Rose Madder

by Stephen King

  The squabble of the birds--You did, No I didn't, Yes you did--started up again, and she observed twenty or thirty of the largest birds she had ever seen in her life lined up along the peak of the temple's roof. They were much too big to be crows, and after a moment she decided they were this world's version of buzzards or vultures. But where had they come from? And why were they here?

  Without realizing she was doing it until the infant squirmed and protested in her sleep, Rosie hugged the baby tighter to her breast as she gazed at the birds. They all took off at the same instant, their wings flapping like sheets on a clothesline. It was as if they had seen her looking at them and didn't like it. Most of them flew off to roost in the dead trees behind her, but several remained in the hazy sky overhead, circling like bad omens in a western movie.

  Where did they come from? What do they want?

  More questions to which Rosie had no answers. She pushed them away and crossed the stream on the stones. As she approached the temple, she saw a neglected but faintly visible path leading around its stone flank. Rosie took it without a single moment of interior debate, although she was naked and both sides of the path were lined with thorn-bushes. She walked carefully, turning sideways to keep her hip from being scratched, holding

  (Caroline)

  the baby up and out of thorns' way. Rosie took one or two swipes in spite of her care, but only one--across her badly used right thigh--was deep enough to draw blood.

  As she came around the corner of the temple and glanced up at the front, it seemed to her that the building had changed somehow, and that the change was so fundamental that she wasn't quite able to grasp it. She forgot the idea for a moment in her relief at seeing "Wendy" still standing beside the fallen pillar, but after she'd taken half a dozen steps toward the woman in the red dress, Rosie stopped and looked back, opening her eyes to the building, opening her mind to it.

  This time she saw the change at once, and a little grunt of surprise escaped her. The Temple of the Bull now looked stiff and unreal ... two-dimensional. It made Rosie think of a line of poetry she'd read back in high school, something about a painted ship upon a painted ocean. The odd, unsettling sense that the temple was out of perspective (or inhabiting some strange, non-Euclidean universe where all the laws of geometry were different) had departed, and the building's aura of menace had departed with it. Now its lines looked straight in all the places where one expected such a building to look straight; there were no sudden turns or jags in the architecture to trouble the eye. The building looked, in fact, like a painting rendered by an artist whose mediocre talent and run-of-the-mill romanticism have combined to create a piece of bad art--the sort of picture which always seems to end up gathering dust in a basement comer or on an attic shelf, along with old issues of the National Geographic and stacks of jigsaw puzzles with a piece or two missing.

  Or in the seldom-browsed third aisle of a pawnshop, perhaps.

  "Woman! You, woman!"

  She swung back toward "Wendy" and saw her beckoning impatiently.

  "Hurry up n get that baby over here! This ain't no tourist 'traction!"

  Rosie ignored her. She had risked her life for this child, and she didn't intend to be hurried. She folded back the blanket and looked at a body which was as naked and female as her own. That was where the resemblance ended, however. There were no scars on the child, no marks that looked like the fading teeth of old traps. There was not, as far as Rosie could see, so much as a single mole on that small and lovely body. She traced a finger slowly up the baby's entire length, from ball of ankle to ball of hip to ball of shoulder. Perfect.

  Yes, perfect. And now that you have risked your life for her, Rosie, now that you've saved her from the dark and the bull and God knows what else that might have been down there, do you intend to turn her over to these two women? Both have some sort of disease working on them, and the one up on the hill has a mental problem, as well. A serious mental problem. Do you intend to give this kid to them?

  "She be all right," the brown-skinned woman said. Rosie wheeled in the direction of the voice. "Wendy Yarrow" was now standing at her shoulder, and looking at Rosie with perfect understanding.

  "Yes," she said, nodding as if Rosie had spoken her doubts aloud. "I know what you're thinkin and I tell you it's all right. She mad, no doubt in the world 'bout that, but her madness don't extend to the child. She knows that although she bore it, this child ain't hers to keep, no more than it's yours to keep."

  Rosie glanced toward the hill, where she could just see the woman in the chiton, standing by the pony and waiting for the outcome.

