“Yes, it’s you,” he said, at last, “it’s you, that good young man. There is no mistake, is there?”
“I hope not; I believe I’m a good young man. But I am very sorry you are ill. What can I do for you?”
“I am very bad, very bad; my poor old bones ache so!” and, groaning portentously, he tried to turn toward me.
I questioned him about the nature of his malady and the length of time he had been in bed, but he barely heeded me; he seemed impatient to speak of something else. He grasped my sleeve, pulled me toward him, and whispered quickly:
“You know my time’s up!”
“Oh, I trust not,” I said, mistaking his meaning. “I shall certainly see you on your legs again.”
“God knows!” he cried. “But I don’t mean I’m dying; not yet a bit. What I mean is, I’m due at the house. This is rent-day.”
“Oh, exactly! But you can’t go.”
“I can’t go. It’s awful. I shall lose my money. If I am dying, I want it all the same. I want to pay the doctor. I want to be buried like a respectable man.”
“It is this evening?” I asked.
“This evening at sunset, sharp.”
He lay staring at me, and, as I looked at him in return, I suddenly understood his motive in sending for me. Morally, as it came into my thought, I winced. But, I suppose I looked unperturbed, for he continued in the same tone. “I can’t lose my money. Someone else must go. I asked Belinda; but she won’t hear of it.”
“You believe the money will be paid to another person?”
“We can try, at least. I have never failed before and I don’t know. But, if you say I’m as sick as a dog, that my old bones ache, that I’m dying, perhaps she’ll trust you. She don’t want me to starve!”
“You would like me to go in your place, then?”
“You have been there once; you know what it is. Are you afraid?”
I hesitated.
“Give me three minutes to reflect,” I said, “and I will tell you.” My glance wandered over the room and rested on the various objects that spoke of the threadbare, decent poverty of its occupant. There seemed to be a mute appeal to my pity and my resolution in their cracked and faded sparseness. Meanwhile Captain Diamond continued, feebly:
“I think she’d trust you, as I have trusted you; she’ll like your face; she’ll see there is no harm in you. It’s a hundred and thirty-three dollars, exactly. Be sure you put them into a safe place.”
“Yes,” I said at last, “I will go, and, so far as it depends upon me, you shall have the money by nine o’clock tonight.”
He seemed greatly relieved; he took my hand and faintly pressed it, and soon afterward I withdrew. I tried for the rest of the day not to think of my evening’s work, but, of course, I thought of nothing else. I will not deny that I was nervous; I was, in fact, greatly excited, and I spent my time in alternately hoping that the mystery should prove less deep than it appeared, and yet fearing that it might prove too shallow. The hours passed very slowly, but, as the afternoon began to wane, I started on my mission. On the way, I stopped at Captain Diamond’s modest dwelling, to ask how he was doing, and to receive such last instructions as he might desire to lay upon me. The old negress, gravely and inscrutably placid, admitted me, and, in answer to my inquiries, said that the Captain was very low; he had sunk since the morning.
“You must be right smart,” she said, “if you want to get back before he drops off.”
A glance assured me that she knew of my projected expedition, though, in her own opaque black pupil, there was not a gleam of self-betrayal.
“But why should Captain Diamond drop off?” I asked. “He certainly seems very weak; but I cannot make out that he has any definite disease.”
“His disease is old age,” she said, sententiously.
“But he is not so old as that; sixty-seven or sixty-eight, at most.”
She was silent a moment.
“He’s worn out; he’s used up; he can’t stand it any longer.”
“Can I see him a moment?” I asked; upon which she led me again to his room.
He was lying in the same way as when I had left him, except that his eyes were closed. But he seemed very “low,” as she had said, and he had very little pulse. Nevertheless, I further learned the doctor had been there in the afternoon and professed himself satisfied. “He don’t know what’s been going on,” said Belinda, curtly.
The old man stirred a little, opened his eyes, and after some time recognized me.
“I’m going, you know,” I said. “I’m going for your money. Have you anything more to say?” He raised himself slowly, and with a painful effort, against his pillows; but he seemed hardly to understand me. “The house, you know,” I said. “Your daughter.”
He rubbed his forehead, slowly, awhile, and at last, his comprehension awoke. “Ah, yes,” he murmured, “I trust you. A hundred and thirty-three dollars. In old pieces—all in old pieces.” Then he added more vigorously, and with a brightening eye: “Be very respectful—be very polite. If not—if not—” and his voice failed again.
“Oh, I certainly shall be,” I said, with a rather forced smile. “But, if not?”
“If not, I shall know it!” he said, very gravely. And with this, his eyes closed and he sunk down again.
I took my departure and pursued my journey with a sufficiently resolute step. When I reached the house, I made a propitiatory bow in front of it, in emulation of Captain Diamond. I had timed my walk so as to be able to enter without delay; night had already fallen. I turned the key, opened the door and shut it behind me. Then I struck a light, and found the two candlesticks I had used before, standing on the tables in the entry. I applied a match to both of them, took them up and went into the parlor. It was empty, and though I waited awhile, it remained empty. I passed then into the other rooms on the same floor, and no dark image rose before me to check my steps. At last, I came out into the hall again, and stood weighing the question of going upstairs. The staircase had been the scene of my discomfiture before, and I approached it with profound mistrust. At the foot, I paused, looking up, with my hand on the balustrade. I was acutely expectant, and my expectation was justified. Slowly, in the darkness above, the black figure that I had seen before took shape. It was not an illusion; it was a figure, and the same. I gave it time to define itself, and watched it stand and look down at me with its hidden face. Then, deliberately, I lifted up my voice and spoke.
