Duma Key - Stephen King

"Nanny didn't know no better," Noveen said an instant later from Jack's leg. "And Libbit be trustin Nanny."

"Of course she did," Wireman said. "Melda was almost the child's mother."

I had visualized the drawing and erasing as happening in Elizabeth's room, but now I knew better. It had happened at the pool. Perhaps even in the pool. Because the pool had been, for some reason, safe. Or so little Libbit had believed.

Noveen said, "It din' make Perse gone, but it sholy did get her attention. I think it hoit dat bitch." The voice sounded tired now, croaky, and I could see Jack's Adam's apple sliding up and down in his throat again. "I hope it did!"

"Yes," I said. "Probably it did. So... what came next?" But I knew. Not the details, but I knew. The logic was grim and irrefutable. "Perse took her revenge on the twins. And Elizabeth and Nan Melda knew. They knew what they did. Nan Melda knew what she did."

"She knew," Noveen said. It was still a female voice, but it was edging closer to Jack's all the time. Whatever the spell was, it wouldn't hold much longer. "She held on until the Mister found their tracks down on Shade Beach - tracks goin into the water - but after that she couldn't hold on no longer. She felt she got her babby-uns killed."

"Did she see the ship?" I asked.

"Seen it that night. You cain't see that boat at night and not believe."

I thought of my Girl and Ship paintings and knew that was the truth.

"But even before the Mister rung the high sheriff on the s'change to say his twins was missin and probably drownded, Perse done spoke to Libbit. Tole her how it was. An' Libbit tole Nanny."

The doll slumped, its round cookie-face seeming to study the heart-shaped box from which it had been exhumed.

"Told her what, Noveen?" Wireman asked. "I don't understand."

Noveen said nothing. Jack, I thought, looked exhausted even though he hadn't moved at all.

I answered for Noveen. "Perse said, 'Try to get rid of me again and the twins are just the beginning. Try again and I'll take your whole family, one by one, and save you for last.' Isn't that right?"

Jack's fingers flexed. Noveen's rag head nodded slowly up and down.

Wireman licked his lips. "That doll," he said. "Exactly whose ghost is it?"

"There are no ghosts here, Wireman," I said.

Jack moaned.

"I don't know what he's been doing, amigo, but he's done," Wireman said.

"Yes, but we're not." I reached for the doll - the one that had gone everywhere with the child artist. And as I did, Noveen spoke to me for the last time, in a voice that was half hers and half Jack's, as if both of them were struggling to come through at the same time.

"Nuh- uh, not dat hand -you need dat hand to draw wit'."

And so I reached out the arm I used to lift Monica Goldstein's dying dog out of the street six months ago, in another life and universe. I used that hand to grasp Elizabeth Eastlake's doll and lift it off Jack's knee.

"Edgar?" Jack said, straightening up. "Edgar, how in hell did you get your-"

- arm back, I suppose he said, but I don't know for sure; I didn't hear the finish. What I saw were those black eyes and that black maw of a mouth ringed with red. Noveen. All these years she had been down there in the double dark - under the stair and in the tin box - waiting to spill her secrets, and her lipstick had stayed fresh all the while.

Are you set? she whispered inside my head, and that voice wasn't Noveen's, wasn't Nan Melda's (I was sure of that), wasn't even Elizabeth's; that was all Reba. You all set and ready to draw, you nasty man? Are you ready to see the rest? Are you ready to see it all?

I wasn't... but I would have to be.

For Ilse.

"Show me your pictures," I whispered, and that red mouth swallowed me whole.

How to Draw a Picture (X)

Be prepared to see it all. If you want to create - God help you if you do, God help you if you can - don't you dare commit the immorality of stopping on the surface. Go deep and take your fair salvage. Do it no matter how much it hurts.

You can draw two little girls - twins - but anyone can do that. Don't stop there just because the rest is a nightmare. Do not neglect to add the fact that they are standing thigh-deep in water that should be over their heads. A witness - Emery Paulson, for instance - could see this if he looked, but so many people aren't prepared to see what is right in front of their eyes.

Until, of course, it's too late.

He's come down to the beach to smoke a cigar. He can do this on the back porch or on the veranda, but some strong compulsion has urged him down the rutted road Adie calls Drunkard's Boulevard and then down the steeper, sandy path to the beach. This voice has suggested his cigar will taste better here. He can sit on a fallen log the waves have cast up and watch the after-ashes of the sunset, as orange fades to tangerine and the stars go blue. The Gulf will look pleasant in such light, the voice suggests, even if the Gulf has had the bad taste to mark the beginning of his marriage by swallowing two of his beloved's little sisters.

