The Collective

by The Collective [lit]

  Moving forward again, wishing absurdly for a cigarette (he had

  given them up sixteen years before), he grabbed the dolly, tilted it

  back, and began pulling it slowly up the stairs.

  Outside, the moon watched coldly as he lifted the entire load, dolly

  and all, into the back of what he had come to think of as Wilma's

  Jeep--although Wilma had not earned a dime since the day he had

  married her. It was the biggest lift he had done since he had

  worked with a moving company in Westbrook as an

  undergraduate. At the highest point of the lift, a lance of pain

  seemed to dig into his lower back. And still he slipped it into the

  back of the Scout as gently as a sleeping baby.

  He tried to close the back, but it wouldn't go up; the handle of the

  dolly stuck out four inches too far. He drove with the tailgate

  down, and at every bump and pothole, his heart seemed to stutter.

  His ears felt for the whistle, waiting for it to escalate into a shrill

  scream and then descend to a guttural howl of fury waiting for the

  hoarse rip of canvas as teeth and claws pulled their way through it.

  And overhead the moon, a mystic silver disc, rode the sky.

  "I drove out to Ryder's Quarry," Henry went on. "There was a

  chain across the head of the road, but I geared the Scout down and

  got around. I backed right up to the edge of the water. The moon

  was still up and I could see its reflection way down in the

  blackness, like a drowned silver dollar. I went around, but it was a

  long time before I could bring myself to grab the thing. In a very

  real way, Dex, it was three bodies... the remains of three human

  beings. And I started wondering...where did they go? I saw

  Wilma's face, but it looked ... God help me, it looked all flat, like a

  Halloween mask. How much of them did it eat, Dex? How much

  could it eat? And I started to understand what you meant about that

  central axle pulling loose."

  "It was still whistling. I could hear it, muffled and faint, through

  that canvas dropcloth. Then I grabbed it and I heaved... I really

  believe it was do it then or do it never. It came sliding out... and I

  think maybe it suspected, Dex... because, as the dolly started to tilt

  down toward the water it started to growl and yammer again ... and

  the canvas started to ripple and bulge ... and I yanked it again. I

  gave it all I had ... so much that I almost fell into the damned

  quarry myself. And it went in. There was a splash ... and then it

  was gone. Except for a few ripples, it was gone. And then the

  ripples were gone, too."

  He fell silent, looking at his hands.

  "And you came here," Dex said.

  "First I went back to Amberson Hall. Cleaned under the stairs.

  Picked up all of Wilma's things and put them in her purse again.

  Picked up the janitor's shoe and his pen and your grad student's

  glasses. Wilma's purse is still on the seat. I parked the car in our--

  in my--driveway. On the way there I threw the rest of the stuff in

  the river."

  "And then did what? Walked here?"

  "Yes."

  "Henry, what if I'd waked up before you got here? Called the

  police?"

  Henry Northrup said simply: "You didn't."

  They stared at each other, Dex from his bed, Henry from the chair

  by the window.

  Speaking in tones so soft as to be nearly inaudible, Henry said,

  "The question is, what happens now? Three people are going to be

  reported missing soon. There is no one element to connect all

  three. There are no signs of foul play; I saw to that. Badlinger's

  crate, the dolly, the painters' dropcloth--those things will be

  reported missing too, presumably. There will be a search. But the

  weight of the dolly will carry the crate to the bottom of the quarry,

  and ... there are really no bodies, are there, Dex?"

  "No," Dexter Stanley said. "No, I suppose there aren't."

  "But what are you going to do, Dex? What are you going to say?"

  "Oh, I could tell a tale," Dex said. "And if I told it, I suspect I'd end

  up in the state mental hospital. Perhaps accused of murdering the

  janitor and Gereson, if not your wife. No matter how good your

  cleanup was, a state police forensic unit could find traces of blood

  on the floor and walls of that laboratory. I believe I'll keep my

  mouth shut."

  "Thank you," Henry said. "Thank you, Dex."

  Dex thought of that elusive thing Henry had mentioned

  companionship. A little light in the darkness. He thought of

  playing chess perhaps twice a week instead of once. Perhaps even

  three times a week... and if the game was not finished by ten,

  perhaps playing until midnight if neither of them had any early

  morning classes, instead of having to put the board away (and, as

  likely as not, Wilma would just "accidentally" knock over the

  pieces "while dusting," so that the game would have to be started

  all over again the following Thursday evening). He thought of his

  friend, at last free of that other species of Tasmanian devil that

  killed more slowly but just as surely--by heart attack, by stroke, by

  ulcer, by high blood pressure, yammering and whistling in the ear

  all the while.

  Last of all, he thought of the janitor, casually flicking his quarter,

  and of the quarter coming down and rolling under the stairs, where

  a very old horror sat squat and mute, covered with dust and

  cobwebs, waiting... biding its time...

  What had Henry said? The whole thing was almost hellishly

  perfect.

  "No need to thank me, Henry," he said.

