Gerald's Game

by Stephen King

  No, that's not true, a voice from the deeper ranges of her mind suddenly spoke up. This voice was both musical yet frighteningly powerful, like the cry of a whale. She started when she was only ten and a half. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he smelled blood, just like that dog out in the entry. Maybe it made him frantic.

  Shut up! Jessie cried. She felt suddenly frantic herself. Shut up, we don't talk about that!

  And speaking of smells, what's that other one? Ruth asked. Now the mental voice was harsh and eager ... the voice of a prospector who has finally stumbled onto a vein of ore he has long suspected but has never been able to find. That mineral smell, like salt and old pennies--

  We don't talk about that, I said!

  She lay on the coverlet, her muscles tense beneath her cold skin, both her captivity and her husband's death forgotten--at least for the time being--in the face of this new threat. She could feel Ruth, or some cut-off part of her for which Ruth spoke, debating whether or not to pursue the matter. When it decided not to (not directly, at least), both Jessie and Goodwife Burlingame breathed a sigh of relief.

  All right--let's talk about Nora instead, Ruth said. Nora, your therapist? Nora, your counsellor? The one you started to go see around the time you stopped painting because some of the paintings were scaring you? Which was also the time, coincidentally or not, when Gerald's sexual interest in you seemed to evaporate and you started sniffing the collars of his shirts for perfume? You remember Nora, don't you?

  Nora Callighan was a prying bitch! the Goodwife snarled.

  "No," Jessie muttered. 'She was well-intentioned, I don't doubt that a bit, she just always wanted to go one step too far. Ask one question too many."

  You said you liked her a lot. Didn't I hear you say that?

  "I want to stop thinking," Jessie said. Her voice was wavery and uncertain. "I especially want to stop hearing voices, and talking back to them, too. It's nuts."

  Well, you better listen just the same, Ruth said grimly, because you can't run away from this the way you ran away from Nora ... the way you ran away from me, for that matter.

  I never ran away from you, Ruth! Shocked denial, and not very convincing. She had done just that, of course. Had simply packed her bags and moved out of the cheesy but cheerful dorm suite she and Ruth shared. She hadn't done it because Ruth had started asking her too many of the wrong questions--questions about Jessie's childhood, questions about Dark Score Lake, questions about what might have happened there during the summer just after Jessie started to menstruate. No, only a bad friend would have moved out for such reasons. Jessie hadn't moved out because Ruth started asking questions; she moved out because Ruth wouldn't stop asking them when Jessie asked her to do so. That, in Jessie's opinion, made Ruth a bad friend. Ruth had seen the lines Jessie had drawn in the dust ... and had then deliberately stepped over them anyway. As Nora Callighan had done, years later.

  Besides, the idea of running away under these conditions was pretty ludicrous, wasn't it? She was, after all, handcuffed to the bed.

  Don't insult my intelligence, cutie-pie, Ruth said. Your mind isn't handcuffed to the bed, and we both know it. You can still run if you want to, but my advice--my strong advice--is don't you do it, because I'm the only chance you've got. If you just lie there pretending this is a bad dream you got from sleeping on your left side, you're going to die in handcuffs. Is that what you want? Is that your prize for living your whole life in handcuffs, ever since--

  "I will not think about that!" Jessie screamed at the empty room.

  For a moment Ruth was silent, but before Jessie could do more than begin to hope that she'd gone away, Ruth was back ... and back at her, worrying her like a terrier worrying a rag.

  Come on, Jess--you'd probably like to believe you're crazy rather than dig around in that old grave, but you're really not, you know. I'm you, the Goodwife's you ... we're all you, as a matter of fact. I have a pretty good idea of what happened that day at Dark Score when the rest of the family was gone, and the thing I'm really curious about doesn't have a lot to do with the events per se. What I'm really curious about is this: is there a part of you--one I don't know about--that wants to be sharing space with Gerald in that dog's guts come this time tomorrow? I only ask because that doesn't sound like loyalty to me; it sounds like lunacy.