But there's more to watch than just a sunset, it seems. There's a ship out there. It's an old-fashioned one, a pretty, slim-hulled thing with three masts and furled sails. Instead of sitting on the log, he walks down the beach to where the dry sand becomes wet and firm and packed, marveling at that swallow-shape against the fading sunset. Some trick of the air makes it seem as if the day's last red is shining right through the hull.

He is thinking this when the first cry comes, chiming in his head like a silver bell: Emery!

And then comes another: Emery, help! The undertow! The rip!

That is when he sees the girls, and his heart gives a springing leap. It seems to rise all the way to his throat before falling back into place, where it dashes double-time. The unlit cigar tumbles from his fingers.

Two little girls, and they look just the same. They appear to be wearing identical jumpers, and although Emery should not be able to distinguish colors in this dying light, he can: one jumper is red, with an L on the front; the other is blue, with a T .

The rip! the girl with the T on her jumper calls, holding out her arms in supplication.

The undertow! calls the girl with the L .

And although neither girl appears to be in the slightest danger of drowning, Emery doesn't hesitate. His joy won't let him hesitate, nor his bright certainty that this is a miracle opportunity: when he turns up with the twins, his previously distant father-in-law will change his tune in a hurry. And the silver chimes those voices ring in his head, they urge him forward, too. He rushes to rescue Adie's sisters, to gather the lost girls in and splash with them to shore.

Emery! That's Tessie, her eyes dark in her china-pale face... but her lips are red.

Emery, hurry! That's Laura, with her dripping white hands held out to him and her lank curls pasted against her white cheeks.

He cries I'm coming, girls! Hold on!

Splashing toward them, now up to his shins, now his knees.

He cries Fight it! as though they are doing anything but standing there in water that is only thigh-deep on them, although he's now up to his own thighs and he's six feet and two inches tall.

The water of the Gulf - still chilly in mid-April - is up to his chest when he reaches them, when he reaches out to them, and when they seize him with hands that are stronger than any little girls' hands should be; by the time he's close enough to see the silvery gleam in their glazed eyes and smell the salty, dead-fish aroma coming from their rotting hair, it's too late. He struggles, his cries of joy and his entreaties to fight the undertow turning first to yells of protest and then to screams of horror, but by then it is far too late. The screams do not last long, in any case. Their small hands have become cold claws digging deep into his flesh as they pull him deeper, and the water fills his mouth, drowning his screams. He sees the ship against the last cold ashes of the sunset, and - how did he not see it before? how did he not know? - realizes it is a hulk, a plague ship, a deathship. Something is waiting for him there, something in a shroud, and he would scream if he could, but now the water fills his eyes and there are other hands, ones that feel like nothing but stripped radiations of bone, closing around his ankles. A talon pulls off a shoe, then tweaks a toe... as if it means to play "This little piggy went to market" with him as he drowns.

As Emery Paulson drowns.

19 - April of '27

i

Someone was yelling in the dark. It sounded like Make him stop screaming. Then there was a flat hard whacking sound and the dark lit up deep red, first on one side, then in the back. The red rolled toward the front of the darkness like a cloud of blood in water.

"You hit him too hard," someone said. Was that Jack?

"Boss? Hey, boss!" Somebody was shaking me, so I still had a body. Probably that was good. Jack was shaking me. Jack who? I could get it, but I had to think sideways. His name was like someone on The Weather Channel -

More shaking. Rougher. " Muchacho! You there?"

My head bonked something, and I opened my eyes. Jack Cantori was kneeling to my left, his face tight and scared. It was Wireman in front of me, on his feet but bending over, shaking me like a daiquiri. The doll was lying face-down on my lap. I batted her aside with a grunt of disgust - oh you nasty man, indeed. Noveen landed in the pile of dead wasps with a papery rustle.

Suddenly the places she'd taken me began to come back: hell's own tour. The path to Shade Beach that Adriana Eastlake had called (much to her father's fury) Drunkard's Boulevard. The beach itself, and the horrible things that had happened there. The pool. The cistern.

"His eyes are open," Jack said. "Thank God. Edgar, do you hear me?"

"Yes," I said. My voice was hoarse from screaming. I wanted food, but first I wanted to pour something down my burning throat. "Thirsty - can you help a brother out?"

Wireman handed me one of the big bottles of Evian water. I shook my head. "Pepsi."

"You sure, muchacho? Water might be-"

"Pepsi. Caffeine." That wasn't the only reason, but it would do.