  "What's her name?" she asked. "The baby's mother? Is it--"

  "Ne'mine," the brown woman in the red dress replied, cutting in quickly, as if to keep Rosie from speaking some word better left unsaid. "Her name don't matter. Her state o' mind does. She a mighty impatient lady these days, along with all her other woes. We best be goin up with no more jabber."

  Rosie said, "I'd made up my mind to call my baby Caroline. Norman said I could. He didn't really care one way or the other." She began to cry.

  "Seems like a nice enough name to me. A fine name. Don't you cry, now. Don't you carry on." She slipped an arm around Rosie's shoulders and they began walking up the hill. The grass whispered gently against Rosie's bare legs and tickled her knees. "Will you listen to a piece o' my advice, woman?"

  Rosie looked at her curiously.

  "I know advice is hard to take in matters o' sorrow, but think about my qualifications to give it: I was born in slavery, raised in chains, and ransomed to freedom by a woman who's not quite a goddess. Her." She pointed to the woman who stood silently watching and waiting for them. "She's drunk the waters of youth, and she made me drink, too. Now we go on together, and I don't know 'bout her, but sometimes when I look in the mirror I wish for wrinkles. I've buried my children, and their children, and their children's children into the fifth generation. I've seen wars come n go like waves on a beach that roll in n rub out the footprints and wash away the castles in the sand. I've seen bodies on fire and heads by the hundreds poked onto poles along the streets of the City of Lud, I've seen wise leaders assassinated and fools put up in their places, and still I live."

  She sighed deeply.

  "Still I live, and if there's anything that qualifies me to give advice, it's that. Will you hear it? Answer quick. It's not advice I'd have her overhear, and we're drawin close."

  "Yes, tell me," Rosie said.

  "It's best to be ruthless with the past. It ain't the blows we're dealt that matter, but the ones we survive. Now remember, for your sanity's sake if not your life's, don't look at her!"

  The woman in red spoke these last words in an emphatic little mutter. Less than a minute later, Rosie was once more standing in front of the blonde woman. She fixed her eyes firmly on the hem of Rose Madder's chiton, and she didn't realize she was clutching the baby too tightly again until "Caroline" wriggled in her arms and waved an indignant arm. The child had awakened and was looking up at Rosie with bright interest. Her eyes were the same hazy blue as the summer sky overhead.

  "You've done well, so you have," that low and sweetly husky voice told her. "I thank you. Now give her to me."

  Rose Madder held out her hands. They swarmed with shadows. And now Rosie saw something she liked even less: a thick, gray-green sludge was growing between the woman's fingers like moss. Or scales. Without thinking about what she was doing, Rosie held the baby against her. This time she wriggled more strongly, and voiced a short cry.

  A brown hand reached out and squeezed Rosie's shoulder. "It's all right, I tell you. She'd never hurt it, and I'll have most of the care of it until our journey's done. That won't be long, and then she'll turn the child over to ... well, that part don't matter. For a little while longer, the baby's hers. Give it over, now."

  Feeling it was the hardest thing she'd ever had to do in a life full of hard things, Rosie held out the baby. There was a soft little grunt of satisfact
ion as the shadowy hands took her. The baby gazed up into the face which Rosie was forbidden to look at ... and laughed.

  "Yes, yes," the sweet, husky voice crooned, and there was something in it like Norman's smile, something that made Rosie feel like screaming. "Yes, sweet one, it was dark, wasn't it? Dark and nasty and bad, oh yes, Mamma knows."

  The mottled hands lifted the baby against the rose madder gown. The child looked up, smiled, then laid her head on her mother's breast and closed her eyes again.

  "Rosie," the woman in the chiton said. Her voice was musing, thoughtful, insane. The voice of a despot who will soon seize personal control of imaginary armies.

  "Yes," Rosie nearly whispered.

  "Really Rosie. Rosie Real."

  "Y-Yes. I guess."

  "Do you remember what I told you before you went down?"

  "Yes," Rosie said. "I remember very well." She wished she didn't.

  "What was it?" Rose Madder asked greedily. "What did I tell you, Rosie Real?"