  Tears were trickling down her cheeks again, but she didn't know if she was crying because of the possibility--finally articulated--that she actually could die here or because for the first time in at least four years she had come close to thinking about that other summer place, the one on Dark Score Lake, and about what happened there on the day when the sun went out.

  Once upon a time she had almost spilled that secret at a women's consciousness group ... back in the early seventies that had been, and of course attending that meeting had been her roomie's idea, but Jessie had gone along willingly, at least to begin with; it had seemed harmless enough, just another act in the amazing tie-dyed carnival that was college back then. For Jessie, those first two years of college--particularly with someone like Ruth Neary to tour her through the games, rides, and exhibits--had been for the most part quite wonderful, a time when fearlessness seemed usual and achievement inevitable. Those were the days when no dorm room was complete without a Peter Max poster and if you were tired of the Beatles--not that anybody was--you could slap on a little Hot Tuna or MC5. It had all been a little too bright to be real, like things seen through a fever which is not quite high enough to be life-threatening. In fact, those first two years had been a blast.

  The blast had ended with that first meeting of the women's consciousness group. In there, Jessie had discovered a ghastly gray world which seemed simultaneously to preview the adult future that lay ahead for her in the eighties and to whisper of gloomy childhood secrets that had been buried alive in the sixties ... but did not lie quiet there. There had been twenty women in the living room of the cottage attached to the Neuworth Interdenominational Chapel, some perched on the old sofa, others peering out of the shadows thrown by the wings of the vast and lumpy parsonage chairs, most sitting cross-legged on the floor in a rough circle --twenty women between the ages of eighteen and fortysomething. They had joined hands and shared a moment of silence at the beginning of the session. When that was over, Jessie had been assaulted by ghastly stories of rape, of incest, of physical torture. If she lived to be a hundred she would never forget the calm, pretty blonde girl who had pulled up her sweater to show the old scars of cigarette burns on the undersides of her breasts.

  That was when the carnival ended for Jessie Mahout. Ended? No, that wasn't right. It was as if she had been afforded a momentary glimpse behind the carnival; had been allowed to see the gray and empty fields of autumn that were the real truth: nothing but empty cigarette wrappers and used condoms and a few cheap broken prizes caught in the tall grass, waiting to either blow away or be covered by the winter snows. She saw that silent stupid sterile world waiting beyond the thin layer of patched canvas which was all that separated it from the razzle-dazzle brightness of the midway, the patter of the hucksters, and the glimmer-glamour of the rides, and it terrified her. To think that only this lay ahead for her, only this and nothing more, was awful; to think that it lay behind her as well, imperfectly hidden by the patched and tawdry canvas of her own doctored memories, was insupportable.

  After showing them the bottoms of her breasts, the pretty blonde girl had pulled her sweater back down and explained that she could say nothing to her parents about what her brother's friends had done to her on the weekend her parents had gone to Montreal because it might mean that what her brother had been doing to her off and on all during the last year would come out, and her parents would never have believed that.

  The blonde girl's voice was as calm as her face, her tone perfectly rational. When she finished there was a thunderstruck pause--a moment during which Jessie had felt something tearing loose inside her and had heard a hundred ghostly interior voices screaming in mingled
hope and terror--and then Ruth had spoken.

  "Why wouldn't they believe you?" she'd demanded. "Jesus, Liv--they burned you with live cigarettes! I mean, you had the burns as evidence! Why wouldn't they believe you? Didn't they love you?"

  Yes, Jessie thought. Yes, they loved her. But--

  "Yes," the blonde girl said. "They loved me. They still do. But they idolized my brother Barry."

  Sitting beside Ruth, the heel of one not-quite-steady hand resting against her forehead, Jessie remembered whispering, "Besides, it would have killed her."

  Ruth turned to her, began, "What--?" and the blonde girl, still not crying, still eerily calm, said: "Besides, finding out something like that would have killed my mother."