  Henry stood up. "If you got dressed," he said, "you could run me

  down to the campus. I could get my MG and go back home and

  report Wilma missing."

  Dex thought about it. Henry was inviting him to cross a nearly

  invisible line, it seemed, from bystander to accomplice. Did he

  want to cross that line?

  At last he swung his legs out of bed. "All right, Henry."

  "Thank you, Dexter."

  Dex smiled slowly. "That's all right," he said. "After all, what are

  friends for?"

  STEPHEN KING

  The Revelations Of 'Becka Paulson

  From Rolling Stone Magazine 1984

  An excerpt from The Tommyknockers

  What happened was simple enough at least, at the start. What

  happened was that Rebecca Paulson shot herself in the head with her

  husband Joe's .22-caliber pistol. This occurred during her annual

  spring cleaning, which took place this year (as it did most years)

  around the middle of June. 'Becka had a way of falling behind in

  such things.

  She was standing on a short stepladder and rummaging through

  the accumulated junk on the high shelf in the downstairs hall closet

  while the Paulson cat, a big brindle tom named Ozzie Nelson, sat in

  the living-room doorway, watching her. From behind Ozzie came the

  anxious voices of Another World, blaring out of the Paulsons' big old

  Zenith TV which would later become something much more than a

  TV.

  'Becka pulled stuff down and examined it, hoping for

  something that was stil
l good, but not really expecting to find such a

  thing. There were four or five knitted winter caps, all moth-eaten and

  unraveling. She tossed them behind her onto the hall floor. Here was

  a Reader's Digest Condensed Book from the summer of 1954,

  featuring Run Silent, Run Deep and Here's Goggle. Water damage

  had swelled it to the size of a Manhattan telephone book. She tossed

  it behind her. Ah! Here was an umbrella that looked salvageable ...

  and a box with something in it.

  It was a shoebox. Whatever was inside was heavy. When she

  tilted the box, it shifted. She took the lid off, also tossing this behind

  her (it almost hit Ozzie Nelson, who decided to split the scene). Inside

  the box was a gun with a long barrel and imitation wood-grip

  handles.

  "Oh," she said. "That." She took it out of the box, not noticing

  that it was cocked, and turned it around to look into the small beady

  eye of the muzzle, believing that if there was a bullet in there she

  would see it.

  She remembered the gun. Until five years ago, Joe had been a

  member of Derry Elks. Some ten years ago (or maybe it had been

  fifteen), Joe had bought fifteen Elks raffle tickets while drunk. 'Becka

  had been so mad she had refused to let him put his manthing in her

  for two weeks. The first prize had been a Bombardier Skidoo, second

  prize an Evinrude motor. This .22 target pistol had been the third

  prize.

  He had shot it for a while in the backyard, she remembered

  plinking away at cans and bottles until 'Becka complained about the

  noise. Then he had taken it up to the gravel pit at the dead end of

  their road, although she had sensed he was losing interest, even then

  he'd just gone on shooting for a while to make sure she didn't think

  she had gotten the better of him. Then it had disappeared. She had

  thought he had swapped it for something a set of snow tires, maybe,

  or a battery but here it was.

  She held the muzzle of the gun up to her eye, peering into the

  darkness, looking for the bullet. She could see nothing but darkness.

  Must be unloaded, then.

  I'll make him get rid of it just the same, she thought, backing

  down the stepladder. Tonight. When he gets back from the post

  office. I'll stand right up to him. "Joe" I'll say, "it's no good having a

  gun sitting around the house even if there's no kids around and it's

  unloaded. You don't even use it to shoot bottles anymore." That's

  what I'll say.

  This was a satisfying thing to think, but her undermind knew

  that she would of course say no such thing. In the Paulson house, it

  was Joe who mostly picked the roads and drove the horses. She

  supposed that it would be best to just dispose of it herself put it in a

  plastic garbage bag under the other rickrack from the closet shelf.

  The gun would go to the dump with everything else the next time

  Vinnie Margolies stopped by to pick up their throw-out. Joe would

  not miss what he had already forgotten the lid of the box had been

  thick with undisturbed dust. Would not miss it, that was, unless she

  was stupid enough to bring it to his attention.

  'Becka reached the bottom of the ladder. Then she stepped

  backward onto the Reader's Digest Condensed Book with her left

  foot. The front board of the book slid backward as the rotted binding

  gave way. She tottered, holding the gun with one hand and flailing

  with the other. Her right foot came down on the pile of knitted caps,

  which also slid backward. As she fell she realised that she looked

  more like a woman bent on suicide than on cleaning.

  Well, it ain't loaded, she had time to think, but the gun was

  loaded, and it had been cocked; cocked for years, as if waiting for her

  to come along. She sat down hard in the hallway and when she did

  the hammer of the pistol snapped forward. There was a flat,

  unimportant bang not much louder than a baby firecracker in a tin

  cup, and a .22 Winchester short entered 'Becka Paulson's brain just

  above the left eye. It made a small black hole what was the faint blue

  of just-bloomed irises around the edges.

