by Stephen King
What mattered was they were never getting out. He was safe.
That was what he thought then. Of course, he also thought he would never take a drink, not after seeing what it had done to his father.
Sometimes we just get it wrong.
RATTLESNAKE
1
Her name was Andrea Steiner, and she liked movies but she didn't like men. This wasn't surprising, since her father had raped her for the first time when she was eight. He had gone on raping her for that same number of years. Then she had put a stop to it, first popping his balls, one after the other, with one of her mother's knitting needles, and then putting that same needle, red and dripping, in her rapist-sire's left eyesocket. The balls had been easy, because he was sleeping, but the pain had been enough to wake him in spite of her special talent. She was a big girl, though, and he was drunk. She had been able to hold him down with her body just long enough to administer the coup de grace.
Now she had years eight times four, she was a wanderer on the face of America, and an ex-actor had replaced the peanut farmer in the White House. The new fellow had an actor's unlikely black hair and an actor's charming, untrustworthy smile. Andi had seen one of his movies on TV. In it, the man who would be president played a guy who lost his legs when a train ran over them. She liked the idea of a man without legs; a man without legs couldn't chase you down and rape you.
Movies, they were the thing. Movies took you away. You could count on popcorn and happy endings. You got a man to go with you, that way it was a date and he paid. This movie was a good one, with fighting and kissing and loud music. It was called Raiders of the Lost Ark. Her current date had his hand under her skirt, high up on her bare thigh, but that was all right; a hand wasn't a prick. She had met him in a bar. She met most of the men she went on dates with in bars. He bought her a drink, but a free drink wasn't a date; it was just a pickup.
What's this about? he'd asked her, running the tip of his finger over her upper left arm. She was wearing a sleeveless blouse, so the tattoo showed. She liked the tattoo to show when she was out looking for a date. She wanted men to see it. They thought it was kinky. She had gotten it in San Diego the year after she killed her father.
It's a snake, she said. A rattler. Don't you see the fangs?
Of course he did. They were big fangs, out of all proportion to the head. A drop of poison hung from one.
He was a businessman type in an expensive suit, with lots of combed-back presidential hair and the afternoon off from whatever paper-pushing crap he did for work. His hair was mostly white instead of black and he looked about sixty. Close to twice her age. But that didn't matter to men. He wouldn't have cared if she was sixteen instead of thirty-two. Or eight. She remembered something her father had said once: If they're old enough to pee, they're old enough for me.
Of course I see them, the man who was now sitting beside her had said, but what does it mean?
Maybe you'll find out, Andi replied. She touched her upper lip with her tongue. I have another tattoo. Somewhere else.
Can I see it?
Maybe. Do you like movies?
He had frowned. What do you mean?
You want to date me, don't you?
He knew what that meant--or what it was supposed to mean. There were other girls in this place, and when they spoke of dates, they meant one thing. But it was not what Andi meant.
Sure. You're cute.
Then take me on a date. A real date. Raiders of the Lost Ark is playing at the Rialto.
I was thinking more of that little hotel two blocks down, darlin. A room with a wetbar and a balcony, how does that sound?
She had put her lips close to his ear and let her breasts press against his arm. Maybe later. Take me to the movies first. Pay my way and buy me popcorn. The dark makes me amorous.
And here they were, with Harrison Ford on the screen, big as a skyscraper and snapping a bullwhip in the desert dust. The old guy with the presidential hair had his hand under her skirt but she had a tub of popcorn placed firmly on her lap, making sure he could get most of the way down the third base line but not quite to home plate. He was trying to go higher, which was annoying because she wanted to see the end of the movie and find out what was in the Lost Ark. So . . .
2
At 2 p.m. on a weekday, the movie theater was almost deserted, but three people sat two rows back from Andi Steiner and her date. Two men, one quite old and one appearing on the edge of middle age (but appearances could be deceiving), flanked a woman of startling beauty. Her cheekbones were high, her eyes were gray, her complexion creamy. Her masses of black hair were tied back with a broad velvet ribbon. Usually she wore a hat--an old and battered tophat--but she had left it in her motorhome this day. You didn't wear a tall topper in a movie theater. Her name was Rose O'Hara, but the nomadic family she traveled with called her Rose the Hat.
