeaux came on, plus the chandelier. It was a beautiful thing and cast a beautiful light, but I was in no mood to enjoy it. I was becoming more and more sure that Liz had already been here, and shot Teddy before she came to get me.

  She won’t have to shoot me if she doesn’t know I saw him, I told myself, and although this made a degree of sense, I knew I couldn’t trust logic to get me through this. She was as high as a kite, practically vibrating. I thought again of Thumper’s bombs.

  “You didn’t ask me,�
� I said.

  “Ask you what?”

  “If he’s here.”

  “Well, is he?” She didn’t ask with any real concern in her voice, more like it was for form’s sake. What was up with that?

  “No,” I said.

  She didn’t seem upset like she had been when we were hunting for Therriault. “Let’s check the second floor. Maybe he’s in the master bedroom, recalling all the happy times he spent there boinking his whores. There were many after Madeline left. Probably before, too.”

  “I don’t want to go up there.”

  “Why not? The place isn’t haunted, Jamie.”

  “It is if he’s up there.”

  She considered this, then laughed. Her hand was still in the pocket of her jacket. “I suppose you have a point, but since it’s him we’re looking for, go on up. Ándale, ándale.”

  I gestured to the hall leading away from the right side of the great room. “Maybe he’s in the kitchen.”

  “Getting himself a snack? I don’t think so. I think he’s upstairs. Go on.”

  I thought about arguing some more, or point-blank refusing, but then her hand might come out of her jacket pocket and I had a pretty good idea of what would be in it. So I started up the right-hand staircase. The rail was cloudy green glass, smooth and cool. The steps were made out of green stone. There were forty-seven steps in all, I counted, and each one was probably worth the price of a Kia.

  On the wall at the top of this set of stairs was a gilt-framed mirror that had to be seven feet tall. There was one just like it on the other side. I watched myself rise into the mirror with Liz behind me, looking over my shoulder.

  “Your nose,” I said.

  “I see it.” Both of her nostrils were bleeding now. She wiped her nose, then wiped her hand on her sweatshirt. “It’s stress. Stress makes it happen because all the capillaries in there are fragile. Once we find Marsden and he tells us where the pills are, the stress will be relieved.”

  Did it bleed when you shot Teddy? I wondered. How stressful was that, Liz?

  The hall at the top was actually a circular balcony, almost a catwalk, with a waist-high rail. Looking over it made my stomach feel funny. If you fell—or got pushed—you’d take a short ride straight down to the middle of the conversation pit, where the colorful rug wouldn’t do much to cushion you from the stone floor beneath.

  “Left turn, Jamie.”

  Which meant away from the balcony, and that was good. We went down a long hall with all the doors on the left, so whoever was in those rooms could dig the view. The only door that was open was halfway down. It was a circular library, every shelf crammed with books. My mother would have swooned with delight. There were chairs and a sofa in front of the only wall without books. That wall was a window, of course, curved glass looking out on a landscape that was now turning purple with dusk. I could see the nest of lights that must have been the town of Renfield, and I would have given almost anything to be there.

  Liz didn’t ask if Marsden was in the library, either. Didn’t even give it a glance. We came to the end of the hall and she used the hand not in her jacket pocket to point at the last door. “I’m pretty sure he’s in there. Open it.”

  I did, and sure enough, Donald Marsden was there, sprawled on a bed so big it looked like a triple, maybe even a quadruple, instead of a double. He was a quadruple himself, Liz had been right about that. To my child’s eyes, the bulk of him was almost hallucinatory. A good suit might have disguised at least some of his flab, but he wasn’t wearing a suit. He was wearing a pair of gigantic boxer shorts and nothing else. His immense girth, jumbo man-breasts, and flabby arms were crisscrossed with shallow cuts. His full moon of a face was bruised and one eye was swollen shut. There was a weird thing stuck in his mouth that I later learned (on one of those websites you don’t want your mom to know about) was a ball-gag. His wrists had been handcuffed to the top bedposts. Liz must have only brought two pairs of cuffs, because his ankles had been duct-taped to the bottom posts. She must have used a roll for each one.

  “Behold the man of the house,” Liz said.

  His good eye blinked. You would say I should have known from the cuffs and the duct tape. I should have known because some of the cuts were still oozing. But I didn’t. I was in shock and I didn’t. Not until that single blink.

  “He’s alive!”

  “I can fix that,” Liz said. She took the gun out of her coat pocket and shot him in the head.

  61

  Blood and brains spattered the wall behind him. I screamed and ran out of the room, down the stairs, out the door, past Teddy, and down the hill. I ran all the way to Renfield. All of this in one second. Then Liz wrapped her arms around me.