  Her head thumped back against the wall, and a trickle of blood

  ran from the hole into her left eyebrow. The gun, with a tiny thread of

  white smoke rising from its muzzle, fell into her lap. Her hands

  drummed lightly up and down on the floor for a period of about five

  seconds, her right leg flexed, then shot straight out. Her loafer flew

  across the hall and hit the far wall. Her eyes remained open for the

  next thirty minutes, the pupils dilating and constricting, dilating and

  constricting.

  Ozzie Nelson came to the living-room door, miaowed at her,

  and then began washing himself.

  She was putting supper on the table that night before Joe

  noticed the Band-Aid over her eye. He had been home for an hour

  and a half, but just lately he didn't notice much at all around the

  house he seemed preoccupied with something, far away from her a

  lot of the time. This didn't bother her as much as it might have once

  at least he wasn't always after her to let him put his manthing into her

  ladyplace.

  "What'd you do to your head?" he asked as she put a bowl of

  beans and a plate of red hot dogs on the table.

  She touched the Band-Aid vaguely. Yes what exactly had she

  done to her head? She couldn't really remember. The whole middle of

  the day had a funny dark place in it, like an inkstain. She

  remembered feeding Joe his breakfast and standing on the porch as he

  headed off to the post office in his Wagoneer that much was crystal

  clear. She remembered doing the white load in the new Sears washer

  while Wheel of Fortune blared from the TV. That was also clear.

  Then the inkstain began. She remembered putting in the colors and

  starting the cold cycle. She had the faintest, vaguest recollection of

  putting a couple of Swanson's Hungary man frozen dinners in the

  oven for herself 'Becka Paulson was a hefty eater but after that

  there was nothing. Not until she had awakened sitting on the living-

  room couch. She had changed from slacks and her flowed smock into

  a dress and high heel; she had put her hair in braids. There was

  something heavy in her lap and on her shoulders and her forehead

  tickled. It was Ozzie Nelson. Ozzie was standing with his hind legs in

  her crotch and his forepaws on her shoulders. He was busily licking

  blood off her forehead and out of her eyebrow. She swotted Ozzie

  away from her lap and then looked at the clock. Joe would be home

  in an hour and she hadn't even started dinner. Then she had touched

  her head, which throbbed vaguely.

  "'Becka?"

  "What?" She sat down at her place and began to spoon beans

  onto her plate.

  "I asked you what you did to your head?"

  "Bumped it," she said ... although, when she went down to the

  bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror, it hadn't looked like a

  bump; it had looked like a hole. "I just bumped it."

  "Oh," he said, losing interest. He opened the new issue of

  Sports Illustrated wh
ich had come that day and immediately fell into

  a daydream. In it he was running his hands slowly over the body of

  Nancy Voss an activity he had been indulging in the last six weeks

  or so. God bless the United States Postal Authority for sending Nancy

  Voss from Falmouth to Haven, that was all he could say. Falmouth's

  loss was Joe Paulson's gain. He had whole days when he was quite

  sure he had died and gone to heaven, and his pecker hadn't been so

  frisky since he was nineteen and touring West Germany with the U.S.

  Army. It would have taken more than a Band-Aid on his wife's

  forehead to engage his full attention.

  'Becka helped herself to three hot dogs, paused to debate a

  moment, and then added a fourth. She doused the dogs and the beans

  with ketchup and then stirred everything together. The result looked a

  bit like the aftermath of a bad motorcycle accident. She poured

  herself a glass of grape Kool-Aid from the pitcher on the table (Joe

  had a beer) and then touched the Band-Aid with the tips of her fingers

  she had been doing that ever since she put it on. Nothing but a cool

  plastic strip. That was okay ... but she could feel the circular

  indentation beneath. The hole. That wasn't so okay.

  "Just bumped it," she murmured again, as if saying would

  make it so. Joe didn't look up and 'Becka began to eat.

  Hasn't hurt my appetite any, whatever it was, she thought. Not

  that much ever does probably nothing ever will. When they say on

  the radio that all those missiles are flying and it's the end of the world.

  I'll probably go right on eating until one of those rockets lands on

  Haven.

  She cut herself a piece of bread from the homemade loaf and

  began mopping up bean juice with it.

  Seeing that ... that mark on her forehead had unnerved her at

  the time, unnerved her plenty. No sense kidding about that, just as

  there was no sense kidding that it was just a mark, like a bruise. And

  in case anyone ever wanted to know, 'Becka thought, she would tell

  them that looking into the mirror and seeing that you had an extra

  hole in your head wasn't one of life's cheeriest experiences. Your

  head, after all, was where your brains were. And as for what she had

  done next

  She tried to shy away from that, but it was too late.

  Too late, 'Becka, a voice tolled in her mind it sounded like

  her dead father's voice.

  She had stared at the hole, stared at it and stared at it, and then