  " 'I repay.'

  "Yes. I repay. Was it bad for you, down in the dark? Was it bad for you, Rosie Real?"

  She thought this over carefully. "Bad, but not the worst. I think the worst was the stream. I wanted to drink."

  "There are many things in your life that you would forget?"

  "Yes. I guess there are."

  "Your husband?"

  She nodded.

  The woman with the sleeping baby against her breast spoke with a queer, flat assurance that chilled Rosie's heart. "You shall be divorced of him."

  Rosie opened her mouth, found herself quite incapable of speech, and closed it again.

  "Men are beasts," Rose Madder said conversationally. "Some can be gentled and then trained. Some cannot. When we come upon one who cannot be gentled and trained--a rogue--should we feel that we have been cursed or cheated? Should we sit by the side of the road--or in a rocking chair by the bed, for that matter--bewailing our fate? Should we rage against ka? No, for ka is the wheel that moves the world, and the man or woman who rages against it will be crushed under its rim. But rogue beasts must be dealt with. And we must go about that task with hopeful hearts, for the next beast may always be different."

  Bill isn't a beast, Rosie thought, and knew she would never dare say that aloud to this woman. It was too easy to imagine this woman seizing her and tearing her throat out with her teeth.

  "In any case, beasts will fight," Rose Madder said. "That is their way, to lower their heads and rush at each other so they may try their horns. Do you understand?"

  Rosie suddenly thought she did understand what the woman was saying, and it terrified her. She raised her fingers to her mouth and touched her lips. They felt dry, feverish. "There isn't going to be any fight," she said. "There isn't going to be any fight, because they don't know about each other. They--"

  "Beasts will fight," Rose Madder repeated, and then held something out to Rosie. It took her a moment to realize what it was: the gold armlet she'd been wearing above her right elbow.

  "I . . . I can't . . ."

  "Take it," the woman in the chiton said with sudden harsh impatience. "Take it, take it! And don't whine anymore! For the sake of every god that ever was, stop your stupid sheep's whining!"

  Rosie reached out with a trembling hand and took the armlet. Although it had been against the blonde woman's flesh, it felt cold. If she asks me to put it on, I don't know what I'll do, Rosie thought, but Rose Madder did not ask her to put it on. Instead she reached out with her mottled hand and pointed toward the olive tree. The easel was gone, and the picture--like the one in her room--had grown to an enormous size. It had changed, as well. It still showed the room on Tremont Street, but now there was no woman facing the door. The room was in darkness. Just a fluff of blonde hair and a single bare shoulder showed above the blanket on the bed.

  That's me, Rosie thought in wonder. That's me sleeping and having this dream.

  "Go on," Rose Madder said, and touched the back of her head. Rosie took a step toward the picture, mostly to get away from even the lightest touch of that cold and awful hand. As she did, she realized she could hear--very faintly--the sound of traffic. Crickets jumped around her feet and ankles in the high grass. "Go on, little Rosie Real. Thank you for saving my baby."

  "Our baby," Rosie said, and was instantly horrified. A person who corrected this woman had to be insane herself.

  But the woman in the reddish-purple chiton sounded amused rather than angry when she replied. "Yes, yes, if you like--our baby. Go on, now. Remember what you have to remember, and forget what you need to forget. Protect yourself while you are outside the circle of my regard."

  You bet, Rosie thought. And I won't be coming around, looking for favors, you can count on it. That would be like hiring Idi Amin to cater a garden-party, or Adolf Hitler to--

  The thought broke off as she saw the woman in the painting shift in her bed and pull the blanket up over her exposed shoulder.

  Not a painting, not anymore.

  A window.

  "Go on," the woman in the red dress said softly. "You done fine. Get gone before she change her mind 'bout how she feel."