  “Steady, kiddo. Stead—”

  I punched her in the stomach and heard her woof out a surprised breath. Then I was whirled and my arm was twisted up behind me. It hurt like blue fuck and I screamed some more. All of a sudden my feet were no longer holding me up. She’d swept them right out from under me and I went on my knees, yelling my head off with my arm twisted up so high that my wrist was touching my shoulderblade.

  “Shut up!” Her voice, little more than a growl, was in my ear. This was the woman who had once played Matchbox cars with me, both of us down on our knees while my mother stirred spaghetti sauce in the kitchen, listening to oldies on Pandora. “Quit that squalling and I’ll let you go!”

  I did and she did. Now I was on my hands and knees, staring down at the rug, shaking all over.

  “On your feet, Jamie.”

  I managed to do it, but I kept looking at the rug. I didn’t want to look at the fat man with the top of his head gone.

  “Is he here?”

  I stared at the rug and said nothing. My hair was in my eyes. My shoulder throbbed.

  “Is he here? Look around!”

  I raised my head, hearing my neck creak as I did it. Instead of looking directly at Marsden—although I could still see him, he was too big to miss—I looked at the table beside his bed. There was a cluster of pill bottles on it. There was also a fat sandwich and a bottle of spring water.

  “Is he here?” She slapped me on the back of my head.

  I scoped the room. There was nobody but us and the fat man’s corpse. Now I’d seen two men shot in the head. Therriault had been bad, but at least I hadn’t had to watch him die.

  “No one,” I said.

  “Why not? Why isn’t he here?” She sounded frantic. I couldn’t think much then, I was too fucking terrified. It was only later, replaying that endless five minutes in Marsden’s room, that I realized she was doubting the whole thing. In spite of Regis Thomas and his book, in spite of the bomb in the supermarket, she was afraid I couldn’t see dead people at all, and she’d killed the only person who knew where that stash of pills was hidden.

  “I don’t know. I was never where someone actually died. Maybe…maybe it takes awhile. I don’t know, Liz.”

  “Okay,” she said. “We’ll wait.”

  “Not in here, okay? Please, Liz, not where I have to look at him.”

  “In the hall, then. If I let go of you, are you going to be good?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not going to try to run?”

  “No.”

  “You better not, I’d hate to shoot you in the foot or the leg. That’d be the end of your tennis career. Back out.”

  I backed out and she backed out with me, so she could block me off if I tried to make a break for it. When we were in the hall, she told me to look around again. I did. Marsden wasn’t there and I told her that.

  “Damn.” Then: “You saw the sandwich, didn’t you?”

  I nodded. A sandwich and a bottle of water for a man who was bound to his jumbo bed. Bound hand and foot.

  “He loved his food,” Liz said. “I ate with him in a restaurant once. He should have had a shovel instead of a fork and spoon. What a pig.”

  “Why would you leave him a sandwich he couldn’t eat?”

  �
��I wanted him to look at it, that’s why. Just look. All day, while I went to get you and bring you back. And believe me, a shot in the head is just what he deserved. Do you have any idea how many people he killed with his…his happy poison?”

  Who helped him? I thought, and of course didn’t say.

  “How long do you think he would have lived, anyway? Two years? Five? I’ve been in his bathroom, Jamie. He’s got a double-wide toilet seat!” She made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a snort of disgust. “Okay, let’s stroll down to the balcony. We’ll see if he’s in the great room. Slow.”

  I couldn’t have gone fast if I’d wanted to, because my thighs were trembling and my knees felt like jelly.

  “You know how I got the gate code? Marsden’s UPS man. Guy has a hell of a coke habit, I could have slept with his wife if I’d wanted to, he’d’ve been happy to supply her if I kept supplying him. The house code I got from Teddy.”

  “Before you killed him.”

  “What else was I supposed to do?” Like I was the dumbest kid in class. “He could identify me.”

  So can I, I thought, and that brought me back to the thing this lad—me—could whistle for. I’d have to do it, but I still didn’t want to. Because it might not work? Yeah, but not just that. Rub a magic lamp and get a genie, okay, good for you. Rub it and summon a demon—a deadlight—and God might know what would happen, but I didn’t.

  We reached the balcony with its low rail and high drop. I peered over.

  “Is he down there?”

  “No.”

  The gun prodded me in the small of my back. “Are you lying?”

  “No!”

  She gave a harsh sigh. “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to go.”

  “I don’t know how it’s supposed to go, Liz. For all I know, he could be outside talking with T—” I stopped.

  She took hold of my shoulder and turned me around. There was blood all over her upper lip now—her stress must have been very high—but she was smiling. “You saw Teddy?”