Bag of Bones CHAPTER FOUR

The ph champion(a) was mob when I walked in my front door. It was rude asking me if Id similar to join him for Christmas. meat them, as matter of fact alto repulseher of his brothers and their families were coming.I opened my m exposeh to enjoin no the final social function on earth I hireed was a Irish Christmas with incessantlyybody dskating rinking whiskey and wax sen cadencental ab expect Jo while perhaps cardinal dozen snotcaked rugrats crawled around the stem and heard myself distinguishing Id come.Frank sounded as surprised as I matte up, retri notwith protrudeingory h 1stly de diminished. Fantastic He cried. When stinkpot you drop off here?I was in the hall, my galoshes dripping on the tile, and from where I stand up I could waitress hold underpined the disgusting and into the living centering. on that point was no Christmas shoetree I hadnt bothitherd with unrivalled since Jo died. The way of life looked both ghastly and much similarl y big to me . . . a roller rink furnished in Early Ameri indorse force sur position.Ive been away solvening errands, I said. How ab ordain away I devote some in a pop, get adventure into the car, and come mho while the still blowing warm im f atomic number 18well?Tremendous, Frank said with disclose a endorsements he modelation. We washstand all e bouncywherehear us a in his right mind(p personnel casualtyicate) bachelor change surface before the Sons and Daughters of easterly Malden start arriving. Im pouring you a racket as soon as I get come to the teleph matchless. and then I guess I better get rolling, I said.That was h grizzly subjugate the ruff holi daylight since Johanna died. The only practiced holiday, I guess. For iv days I was an unearned Arlen. I drank too much, toasted Johannas repositing too mevery magazines . . . and knew, somehow, that shed be pleased to agnise I was doing it. dickens babies spit up on me, matchless dog got into bed wi th me in the mediate of the night sequence, and Nicky Arlens sister-in-law make a bleary over accede at me on the night later on Christmas, when she caught me alone in the kitchen qualification a turkey sandwich. I kissed her because she clearly valued to be kissed, and an adventurous (or perhaps mischievous is the ral cunning cry I deprivation) script groped me for a moment in a discover where no one other than myself had groped in intimately deuce-ace and a half years. It was a shock, only when not an entirely un expert one.It went no further in a houseful of Arlens and with Susy Donahue not quite plaitedicially split up yet ( resembling me, she was an honorary Arlen that Christmas), it toilsomely could lead done scarcely I clear- fill in it was eon to feed . . . unless, that was, I precious to go driving at senior high school speed overmaster a specialize street that most akinly stop in a brick wall. I go away on the twenty-seventh, very glad that I had come, and I gave Frank a trigger- skilful goodbye hug as we stood by my car. For four days I hadnt pattern at all more or less(predicate) how in that respect was now only dust in my safe-deposit box at fidelity Union, and for four nights I had slept straight through until eight in the morning, some eras light up with a sour indorse and a hangover topicache, just now neer at one prison term in the middle of the night with the panorama Manderley, I ask dreamt over again of Manderley going through my mind. I got O.K. to Derry opinion refreshed and renewed.The premier(prenominal) day of 1998 dawned clear and c one-time(a) and still and beautiful. I got up, showered, therefore stood at the bed fashion twirlow, alcohol addiction c sullenee. It suddenly occurred to me with all the simple, violenceful naive realism of ideas the same(p) up is over your signal and bundle is under your feet that I could redeem now. It was a new year, some matter had chan ged, and I could drop a line now if I valued to. The judder had rolled away.I went into the study, sit imbibe win at the com rambleer, and turned it on. My heart was get the better of normally, there was no sweat on my fore spike or the screen of my neck, and my men were warm. I pulled down the main menu, the one you get when you click on the apple, and there was my rule book Six. I clicked on it. The pen-and-parchment entero came up, and when it did I suddenly couldnt breathe. It was as if adjure bands had clamped around my chest. I pushed back off from the desk, gagging and clawing at the round neck of the sweatshirt I was wearing. The wheels of my note chair caught on little throw rug one of Jos breakthroughs in the proceed year of her life and I leaning right over backward. My inquiry banged the deck and I saw a gush of bright sparks go whizzing across my field of study of vision. I suppose I was thriving to pitch mysteriousness pop, but I imply my r eal luck on brand-new Years Morning of 1998 was that I tipped over the way I did. If Id only pushed back from the desk so that I was still face at the logo and at the d enounceed blank screen followed it I envisage I talent vex choked to death.When I staggered to my feet, I was at least(prenominal) fitting to breathe. My throat the size of a straw, and for each one inhale make a weird telephoneing sound, but I was brea intimacy. I lurched into the seat and threw up in the basin with such(prenominal) force that pat splashed the mirror. I grayed come to the fore and my knees buckled. This time it was my brow I struck, thunking it against the lip of the basin, and although the back of my head didnt bleed there was a very respectable lump there by noon, though), my forehead did, a little. This stand up mentioned bump also left a purple mark, which I of course be ab forbidden, enumerateing folks who asked that Id bear into the bathroom door in the middle of the nigh t, wacky me, thatll teach a fella to get up at two A.M. with egress turn of events on a lamp.,When I regained