The man edging into middle age was Barry Smith. Although one hundred percent Caucasian, he was known in this same family as Barry the Chink, because of his slightly upturned eyes.
"Now watch this," he said. "It's interesting."
"The movie's interesting," the old man--Grampa Flick--grunted. But that was just his usual contrariness. He was also watching the couple two rows down.
"It better be interesting," Rose said, "because the woman's not all that steamy. A little, but--"
"There she goes, there she goes," Barry said as Andi leaned over and put her lips to her date's ear. Barry was grinning, the box of gummy bears in his hand forgotten. "I've watched her do it three times and I still get a kick out of it."
3
Mr. Businessman's ear was filled with a thatch of wiry white hairs and clotted with wax the color of shit, but Andi didn't let that stop her; she wanted to blow this town and her finances were at a dangerously low ebb. "Aren't you tired?" she whispered in the disgusting ear. "Don't you want to go to sleep?"
The man's head immediately dropped onto his chest and he began to snore. Andi reached under her skirt, plucked up the relaxing hand, and placed it on the armrest. Then she reached into Mr. Businessman's expensive-looking suitcoat and began to rummage. His wallet was in the inside left pocket. That was good. She wouldn't have to make him get up off his fat ass. Once they were asleep, moving them could be tricky.
She opened the wallet, tossed the credit cards on the floor, and looked for a few moments at the pictures--Mr. Businessman with a bunch of other overweight Mr. Businessmen on the golf course; Mr. Businessman with his wife; a much younger Mr. Businessman standing in front of a Christmas tree with his son and two daughters. The daughters were wearing Santa hats and matching dresses. He probably hadn't been raping them, but it was not out of the question. Men would rape when they could get away with it, this she had learned. At her father's knee, so to speak.
There was over two hundred dollars in the bill compartment. She had been hoping for even more--the bar where she had met him catered to a better class of whore than those out by the airport--but it wasn't bad for a Thursday matinee, and there were always men who wanted to take a good-looking girl to the movies, where a little heavy petting would only be the appetizer. Or so they hoped.
4
"Okay," Rose murmured, and started to get up. "I'm convinced. Let's give it a shot."
But Barry put a hand on her arm, restraining her. "No, wait. Watch. This is the best part."
5
Andi leaned close to the disgusting ear again and whispered, "Sleep deeper. As deep as you can. The pain you feel will only be a dream." She opened her purse and took out a pearl-handled knife. It was small, but the blade was razor-sharp. "What will the pain be?"
"Only a dream," Mr. Businessman muttered into the knot of his tie.
"That's right, sweetie." She put an arm around him and quickly slashed double Vs into his right cheek--a cheek so fat it would soon be a jowl. She took a moment to admire her work in the chancy light of the projector's colored dream-beam. Then the blood sheeted down. He would wake up with
his face on fire, the right arm of his expensive suitcoat drenched, and in need of an emergency room.
And how will you explain it to your wife? You'll think of something, I'm sure. But unless you have plastic surgery, you'll see my marks every time you look in the mirror. And every time you go looking for a little strange in one of the bars, you'll remember how you got bitten by a rattlesnake. One in a blue skirt and a white sleeveless blouse.
She tucked the two fifties and five twenties into her purse, clicked it shut, and was about to get up when a hand fell on her shoulder and a woman murmured in her ear. "Hello, dear. You can see the rest of the movie another time. Right now you're coming with us."
Andi tried to turn, but hands seized her head. The terrible thing about them was that they were inside.
After that--until she found herself in Rose's EarthCruiser in a going-to-seed campground on the outskirts of this Midwestern city--all was darkness.