“I have come in place of Captain Diamond, at his request,” I said. “He is very ill; he is unable to leave his bed. He earnestly begs that you will pay the money to me; I will immediately carry it to him.” The figure stood motionless, giving no sign. “Captain Diamond would have come if he were able to move,” I added, in a moment, appealingly; “but, he is utterly unable.”
At this the figure slowly unveiled its face and showed me a dim, white mask; then it began slowly to descend the stairs. Instinctively I fell back before it, retreating to the door of the front sitting-room. With my eyes still fixed on it, I moved backward across the threshold; then I stopped in the middle of the room and set down my lights. The figure advanced; it seemed to be that of a tall woman, dressed in vaporous black crape. As it drew near, I saw that it had a perfectly human face, though it looked extremely pale and sad. We stood gazing at each other; my agitation had completely vanished; I was only deeply interested.
“Is my father dangerously ill?” said the apparition.
At the sound of its voice—gentle, tremulous, and perfectly human—I started forward; I felt a rebound of excitement. I drew a long breath, I gave a sort of cry, for what I saw before me was not a disembodied spirit, but a beautiful woman, an audacious actress. Instinctively, irresistibly, by the force of reaction against my credulity, I stretched out my hand and seized the long veil that muffled her head. I gave it a violent jerk, dragged it nearly off, and stood staring at a large fair person, of about five-and-thirty. I comprehended her at a glance; her long bl
ack dress, her pale, sorrow-worn face, painted to look paler, her very fine eyes—the color of her father’s—and her sense of outrage at my movement.
“My father, I suppose,” she cried, “did not send you here to insult me!” and she turned away rapidly, took up one of the candles and moved toward the door. Here she paused, looked at me again, hesitated, and then drew a purse from her pocket and flung it down on the floor. “There is your money!” she said, majestically.
I stood there, wavering between amazement and shame, and saw her pass out into the hall. Then I picked up the purse. The next moment, I heard a loud shriek and a crash of something dropping, and she came staggering back into the room without her light.
“My father—my father!” she cried; and with parted lips and dilated eyes, she rushed toward me.
“Your father—where?” I demanded.
“In the hall, at the foot of the stairs.”
I stepped forward to go out, but she seized my arm.
“He is in white,” she cried, “in his shirt. It’s not he!”
“Why, your father is in his house, in his bed, extremely ill,” I answered.
She looked at me fixedly, with searching eyes.
“Dying?”
“I hope not,” I stuttered.
She gave a long moan and covered her face with her hands.
“Oh, heavens, I have seen his ghost!” she cried.
She still held my arm; she seemed too terrified to release it. “His ghost!” I echoed, wondering.
“It’s the punishment of my long folly!” she went on.
“Ah,” said I, “it’s the punishment of my indiscretion—of my violence!”
“Take me away, take me away!” she cried, still clinging to my arm. “Not there”—as I was turning toward the hall and the front door—“not there, for pity’s sake! By this door—the back entrance.” And snatching the other candles from the table, she led me through the neighboring room into the back part of the house. Here was a door opening from a sort of scullery into the orchard. I turned the rusty lock and we passed out and stood in the cool air, beneath the stars. Here my companion gathered her black drapery about her, and stood for a moment, hesitating. I had been infinitely flurried, but my curiosity touching her was uppermost. Agitated, pale, picturesque, she looked, in the early evening light, very beautiful.
“You have been playing all these years a most extraordinary game,” I said.
She looked at me somberly, and seemed disinclined to reply. “I came in perfect good faith,” I went on. “The last time—three months ago—you remember?—you greatly frightened me.”
“Of course it was an extraordinary game,” she answered at last. “But it was the only way.”
“Had he not forgiven you?”
“So long as he thought me dead, yes. There have been things in my life he could not forgive.”
I hesitated and then—“And where is your husband?” I asked.
“I have no husband—I have never had a husband.”
She made a gesture which checked further questions, and moved rapidly away. I walked with her round the house to the road, and she kept murmuring—“It was he—it was he!” When we reached the road she stopped, and asked me which way I was going. I pointed to the road by which I had come, and she said—“I take the other. You are going to my father’s?” she added.
“Directly,” I said.
“Will you let me know to-morrow what you have found?”
“With pleasure. But how shall I communicate with you?”
She seemed at a loss, and looked about her. “Write a few words,” she said, “and put them under that stone.” And she pointed to one of the lava slabs that bordered the old well. I gave her my promise to comply, and she turned away. “I know my road,” she said. “Everything is arranged. It’s an old story.”
