Stephen King - Duma Key

"Sure, but what?"

"We'll take her back up to Heron's Roost, that's all. There'll be something there."

But in my mind's eye I kept seeing how the storms had dealt with the mansion that had once dominated this end of Duma Key, turning it into little more than a fa ade. Then I wondered how many containers we actually would find there, especially with just forty minutes or so before dark came and the Perse sent a landing-party to end our meddling. God, to have forgotten such an elementary item as a water-tight container!

"Fuck!" I said. I kicked a pile of shards and sent them flying. "Fuck!"

"Easy, vato. That won't help."

No, it wouldn't. And she'd like me angry, wouldn't she? The old angry Edgar would be easy to manipulate. I tried to get hold of myself, but the I can do this mantra wasn't working. Still, it was all I had. And what do you do when you can't use anger to fall back on? You admit the truth.

"All right," I said. "But I don't have a clue."

"Relax, Edgar," Jack said, and he was smiling. "That part's gonna be okay."

"Why? What do you mean?"

"Trust me on this," he said.

v

As we stood looking at Charley the Lawn Jockey in light that was now taking on a definite purple cast, a nonsense couplet from an old Dave Van Ronk blues occurred to me: "Mama bought a chicken, thought it was a duck; Sat it on the table with the legs stickin up." Charley wasn't a chicken or a duck, but his legs, ending not in shoes but a dark iron pedestal, were indeed sticking up. His head, however, was gone. It had crashed down through a square of ancient moss- and vine-covered boards.

"What's that, muchacho?" Wireman asked. "Do you know?"

"I'm pretty sure it's a cistern," I said. "I'm hoping not a septic tank."

Wireman shook his head. "He wouldn't have put them in a shitheap no matter how bad his mental state was. Never in a million years."

Jack looked from Wireman to me, his young face full of horror. "Adriana's down there? And the nanny?"

"Yes," I said. "I thought you understood that. But the most important thing is that Perse 's down there. And the reason I think it's a cistern is-"

"Elizabeth would have insisted on making sure the bitch was in a watery grave," Wireman said grimly. "A fresh -watery one."

vi

Charley was heavy, and the boards covering the hole in the high grass were more rotten than the steps of the ladder. Of course they were; unlike the ladder, the wooden cap had been directly exposed to the elements. We worked carefully in spite of the thickening shadows, not knowing how deep it was beneath. At last I was able to push the troublesome jockey far enough to one side so that Wireman and Jack could grab the slightly cocked blue legs. I stepped onto the rotted wooden cap in doing so; someone had to, and I was the lightest. It bent under my weight, gave out a long, warning groan, puffed up sour air.

"Get off it, Edgar!" Wireman yelled, and at the same instant Jack cried, "Grab it, oh whore, it's gonna fall through!"

They seized Charley as I stepped off the sagging cap, Wireman around the bent knees and Jack around the waist. For a moment I thought it was going to drop through anyway, dragging them both along. Then they gave a combined shout of effort and tumbled over backward with the lawn jockey on top of them. Its grinning face and red cap were covered with huge lumbering beetles. Several dropped off onto Jack's straining face, and one fell directly into Wireman's mouth. He screamed, spat it out, and leaped to his feet, still spitting and rubbing his lips. Jack was beside him a moment later, dancing around him in a circle and brushing the bugs off his shirt.

"Water!" Wireman bellowed. "Gimme the water, one of em got in my mouth, I could feel it crawling on my fucking tongue!"

"No water," I said, rummaging in the considerably depleted bag. Now on my knees, I could smell the air rising through the ragged hole in the cap far better than I wanted to. It was like air from a newly breached tomb. Which, of course, it was. "Pepsi."

"Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, Pepsi," Jack said. "No Coke." He laughed dazedly.

I handed Wireman a can of soda. He stared at it unbelievingly for a moment, then raked back the pull tab. He took a mouthful, spat it out in a brown and foamy spray, took another, then spat that one out. The rest of the can he drank in four long swallows.

"Ay, caramba," he said. "You're a hard man, Van Gogh."

I was looking at Jack. "What do you think? Can we shift it?"

Jack studied it, then fell on his knees and began to tear away the vines clinging to the sides. "Yeah," he said. "But we gotta get rid of this shit."

"We should have brought a crowbar," Wireman said. He was still spitting. I didn't blame him.

"Wouldn't have helped, I don't think," Jack said. "The wood's too rotted. Help me, Wireman." And when I fell on my knees beside him: "Don't bother, boss. This is a job for guys with two arms."

I felt another flash of anger at that - the old anger was very close now - and quelled it as best I could. I watched them work their way around the circular cap, tearing away the vines and the weeds as the light faded from the sky. A single bird cruised by with its wings folded. It was upside-down. You saw something like that and felt like checking into the nearest nuthouse. Preferably for a long stay.

The two of them were working opposite each other, and as Wireman neared the place where Jack had begun and Jack neared the place where Wireman had begun, I said: "Is that speargun loaded, Jack?"

He looked up. "Yes. Why?"