6
When she woke up, Rose gave her a cup of tea and talked to her for a long time. Andi heard everything, but most of her attention was taken up by the woman who had abducted her. She was a presence, and that was putting it mildly. Rose the Hat was six feet tall, with long legs in tapered white slacks and high breasts inside a t-shirt branded with the UNICEF logo and motto: Whatever It Takes To Save a Child. Her face was that of a calm queen, serene and untroubled. Her hair, now unbound, tumbled halfway down her back. The scuffed tophat cocked on her head was jarring, but otherwise she was the most beautiful woman Andi Steiner had ever seen.
"Do you understand what I've been telling you? I'm giving you an opportunity here, Andi, and you should not take it lightly. It's been twenty years or more since we've offered anyone what I'm offering you."
"And if I say no? What then? Do you kill me? And take this . . ." What had she called it? "This steam?"
Rose smiled. Her lips were rich and coral pink. Andi, who considered herself asexual, nonetheless wondered what that lipstick would taste like.
"You don't have enough steam to bother with, dear, and what you do have would be far from yummy. It would taste the way the meat from a tough old cow tastes to a rube."
"To a what?"
"Never mind, just listen. We won't kill you. What we'll do if you say no is to wipe out all memory of this little conversation. You will find yourself on the side of the road outside some nothing town--Topeka, maybe, or Fargo--with no money, no identification, and no memory of how you got there. The last thing you'll remember is going into that movie theater with the man you robbed and mutilated."
"He deserved to be mutilated!" Andi spat out.
Rose stood on her tiptoes and stretched, her fingers touching the roof of the RV. "That's your business, honeydoll, I'm not your psychiatrist." She wasn't wearing a bra; Andi could see the shifting punctuation marks of her nipples against her shirt. "But here's something to consider: we'll take your talent as well as your money and your no doubt bogus identification. The next time you suggest that a man go to sleep in a darkened movie theater, he'll turn to you and ask what the fuck you're talking about."
Andi felt a cold trickle of fear. "You can't do that." But she remembered the terribly strong hands that had reached inside her brain and felt quite sure this woman could. She might need a little help from her friends, the ones in the RVs and motorhomes gathered around this one like piglets at a sow's teats, but oh yes--she could.
Rose ignored this. "How old are you, dear?"
"Twenty-eight." She had been shading her age since hitting the big three-oh.
Rose looked at her, smiling, saying nothing. Andi met those beautiful gray eyes for five seconds, then had to drop her gaze. But what her eyes fell upon when she did were those smooth breasts, unharnessed but with no sign of a sag. And when she looked up again, her eyes only got as far as the woman's lips. Those coral-pink lips.
"You're thirty-two," Rose said. "Oh, it only shows a little--because you've led a hard life. A life on the run. But you're still pretty. Stay with us, live with us, and ten years from now you really will be twenty-eight."
"That's impossible."
Rose smiled. "A hundred years from now, you'll look and feel thirty-five. Until you take steam, that is. Then you'll be twenty-eight again, only you'll feel ten years younger. And you'll take steam often. Live long, stay young, and eat well: those are the things I'm offering. How do they sound?"
"Too good to be true," Andi said. "Like those ads about how you can get life insurance for ten dollars."
She wasn't entirely wrong. Rose hadn't told any lies (at least not yet), but there were things she wasn't saying. Like how steam was sometimes in short supply. Like how not everyone lived through the Turning. Rose judged this one might, and Walnut, the True's jackleg doctor, had cautiously concurred, but nothing was sure.
"And you and your friends call yourself--?"
"They're not my friends, they're my family. We're the True Knot." Rose laced her fingers together and held them in front of Andi's face. "And what's tied can never be untied. You need to understand that."
Andi, who already knew that a girl who has been raped can never be unraped, understood perfectly.
"Do I really have any other choice?"
Rose shrugged. "Only bad ones, dear. But it's better if you want it. It will make the Turning easier."
"Does it hurt? This Turning?"
Rose smiled and told the first outright lie. "Not at all."
7
A summer night on the outskirts of a Midwestern city.
