Misery

Summoning all of his courage, he reached for the doorknob and turned it. The door swung slowly open on darkness, and yes, there was Annie, there was the goddess, standing there in the shadows, a white shape in a nurse’s uniform – He blinked his eyes tightly shut and then opened them. Shadows, yes. Annie, no. Except in the newspaper photographs, he had never seen her in her nurse’s uniform. Only shadows. Shadows and (so vivid) imagination.

He crawled slowly into the hall and looked back down toward the guest-room. It was shut, blank, and he began to crawl toward the parlor.

It was a pit of shadows. Annie could be hidden in any of them; Annie could be any of them. And she could have the axe.

He crawled.

There was the overstuffed sofa, and Annie was behind it. There was the kitchen door, standing open, and Annie was behind that. The floorboards creaked in back of him… of course! Annie was behind him!

He turned, heart hammering, brains squeezing at his temples, and Annie was there, all right, the axe upraised, but only for a second. She blew apart into shadows. He crawled into the parlor and that was when he heard the drone of an approaching motor. A faint wash of headlights illuminated the window, brightened. He heard the tires skid in the dirt and understood they had seen the chain she had strung across the driveway.

A car door opened and shut.

"Shit! Look at this!" He crawled faster, looked out, and saw a silhouette approaching the house. The shape of the silhouette’s hat was unmistakable. It was a state cop.

Paul groped on the knickknack table, knocking figurine over. Some fell to the floor and shattered. His hand closed around one, and that at least was like a book; it held the roundness novels delivered precisely because life so rarely did.

It was the penguin sitting on his block of ice.

NOW MY TALE IS TOLD! the legend on the block read, and Paul thought: Yes! Thank God!

Propped on his left arm, he made his right hand close around the penguin. Blisters broke open, dribbling pus. He drew his arm back and heaved the penguin through the parlor window, just as he had thrown an ashtray through the window of the guest bedroom not so long ago.

"Here!" Paul Sheldon cried deliriously. "Here, in here, please, I’m in here!"

47

There was yet another novelistic roundness in this denouement: they were the same two cops who had come the other day to question Annie about Kushner, David and Goliath. Only tonight David’s sport-coat was not only unbuttoned, his gun was out. David turned out to be Wicks. Goliath was McKnight. They had come with a search warrant. When they finally broke into the house in answer to the frenzied screams coming from the parlor, they found a man who looked like a nightmare sprung to life.

"There was a book I read when I was in high school," Wicks told his wife early the next morning. "Count of Monte Cristo, I think, or maybe it was The Prisoner of Zenda. Anyway, there was a guy in that book who’d spent forty years in solitary confinement. He hadn’t seen anybody in forty years. That’s what this guy looked like." Wicks paused for a moment, wanting to better express how it had been, the conflicting emotions he had felt – horror and pity and sorrow and disgust – most of all wonder that a man who looked this bad should still be alive. He could not find the words. "When he saw us, he started to cry," he said, and finally added: "He kept calling me David. I don’t know why."

"Maybe you look like somebody he knew," she said.

"Maybe so."

48

Paul’s skin was gray, his body rack-thin. He huddled by the occasional table, shivering all over, staring at them with rolling eyes.

"Who – " McKnight began.

"Goddess," the scrawny man on the floor interrupted. He licked his lips. "You have to watch out for her. Bedroom. That’s where she kept me. Pet writer. Bedroom. She’s there."

"Annie Wilkes?" Wicks. "In that bedroom?" He nodded toward the hall.

"Yes. Yes. Locked in. But of course. There’s a window."

"Who – " McKnight began a second time.

"Christ, can’t you see?" Wicks asked. "It’s the guy Kushner was looking for. The writer. I can’t remember his name, but it’s him."

"Thank God," the scrawny man said.

"What?" Wicks bent toward him, frowning.

"Thank God you can’t remember my name."

"I’m not tracking you, buddy."

"It’s all right. Never mind. Just… you have to be careful. I think she’s dead. But be careful. If she’s still alive… dangerous… like a rattlesnake." With tremendous effort he moved his twisted left leg directly into the beam of McKnight’s flashlight. "Cut off my foot. Axe." They stared at the place where his foot wasn’t for long long seconds and then McKnight whispered: "Good Christ."

"Come on," Wicks said. He drew his gun and the two of them started slowly down the hall to Paul’s closed bedroom door.

"Watch out for her!" Paul shrieked in his cracked and broken voice. "Be careful!" They unlocked the door and went in. Paul pulled himself against the wall and leaned his head back, eyes closed. He was cold. He couldn’t stop shivering. They would scream or she would scream. There might be a scuffle. There might be shots. He tried to prepare his mind for either. Time passed, and it seemed to be a very long time indeed.

At last he heard booted feet coming back down the hall. He opened his eyes. It was Wicks.

"She was dead," Paul said. "I knew it – the real part of my mind did – but I can still hardly be – " Wicks said: "There’s blood and broken glass and charred paper in there… but there’s no one in that room at all." Paul Sheldon looked at Wicks, and then he began to scream. He was still screaming when he fainted.