She left me with a rapid step, and as she receded into the darkness, resumed, with the dark flowing lines of her drapery, the phantasmal appearance with which she had at first appeared to me. I watched her till she became invisible, and then I took my own leave of the place. I returned to town at a swinging pace, and marched straight to the little yellow house near the river. I took the liberty of entering without a knock, and, encountering no interruption, made my way to Captain Diamond’s room. Outside the door, on a low bench, with folded arms, sat the sable Belinda.
“How is he?” I asked.
“He’s gone to glory.”
“Dead?” I cried.
She rose with a sort of tragic chuckle.
“He’s as big a ghost as any of them now!”
I passed into the room and found the old man lying there irredeemably rigid and still. I wrote that evening a few lines which I proposed on the morrow to place beneath the stone, near the well; but my promise was not destined to be executed. I slept that night very ill—it was natural—and in my restlessness left my bed to walk about the room. As I did so I caught sight, in passing my window, of a red glow in the north-western sky. A house was on fire in the country, and evidently burning fast. It lay in the same direction as the scene of my evening’s adventures, and as I stood watching the crimson horizon I was startled by a sharp memory. I had blown out the candle which lighted me, with my companion, to the door through which we escaped, but I had not accounted for the other light, which she had carried into the hall and dropped—heaven knew where—in her consternation. The next day I walked out with my folded letter and turned into the familiar cross-road. The haunted house was a mass of charred beams and smoldering ashes; the well-cover had been pulled off, in quest of water, by the few neighbors who had had the audacity to contest what they must have regarded as a demon-kindled blaze, the loose stones were completely displaced, and the earth had been trampled into puddles.
STEPHEN KING
(1947–)
Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine, and earned a BS in English from the University of Maine. King began publishing stories with “I Was a Teenage Grave Robber” in Comics Review (1965) and “The Glass Floor” in Startling Mystery Stories (1967). His first published novel, Carrie: A Novel of a Girl with a Frightening Power (1974), was made into a highly successful film, as were the novels The Shining ( 1977), Firestarter (1980), Pet Sematary (1983), Misery (1987), and The Green Mile (1996). Among his other novels are Need ful Things (1991), Bag of Bones (1998), Cell (2006), and Under the Dome (2009). His story and novella collections include Skeleton Crew (1985), Nightmares and Dreamscapes (1993), Hearts in Atlantis (1999), Everything’s Eventual (2002), Just After Sunset (2008), and Full Dark, No Stars (2010). He has won numerous Bram Stoker and British Fantasy awards, the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
Home Delivery
(1989)
Considering that it was probably the end of the world, Maddie Pace thought she was doing a good job. Hell of a good job. She thought that she just might be coping with the End of Everything better than anyone else on earth. And she was positive she was coping better than any other pregnant woman on earth.
Cop ing.
Maddie Pace, of all people.
Maddie Pace, who sometimes couldn’t sleep if, after a visit from Reverend Peebles, she spied a dust-bunny under the dining room table—just the thought that Reverend Peebles might have seen that dust-bunny could be enough to keep her awake until two in the morning.
Maddie Pace, who, as Maddie Sullivan, used to drive her fiancé Jack crazy when she froze over a menu, debating entrées sometimes for as long as half an hour.
“Maddie, why don’t you just flip a coin?” he’d asked her once after she had managed to narrow it down to a choice between the braised veal and the lamb chops . . . and then could get no further. “I’ve had five bottles of this goddam German beer already, and if you don’t make up y’mind pretty damn quick, there’s gonna be a drunk lobsterman under the table before we ever get any food o
n it!”
So she had smiled nervously, ordered the braised veal . . . and then lay awake until well past midnight, wondering if the chops might not have been better.
She’d had no trouble coping with Jack’s proposal, however ; she accepted it and him quickly, and with tremendous relief. Following the death of her father, Maddie and her mother had lived an aimless, cloudy sort of life on Deer Isle, off the coast of Maine. “If I wasn’t around to tell them women where to squat and lean against the wheel,” George Sullivan had been fond of saying while in his cups and among his friends at Buster’s Tavern or in the back room of Daggett’s Barber Shop, “I don’t know what the hell they’d do.”
When he died of a massive coronary, Maddie was nineteen and minding the town library weekday evenings at a salary of $41.50 a week. Her mother was minding the house—or had been, that was, when George reminded her (sometimes with a good, hard shot to the ear) that she had a house that needed minding.
He was right.
They didn’t speak of it because it embarrassed them, but he was right and both of them knew it. Without George around to tell them where to squat and lean to the wheel, they didn’t know what the hell to do. Money wasn’t the problem; George had believed passionately in insurance, and when he dropped down dead during the tiebreaker frame of the League Bowl-Offs at Big Duke’s Big Ten in Yarmouth, his wife had come into better than a hundred thousand dollars. And island life was cheap, if you owned your own home and kept your garden weeded and knew how to put up your own vegetables come fall. The problem was having nothing to focus on. The problem was how the center seemed to have dropped out of their lives when George went facedown in his Island Amoco bowling shirt just over the foul line of lane nineteen in Big Duke’s (and goddam if he hadn’t picked up the spare they needed to win, too). With George gone their lives had become an eerie sort of blur.
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