Somewhere people were watching Harrison Ford snap his bullwhip; somewhere the Actor President was no doubt smiling his untrustworthy smile; here, in this campground, Andi Steiner was lying on a discount-store lawn recliner, bathed in the headlights of Rose's EarthCruiser and someone else's Winnebago. Rose had explained to her that, while the True Knot owned several campgrounds, this wasn't one of them. But their advance man was able to four-wall places like this, businesses tottering on the edge of insolvency. America was suffering a recession, but for the True, money was not a problem.
"Who is this advance man?" Andi had asked.
"Oh, he's a very winning fellow," Rose had said, smiling. "Able to charm the birdies down from the trees. You'll meet him soon."
"Is he your special guy?"
Rose had laughed at that and caressed Andi's cheek. The touch of her fingers caused a hot little worm of excitement in Andi's stomach. Crazy, but there it was. "You've got a twinkle, don't you? I think you'll be fine."
Maybe, but as she lay here, Andi was no longer excited, only scared. News stories slipped through her mind, ones about bodies found in ditches, bodies found in wooded clearings, bodies found at the bottom of dry wells. Women and girls. Almost always women and girls. It wasn't Rose who scared her--not exactly--and there were other women here, but there were also men.
Rose knelt beside her. The glare of the headlights should have turned her face into a harsh and ugly landscape of blacks and whites, but the opposite was true: it only made her more beautiful. Once again she caressed Andi's cheek. "No fear," she said. "No fear."
She turned to one of the other women, a pallidly pretty creature Rose called Silent Sarey, and nodded. Sarey nodded back and went into Rose's monster RV. The others, meanwhile, began to form a circle around the lawn recliner. Andi didn't like that. There was something sacrificial about it.
"No fear. Soon you'll be one of us, Andi. One with us."
Unless, Rose thought, you cycle out. In which case, we'll just burn your clothes in the incinerator behind the comfort stations and move on tomorrow. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
But she hoped that wouldn't happen. She liked this one, and a sleeper talent would come in handy.
Sarey returned with a steel canister that looked like a thermos bottle. She handed it to Rose, who removed the red cap. Beneath was a nozzle and a valve. To Andi the canister looked like an unlabeled can of bug spray. She thought about bolting up from the recliner and running for it, then rememb
ered the movie theater. The hands that had reached inside her head, holding her in place.
"Grampa Flick?" Rose asked. "Will you lead us?"
"Happy to." It was the old man from the theater. Tonight he was wearing baggy pink Bermuda shorts, white socks that climbed all the way up his scrawny shins to his knees, and Jesus sandals. To Andi he looked like Grandpa Walton after two years in a concentration camp. He raised his hands, and the rest raised theirs with him. Linked that way and silhouetted in the crisscrossing headlight beams, they looked like a chain of weird paperdolls.
"We are the True Knot," he said. The voice coming from that sunken chest no longer trembled; it was the deep and resonant voice of a much younger and stronger man.
"We are the True Knot," they responded. "What is tied may never be untied."
"Here is a woman," Grampa Flick said. "Would she join us? Would she tie her life to our life and be one with us?"
"Say yes," Rose said.
"Y-Yes," Andi managed. Her heart was no longer beating; it was thrumming like a wire.
Rose turned the valve on her canister. There was a small, rueful sigh, and a puff of silver mist escaped. Instead of dissipating on the light evening breeze, it hung just above the canister until Rose leaned forward, pursed those fascinating coral lips, and blew gently. The puff of mist--looking a bit like a comic-strip dialogue balloon without any words in it--drifted until it hovered above Andi's upturned face and wide eyes.
"We are the True Knot, and we endure," Grampa Flick proclaimed.
"Sabbatha hanti," the others responded.
The mist began to descend, very slowly.
"We are the chosen ones."
"Lodsam hanti," they responded.
"Breathe deep," Rose said, and kissed Andi softly on the cheek. "I'll see you on the other side."
Maybe.
"We are the fortunate ones."
"Cahanna risone hanti."
