Misery Chastain was dead. Paul Sheldon had just killed her — with relief, with joy. Misery had made him rich; she was the heroine of a string of bestsellers. And now he wanted to get on to some real writing. That’s when the car accident happened, and he woke up in pain in a strange bed. But it wasn’t the hospital.
Авторы: King Stephen Edwin
Just a little break for the kid, that’s all I’m asking.” («Folks, Sheldon has performed heroically today, but this has got to be his last shot. The crowd has fallen silent…”) He closed his eyes, the sportscaster’s voice fading as he listened avidly to the minute rattle of the pin in the lock. Now! Here was resistance! The tumbler! He could see it lying in there like the curved foot of a rocking chair, pressing the tongue of the lock, holding it in place, holding him in place.
It’s strictly Mickey Mouse, Paul. Just stay cool.
When you hurt this badly, it was hard to stay cool.
He grasped the doorknob with his left hand, reaching under his right arm to do it, and began to apply gentle pressure to the bobby-pin. A little more… a little more…
In his mind he could see the rocker beginning to move in its dusty little alcove; he could see the lock’s tongue begin to retract. No need for it to go all the way, good God, no — no need to overturn the rocking chair, to use Tom Twyford’s metaphor. Just the instant it cleared the doorframe — a push — The pin was simultaneously starting to bend and slip. He felt it happening, and in desperation he pushed upward as hard as he could, turned the knob, and shoved at the door. There was a snap as the pin broke in two, the part in the lock falling in, and he had a dull moment to consider his failure before he saw that the door was slowly swinging open with the tongue of the lock sticking out of the plate like a steel finger.
“Jesus,” he whispered. “Jesus, thank you.” Let’s go to the videotape! Warner Wolf screamed exultantly in his mind as the thousands in Annie Wilkes Stadium — not to mention the untold millions watching at home — broke into thunderous cheers.
“Not now, Warner,” he croaked, and began the long, draining job of backing and filling the wheelchair so he could get a straight shot at the door.
He had a bad — no, not just bad; terrible, horrible — moment when it seemed the wheelchair was not going to fit. It was no more than two inches too wide, but that was two inches too much. She brought it in collapsed, that’s why you thought it was a shopping cart at first, his mind informed him drearily.
In the end he was able to squeeze through — barely — by positioning himself squarely in the doorway and then leaning forward enough to grab the jambs of the door in his hands. The axle-caps of the wheels squalled against the wood, but he was able to get through.
After he did, he grayed out again.
He voice called him out of his daze. He opened his eyes and saw she was pointing a shotgun at him. Her eyes glittered furiously. Spit shone on her teeth.
“If you want your freedom so badly, Paul,” Annie said, “I’ll be happy to grant it to you.” She pulled back both hammers.
He jerked, expecting the shotgun blast. But she wasn’t there, of course; his mind had already recognized the dream.
Not a dream — a warning. She could come back anytime. Anytime at all.
The quality of the light fanning through the half-open bathroom door had changed, grown brighter. It looked like moonlight. He wished the clock would chime and tell him just how close to right he was, but the clock was obstinately silent.
She stayed away fifty hours before.
So she did. And she might stay away eighty this time. Or you might hear that Cherokee pulling in five seconds from now. In case you didn’t know it, friend, the Weather Bureau can post tornado warnings, but when it comes to telling exactly when and where they’ll touch down, they don’t know fuck-all.
“True enough,” he said, and rolled the wheelchair down to the bathroom. Looking in, he saw an austere room floored with hexagonal white tiles. A bathtub with rusty fans spreading below the faucets stood on clawed feet. Beside it was a linen closet. Across from the tub was a sink. Over the sink was a medicine cabinet.
The floor-bucket was in the tub — he could see its plastic top.
The hall was wide enough for him to swing the chair around and face the door, but now his arms were trembling with exhaustion. He had been a puny kid and so he had tried to take reasonably good care of himself as an adult, but his muscles were now the muscles of an invalid and the puny kid was back, as if all that time spent doing laps and jogging and working out on the Nautilus machine had only been a dream.
At least this doorway was wider — not much, but enough to make his passage less hair-raising. Paul bumped over the lintel, and then