Wireman put the Evian back and gave me a Pepsi. It was warm, but I chugged half of it, burped, then drank again. I looked around and saw only my friends and a length of dirty hallway. That was not good. In fact, it was terrible. My hand - I was definitely back to one again - was stiff and throbbing, as if I had been using it steadily for at least two hours, so where were the drawings? I was terrified that without the drawings, everything would fade the way dreams do upon waking. And I had risked more than my life for that information. I had risked my sanity.

I struggled, trying to get to my feet. A bolt of pain went through my head where I'd bumped it against the wall. "Where are the pictures? Please tell me there are pictures!"

"Relax, muchacho, right here." Wireman stepped aside and showed me a semi-tidy stack of Artisan sheets. "You were drawing like a madman, tearing them off your pad as you went. I took em and stacked em up."

"All right. Good. I need to eat. I'm starving." And this felt like the literal truth.

Jack looked around uneasily. The front corridor, which had been filled with afternoon light when I took Noveen from Jack and went bye-bye down a black hole, was now dimmer. Not dark - not yet, and when I looked up I could see the sky overhead was still blue - but it was clear that the afternoon was either gone or almost gone.

"What time is it?" I asked.

"Quarter past five," Wireman said. He didn't have to glance at his watch, which told me he'd been keeping close track. "Sunset's still a couple of hours away. Give or take. So if they only come out at night-"

"I think they do. That's enough time, and I still need to eat. We can get out of this ruin. We're done with the house. We may need a ladder, though."

Wireman raised his eyebrows but didn't ask; he only said, "If there is one, it's probably in the barn. Which seems to have stood up to Father Time pretty well, actually."

"What about the doll?" Jack asked. "Noveen?"

"Put her back in Elizabeth's heart-box and bring her along," I said. "She deserves a place at El Palacio, with the rest of Elizabeth's things."

"What's our next stop, Edgar?" Wireman asked.

"I'll show you, but one thing first." I pointed to the gun in his belt. "That thing's still loaded, right?"

"Absolutely. Fresh clip."

"If the heron comes back, I still want you to shoot it. Make it a priority."

"Why?"

"Because it's her," I said. "Perse's been using it to watch us."

ii

We left the ruin the way we'd entered it and found a Florida early evening full of clear light. The sky above was cloudless. The sun cast a brilliant silver sheen across the Gulf. In another hour or so that track would begin to tarnish and turn to gold, but not yet.

We trudged along the remains of Drunkard's Boulevard, Jack carrying the picnic basket, Wireman the bag containing the food and the Artisan pads. I had my drawings. Sea oats whispered at our pants legs. Our shadows trailed long behind us toward the wreck of the mansion. Far ahead, a pelican saw a fish, folded its wings, and dropped like a dive-bomber. We did not see the heron, nor were we visited by Charley the Lawn Jockey. But when we reached the crest of the ridge, where the path had once sloped down along dunes that were now eroded and steep, we saw something else.

We saw the Perse.

She lay at anchor three hundred yards out. Her spotless sails were furled. She rolled from side to side on the swell, ticking like a clock. From here we could read the entire name painted on her starboard side: Persephone. She appeared deserted, and I was sure she was - in the daytime, the dead stayed dead. But Perse wasn't dead. Worse luck for us.

"My God, it could have sailed right out of your paintings," Jack breathed. There was a stone bench to the right of the path, barely visible for the bushes growing around it and the vines snaking over its flat seat. He dropped onto it, gaping out at the boat.

"No," I said. "I painted the truth. You're seeing the mask it wears in the daytime."

Wireman stood beside Jack, shading his eyes against the sun. Then he turned to me. "Do they see it over on Don Pedro? They don't, do they?"

"Maybe some do," I said. "The terminally ill, the schizos currently ditching their medicine..." That made me think of Tom. "But it's here for us, not them. We're meant to leave Duma Key on it tonight. The road will be closed to us once the sun goes down. The living dead may all be out there on Persephone, but there are things in the jungle. Some - like the lawn jockey - are things that Elizabeth created as a little girl. There are others that have come since Perse woke up again." I paused. I didn't like to say the rest, but I did. I had to. "I imagine I'm responsible for some of those. Every man has his nightmares."

I thought of the skeleton arms reaching up in the moonlight.

"So," Wireman said harshly. "The plan is for us to leave by boat, is it?"

"Yes."

"Press gang? Like in jolly old England?"

"Pretty much."

"I can't do that," Jack said. "I get seasick."

I smiled and sat down beside him. "Sea voyages aren't in the plan, Jack."