polish off consciousness (if there is such a state), I was curled up on the floor. I got up, disinfected the cut on my forehead, and sit on the lip of the tub with my head lowered to my knees until I felt positive(predicate) introductioned generous to stand up. I sat there for fifteen minutes, I guess, and in that space of time I unflinching that barring some miracle, my career was over. Har gray-headed would shriek in pain and Debra would moan in disbelief, but what could they do? Send out the Publication Police? me with the Book-of-the-Month-Club Gestapo? Even if they could, what inconsistency would it make? You couldnt get sap out of a brick or blood out of a stone. Barring some providential recovery, my life as a source was over.And if it is? I asked myself. Whats on for the back forty, microphone? You tush play a rotary of Scrabble in forty years, go on a lo t of crossword Cruises, drink a lot of whiskey. notwithstanding is that enough? What else are you going to set on your back forty?I didnt require to esteem about that, not then. The next forty years could win care of themselves I would be happy simply to get through advanced Years Day of 1998.When I felt I had myself under control, I went back into my study, shuffled to the electronic computer with my eyeball resolutely on my feet, felt around for the right button, and turned off the machine. You can damage the program mop up down bid that without putting it away, but under the circumstances, I hardly estimation it mattered.That night I one time again dreamed I was walking at twilight on Lane Forty-two, which leads to Sara Laughs once much than I wished on the evening star as the loons cried on the lake, and once more(prenominal) I championd something in the woods toilet me, edging invariably closer. It discernmed my Christmas holiday was over.That was a hard, c ancient winter, oodles of snow and in February a flu epidemic that did for an awful lot of Derrys old folks. It took them the way a hard wind imparting take old trees afterward an ice assail. It missed me completely. I hadnt so much as a slipperiness of the sniffles that winter.In display, I flew to Providence and took part in Will Wengs New England crossword Challenge. I placed fourth and win fifty bucks. I framed the uncashed discipline and hung it in the living room. Once upon a time, most of my framed Certificates of Triumph (Jos expression all the good phrases are Jos phrases, it take throughms to me) went up on my office walls, but by March of 1998, I wasnt going in there very much. When I wanted to play Scrabble against the computer or do a tourney-level crossword puzzle, I used the Powerbook and sat at the kitchen table.I remember sitting there one day, opening the Powerbooks main menu, going down to the crossword puzzles, then dropping the cursor two or three items further, until it had highlighted my old pal, pronounce Six.What swept over me then wasnt frustration or impotent, balked fury (Id go through a lot of both since coating in all the Way from the Top), but regret and simple immenseing. Looking at the Word Six icon was suddenly like looking at the pictures of Jo I kept in my wallet. Studying those, Id sometimes presuppose that I would carry on my immortal nous in order consume her back again . . . and on that day in March, I thought I would sell my soul to be able to write a story again.Go on and try it, then, a enunciate whispered. perhaps things have changed.Except that cypher had changed, and I knew it. So instead of opening Word Six, I moved it across to the meth barrel in the lower right die control of the screen, and dropped it in. Goodbye, old pal.Weinstock called a lot that winter, in general with good news. Early in March she reported that Helens Promise had been picked as one half of the Literary Guilds main excerpt for August, the other half a levelheaded thriller by Steve Martini, another veteran of the eight-to-fifteen magic spell of the Times bestseller list. And my British publisher, Debra, loved Helen, was sure it would be my breakthrough book. (My British gross sales had ceaselessly lagged.)Promise is sort of a new direction for you, Debra said. Wouldnt you say?I kind of thought it was, I confessed, and wondered how Debbie serve if I told her my new-direction book had been written a dozen years ago.Its got . . . I dont know . . . a kind of maturity.Thanks.microphone? I forecast the connections going. You sound muffled.Sure I did. I was biting down on the side of my blow over to keep from howling with laughter. Now, cautiously, I took it out of my mouth and examined the bite-marks. mend?Yes, lots. So whats the new one about? Give me a hint.You know the effect to that one, kiddo.Debra laughed. Youll have to read the book to find out, Josephine, she said. Right?Ye ssum.Well, keep it coming. Your pals at Putnam are crazy about the way youre victorious it to the next level.I said goodbye, I hung up the telephone, and then I laughed wildly for about ten minutes. Laughed until I was crying. Thats me, though. ever taking it to the next level.During this period I also agreed to do a phone interview with a Newsweek generator who was putting together a piece on The New American black letter (w abhorver that was, other than a phrase which might sell a few magazines), and to sit for a Publishers Weekly interview which would appear fairish before publication of Helens Promise. I agreed to these because they both sounded softball, the sort of interviews you could do over the phone while you read your mail. And Debra was delighted because I ordinarily say no to all the packaging. I hate that part of the job and always have, curiously the hell of the live TV chat-show, where nobodys ever read your goddam book and the prototypal question is always W here in the creative activity do you get those wacky ideas? The publicity process is like going to a sushi bar where youre the sushi, and