  Rosie stepped toward the picture, and from behind her Rose Madder spoke again, her voice neither sweet nor husky now but loud and harsh and murderous: "And remember: I repay! "

  Rosie's eyes winced shut at this unexpected shout, and she lunged forward, suddenly sure that the woman in the chiton had forgotten the service Rosie had done her and had decided to kill her after all. She tripped over something (the bottom edge of the painting, perhaps?) and then there was a sense of falling. She had time to feel her stomach turn over like a circus tumbler, and then there was only darkness, rushing past her eyes and ears. In it she seemed to hear some ominous sound, distant but drawing closer. Perhaps it was the sound of trains in the deep tunnels beneath Grand Central Station, perhaps it was the rumble of thunder, or perhaps it was the bull Erinyes, running the blind depths of his maze with his head down and his short, sharp horns sorting the air.

  Then, for a little while, at least, Rosie knew nothing at all.

  11

  She floated silently and thoughtlessly, like an undreaming embryo in its placental sac, until seven o'clock in the morning. Then the Big Ben beside the bed tore her out of sleep with its ruthless howl. Rosie sat bolt-upright, flailing at the air with hands like claws and crying out something she didn't understand, words from a dream that was already forgotten : "Don't make me look at you! Don't make me look at you! Don't make me! Don't make me!"

  Then she saw the cream-colored walls, and the sofa that was really just a loveseat with delusions of grandeur, and the light flooding in through the window, and used these things to lock in the reality she needed. Whoever she might have been or wherever she might have gone in her dreams, she was now Rosie McClendon, a single woman who recorded audio books for a living. She had stayed for a long time with a bad man, but had left him and met a good one. She lived in a room at 897 Trenton Street, second floor, end of the hall, good view of Bryant Park. Oh, and one other thing. She was a single woman who never intended to eat another foot-long hotdog in her life, especially one smothered in sauerkraut. They did not agree with her, it seemed. She couldn't remember what she had dreamed

  (remember what you have to remember and forget what you need to forget)

  but she knew how it had started: with her walking into that damned painting like Alice going through the looking-glass.

  Rosie sat where she was for a moment, wrapping herself in her Rosie Real world as firmly as she could, then reached out for the relentless alarm-clock. Instead of gripping it, she knocked it onto the floor. It lay there, bawling its excited, senseless cry.

  "Hire the handicapped, it's fun to watch em," she croaked.

  She leaned over and groped for the clock, fascinated all over again by the blonde hair she saw from the corner of her eye, locks so fabulously unlike those of that obedient little creepmouse Rose Daniels. She got hold of
the clock, felt with her thumb for the stud that shut off the alarm, and then paused as something else registered. The breast pressing against her right forearm was naked.

  She silenced the alarm, then sat up with the clock still in her left hand. She pushed down the sheet and light blanket. Her bottom half was as bare as her top half.

  "Where's my nightie?" she asked the empty room. She thought she had never heard herself sounding so exceptionally stupid ... but of course, she wasn't used to going to bed with her nightgown on and waking up naked. Even fourteen years of marriage to Norman had not prepared her for anything quite that peculiar. She put the clock back on the nighttable, swung her legs out of bed--

  "Ow!" she cried, both startled and frightened by the pain and stiffness in her hips and thighs. Even her butt hurt. "Ow, ow, ow!"

  She sat on the edge of the bed and gingerly flexed her right leg, then her left. They moved, but they hurt, especially the right one. It was as if she'd spent most of yesterday doing the granddaddy of all workouts, rowing machine, treadmill, StairMaster, although the only exercise she had taken was her walk with Bill, and that had been no more than a leisurely stroll.

  The sound was like the trains in Grand Central Station, she thought.

  What sound?

  For a moment she thought she almost had it--had something, anyway--and then it was gone again. She got slowly and cautiously to her feet, stood beside the bed for a moment, then walked toward the bathroom. Limped toward the bathroom. Her right leg felt as if she had actually strained it somehow, and her kidneys ached. What in God's name--?

  She remembered reading somewhere that people sometimes "ran" in their sleep. Perhaps that was what she had been doing; perhaps the jumble of dreams she couldn't quite remember had been so horrible that she'd actually made an effort to run away from them. She stopped in the bathroom doorway and looked back at her bed. The ground-sheet was rumpled, but not twisted or tangled or pulled loose, as she would have expected if she had been really active in her sleep.