"Because this is going to be a photo finish after all."

vii

Jack and Wireman knelt on one side of the cap. I knelt on the other. Above us, the sky had deepened to an indigo that would soon be violet. "My count," Wireman said. "Uno... dos... TRES!" They pulled and I pushed as well as I could with my remaining arm. That was pretty well, because my remaining arm had grown strong during my months on Duma Key. For a moment the cap resisted. Then it slid toward Wireman and Jack, revealing a crescent of darkness - a black and welcoming smile. This thickened to a half-moon, then a full circle.

Jack stood up. So did Wireman. He was checking his hands for more bugs. "I know how you feel," I said, "but I don't think we have time for you to do a full delousing."

"Point taken, but unless you've chewed on one of those maricones, you don't know how I feel."

"Tell us what to do, boss," Jack said. He was looking uneasily into the pit, from which that sallow stench was still issuing.

"Wireman, you have fired the speargun - right?"

"Yes, at targets. With Miss Eastlake. Didn't I say I was the marksman of the group?"

"Then you're on guard. Jack, shine that light."

I could see by his face that he didn't want to, but there was no choice - until this was done, there'd be no going back. And if it wasn't done, there'd never be any going back.

Not by the land route, at least.

He picked up the long-barreled flashlight, clicked it on, and shone the powerful beam down into the hole. "Ah, God," he whispered.

It was indeed a cistern lined with coral rock, but at some point during the last eighty years the ground had shifted, a fissure had opened - probably at the very bottom - and the water inside had leaked out. What we saw in the flashlight's beam was a damp, moss-lined gullet eight or ten feet deep and about five feet in diameter. Lying at the bottom, entwined in an embrace that had lasted eighty years, were two skeletons dressed in rotten rags. Beetles crawled busily around them. Whitish toads - small boys - hopped on the bones. A harpoon lay beside one skeleton. The tip of the second harpoon was still buried in Nan Melda's yellowing spine.

The light began to sway. Because the young man holding it was swaying.

"Don't you faint on us, Jack!" I said sharply. "That's an order!"

"I'm okay, boss." But his eyes were huge, glassy, and behind the flashlight - still not quite steady in his hand - his face was parchment white. "Really."

"Good. Shine it down there again. No, left. A little more... there."

It was one of the Table Whiskey kegs, now little more than a hump under a heavy shag of moss. One of those white toads was crouched on it. It looked up at me, lids nictitating malevolently.

Wireman glanced at his watch. "We have... I'm thinking maybe fifteen minutes before sundown. Could be a little more, could be less. So...?"

"So Jack puts the ladder into the hole, and down I go."

"Edgar... mi amigo... you have just one arm."

"She took my daughter. She murdered Ilse. You know this is my job."

"All right." Wireman looked at Jack. "Which leaves the watertight container question."

"Don't worry," he said, then picked up the ladder and handed me the flash. "Shine it down there, Edgar. I need both hands for what I'm doing."

It seemed to take him forever to get the ladder placed to his satisfaction, but finally the feet were on the bottom, between the bones of Nan Melda's outstretched arm (I could still see the silver bracelets, although now overgrown with moss) and one of Adie's legs. The ladder was really very short, and the top rung was two feet below ground-level. That was all right; Jack could steady me to begin with. I thought of asking him again about the container for the china figure, then didn't. He seemed completely at ease on that score, and I decided to trust him all the way. It was really too late to do otherwise.

In my head a voice, very low, almost meditative, said: Stop now and I'll let you go free.

"Never," I said.

Wireman looked at me without surprise. "You heard it, too, huh?"

viii

I lay on my stomach and backed into the hole. Jack gripped my shoulders. Wireman stood beside him with the loaded harpoon pistol in his hands and the three extra silvertips stuck in his belt. Between them, the flashlight lay on the ground, spraying a bright light into a tangle of uprooted weeds and vines.

The stench of the cistern was very strong, and I felt a tickling on my shin as something scurried up my leg. I should have tucked my pants cuffs into the tops of my boots, but it was a little late to go back and start over.

"Do you feel the ladder?" Jack asked. "Are you there yet?"

"No, I..." Then my foot touched the top rung. "There it is. Hang on."

"I've gotcha, don't worry."

Come down here and I'll kill you.

"Go on and try," I said. "I'm coming for you, you birch, so take your best shot."

I felt Jack's hands tighten spasmodically on my shoulders. "Jesus, boss, are you s-"

"I'm sure. Just hold on."

There were half a dozen rungs on the ladder. Jack was able to hold onto my shoulders until I'd gotten down three, and then I was chest-deep. He offered me the flashlight. I shook my head. "Use it to spot me."

"You don't get it. You don't need it for light, you need it for her."

For a minute I still didn't get it.

"Unscrew the lens cap. Take out the batteries. Put her inside. I'll hand you down the water."

Wireman laughed without humor. "Wireman likes it, ni o." Then he bent to me. "Now go on. Bitch or birch, drown her and let's have done with her."

ix

The fourth rung snapped. The ladder tilted, and I fell off with the flashlight still clamped between my side and my stump, first shining up at the darkening sky, then illuminating lumps of coral coated with moss. My head connected with one of these and I saw stars. A moment later I was lying on a jagged bed of bones and staring into Adriana Eastlake Paulson's eternal grin. One of those pallid toads leaped at me from between her mossy teeth and I batted at it with the barrel of the flashlight.

"Muchacho!" Wireman shouted, and Jack added, "Boss, are you all right!"