  And then Jessie had known she was going to explode if she didn't get out of there. So she had gotten up, springing out of her chair so fast she had almost knocked the ugly, bulky thing over. She had sprinted from the room, knowing they were all looking at her, not caring. What they thought didn't matter. What mattered was that the sun had gone out, the very sun itself, and if she told, her story would be disbelieved only if God was good. If God was in a bad mood, Jessie would be believed ... and even if it didn't kill her mother, it would blow the family apart like a stick of dynamite in a rotten pumpkin.

  So she had run out of the room and through the kitchen and would have belted right on through the back door, except the back door was locked. Ruth chased after her, calling for her to stop, Jessie, stop. She had, but only because that damned locked door made her. She'd put her face against the cold dark glass, actually considering--yes, for just a moment she had--slamming her head right through it and cutting her throat, anything to blot out that awful gray vision of the future ahead and the past behind, but in the end she had simply turned around and slid down to the floor, clasping her bare legs below the hem of the short skirt she'd been wearing and putting her forehead against her upraised knees and closing her eyes. Ruth sat down beside her and put an arm around her, rocking her back and forth, crooning to her, stroking her hair, encouraging her to give it up, get rid of it, sick it up, let it go.

  Now, lying here in the house on the shore of Kashwakamak Lake, she wondered what had happened to the tearless, eerily calm blonde girl who had told them about her brother Barry and Barry's friends--young men who had clearly felt a woman was just a life-support system for a cunt and that branding was a perfectly just punishment for a young woman who felt more or less okay about fucking her brother but not her brother's goodbuddies. More to the point, Jessie wondered what she had said to Ruth as they sat with their backs against the locked kitchen door and their arms around each other. The only thing she could remember for sure was something like "He never burned me, he never burned me, he never hurt me at all." But there must have been more to it than that, because the questions Ruth had refused to stop asking had all pointed clearly in just one direction: toward Dark Score Lake and the day the sun had gone out.

  She had finally left Ruth rather than tell ... just as she had left Nora rather than tell. She had run just as fast as her legs could carry her--Jessie Mahout Burlingame, also known as The Amazing Gingerbread Girl, the last wonder of a dubious age, survivor of the day the sun had gone out, now handcuffed to the bed and able to run no more.

  "Help me," she said to the empty bedroom. Now that she had remembered the blonde girl with the eerily calm face and voice and the stipple of old circular scars on her otherwise lovely breasts, Jessie could not get her out of her mind, nor the knowledge that it hadn't been calmness, not at all, but some fundamental disconnection from the terrible thing that had happened to her. Somehow the blonde girl's face became her face, and when Jessie spoke, she did so in the shaking, humbled voice of an atheist who has been stripped of everything but one final longshot prayer. "Please help me."

  It wasn't God who answered but the part of her which apparently could speak only while masquerading as Ruth Neary. The voice now sounded gentle ... but not very hopeful. I'll try, but you have to help me. I know you're willing to do painful things, but you may have to think painful thoughts, too. Are you ready for that?

  "This isn't about thinking," Jessie said shakily, and thought: So that's what Goodwife Burlingame sounds like out loud. "It's about ... well ... escaping."

  And you may have to muzzle her, Ruth said. She's a valid part of you, Jessie--of us--and not really a bad person, but she's been left to run the whole show for far too long, and in a situation like this, her way of dealing with the world is not much good. Do you want to argue the point?

  Jessie didn't want to argue that point or any other. She was too tired. The light falling through the west window was growing steadily hotter and redder as sunset approached. The wind gusted, sending leaves rattling along the lakeside deck, which was empty now; all the deck furniture had been stacked in the living room. The pines soughed; the back door banged; the dog paused, then resumed its noisome smacking and ripping and chewing.

  "I'm so thirsty," she said mournfully.

  Okay, then--that's where we ought to start.

  She turned her head the other way until she felt the last warmth of the sun on the left side of her neck and the damp hair stuck to her cheek, and then she opened her eyes again. She found herself staring directly at Gerald's glass of water, and her throat immediately sent out a parched, imperative cry.

  Let's begin this phase of operations by forgetting about the dog, Ruth said. The dog is just doing what it has to do to get along, and you've got to do the same.

  "I don't know if I can forget it," Jessie said.

  I think you can, toots--I really do. If you could sweep what happened on the day the sun went out under the rug, I guess you can sweep anything under the rug.

  For a moment she almost had it all, and understood she could have it all, if she really wanted to. The secret of that day had never been completely sunk in her subconscious, as such secrets were in the TV soap-operas and the movie melodramas; it had been buried in a shallow grave, at best. There had been some selective amnesia, but of a completely voluntary sort. If she wanted to remember what had happened on the day the sun had gone out, she thought she probably could.

  As if this idea had been an invitation, her mind's eye suddenly saw a vision of heartbreaking clarity: a pane of glass held in a pair of barbecue tongs. A hand wearing an oven-mitt was turning it this way and that in the smoke of a small sod fire.

  Jessie stiffened on the bed and willed the image away.

  Let's get one thing straight, she thought. She supposed it was the Ruth-voice she was speaking to, but wasn't completely sure; she wasn't really sure of anything anymore. I don't want to remember. Got it? The events of that day have nothing to do with the events of this one. They're apples and oranges. It's easy enough to understand the connections--two lakes, two summer houses, two cases of

  (secrets silence hurt harm)

  sexual hanky-panky--but remembering what happened in 1963 can't do a thing for me now except add to my general misery. So let's just drop that whole subject, okay? Let's forget Dark Score Lake.

  "What do you say, Ruth?" she asked in a low voice, and her gaze shifted to the batik butterfly across the room. For just a moment there was another image--a little girl, somebody's sweet little Punkin, smelling the sweet aroma of aftershave and looking up into the sky through a piece of smoked glass--and then it was mercifully gone.

  She looked at the butterfly for a few moments longer, wanting to make sure those old memories were going to stay gone, and then she looked back at Gerald's glass of water. Incredibly, there were still a few slivers of ice floating on top, although the darkening room continued to hold the heat of the afternoon sun and would for awhile longer.

  Jessie let her gaze drift down the glass, let it embrace those chilly bubbles of condensation standing on it. She couldn't actually see the coaster on which the glass stood--the shelf cut it off--but she didn't have to see it to visualize the dark, spreading ring of moisture forming on it as those cool beads of con
densate continued to trickle down the sides of the glass and pool around it at the bottom.

  Jessie's tongue slipped out and swiped across her upper lip, not imparting much moisture.

  I want a drink! the scared, demanding voice of the child--of somebody's sweet little Punkin--yelled. I want it and I want it right... NOW!

  But she couldn't reach the glass. It was a clear-cut case of so near and yet so far.

  Ruth: Don't give up so easy--if you could hit the goddam dog with an ashtray, tootsie, maybe you can get the glass. Maybe you can.

  Jessie raised her right hand again, straining as hard as her throbbing shoulder would allow, and still came up at least two and a half inches short. She swallowed, grimacing at the sandpapery jerk and clench of her throat.

  "See?" she asked. "Are you happy now?"

  Ruth didn't reply, but Goody did. She spoke up softly, almost apologetically, inside Jessie's head. She said get it, not reach it. They... they might not be the same thing. Goody laughed in an embarrassed who-am-I-to-stick-my-oar-in way, and Jessie had a moment to think again how surpassingly odd it was to feel a part of yourself laughing like that, as if it really were an entirely separate entity. If I had a few more voices, Jessie thought, we could have a goddam bridge tournament in here.

  She looked at the glass a moment longer, then let herself flop back down on the pillows so she could study the underside of the shelf. It wasn't attached to the wall, she saw; it lay on four steel brackets that looked like upside-down capital L's. And the shelf wasn't attached to them, either--she was sure of it. She remembered once when Gerald had been talking on the phone, and had absentmindedly attempted to lean on the shelf. Her end had started to come up, levitating like the end of a seesaw, and if Gerald hadn't snatched his hand away immediately, he would have flipped the shelf like a tiddlywink.