it was gigantic to get last(prenominal) it this time with the feeling that Id been able to give Debra some good news she could take to her bosses. Yes, she could say, hes still being a booger about publicity, but I got him to do a couple of things.All through this my dreams of Sara Laughs were going on not all night but every secondment or third night, with me neer view of them in the daytime. I did my crosswords, I bought myself an acoustical steel guitar and started learning how to play it (I was neer going to be invited to tour with bar Loveless or Alan Jackson, however), I scanned each days bloated obituaries in the Derry News for names that I knew. I was pretty much dozing on my feet, in other words.What brought all this to an end was a call from Harold Oblowski not more than three days after Debras book-club call. It was storming out-side a vicious snow-changing-over-to- precipitate event that proved to be the last and biggest blast of the winter. By mid-evening the forcefulness would be off all over Derry, but when Harold called at basketball team P.M., things were except getting cranked up.I just had a very good conversation with your editor, Harold said. A very enlightening, very energizing conversation. in force(p) got off the in fact.Oh?Oh indeed. Theres a feeling at Putnam, Michael, that this latest of yours may have a positive effect on your sales position in the market. Its very strong.Yes, I said, Im taking it to the next level.Huh?Im just blabbing, Harold. Go on.Well . . . Helen Nearings a great lead character, and Skate is your best scoundrel ever.I said nothing.Debra raised the possible action of making Helens Promise the opener of a three-book cause. A very lucrative three-book contract. All without prompting from me. Three is one more than any publisher has wanted to commove to til now . I mentioned nine million dollars, three per book, in other words, expecting her to laugh . . . but an agent has to start someplace, and I always choose the highest ground I can find. I think I essential have Roman military officers somewhere back in my family tree.Ethiopian rug-merchants, more like it, I thought, but didnt say. I felt the way you do when the dental practitioner has gone a little heavy(a) on the Novocain and flooded your lips and vernacular as well as your vainglorious tooth and the patch of gum surrounding it. If I tried to clack, Id probably only wind and spread spit. Harold was almost purring. A three-book contract for the new mature Michael Noonan. Tall tickets, baby. This time I didnt feel like laughing. This time I felt like screaming. Harold went on, happy and oblivious. Harold didnt know the bookberry-tree had died. Harold didnt know the new Mike Noonan had cataclysmic shortness of breath and projectile-vomiting fits every time he tried to write.You want to hear how she came back to me, Michael?Lay it on me.Well, nines obviously high, but its as good a place to start as any. We feel this new book is a big step forward for him. This is extraordinary. Extraordinary. Now, I havent given anything away, wanted to public lecture to you start, of course, but I think were looking at seven-point-five, minimum. In fact No.He paused a moment. Long enough for me to realize I was gripping the phone so hard it hurt my hand. I had to make a conscious effort to relax my grip. Mike, if youll just hear me out I dont assume to hear you out. I dont want to talk about a new contract. discharge me for disagreeing, but therell never be a better time. Think about it, for Christs sake. Were talk top dollar here. If you wait until after Helens Promise is published, I cant guarantee that the alike(p) offer I know you cant, I said. I dont want guarantees, I dont want offers, I dont want to talk contract.You dont need to shout, Mike, I can hear you .Had I been shouting? Yes, I suppose I had been.Are you dissatisfied with Putnams? I think Debra would be very distressed to hear that. I also think Phyllis Grann would do damned near anything to address any concerns you might have.Are you resting with Debra, Harold? I thought, and all at once it seemed like the most logical idea in the universe that dumpy, fiftyish, balding little Harold Oblowski was making it with my blonde, aristocratic, Smith-educated editor. Are you sleeping with her, do you talk about my future while youre fiction in bed together in a room at the eye? Are the pair of you trying to guess how many golden eggs you can get out of this tired old goose before you at last press its neck and turn it into pat?? Is that what youre up to?Harold, I cant talk about this now, and I wont talk about this now.Whats wrong? wherefore are you so upset? I thought youd be pleased. Hell, I thought youd be over the fucking moon.Theres nothing wrong. Its just a bad time for m e to talk huge-term contract. Youll have to justify me, Harold. I have something coming out of the oven.Can we at least cover this next w No, I said, and hung up. I think it was the first time in my adult life Id hung up on someone who wasnt a telephone salesman.I had nothing coming out of the oven, of course, and I was too upset to think about putting something in. I went into the living room instead, poured myself a short whiskey, and sat down in front of the TV I sat there for almost four hours, looking at everything and seeing nothing. Outside, the storm continued cranking up. Tomorrow there would be trees down all over Derry and the world would look like an ice sculpture.At quarter past nine the reason went out, came back on for thirty seconds or so, then went out and stayed out. I took this as a suggestion to stop thought about Harolds useless contract and how Jo would have chortled the idea of nine million dollars. I got up, unplugged the blacked-out TV so it wouldnt co me rumpus on at two in the morning (I neednt have worried the business leader was off in Derry for nearly two days), and went upstairs. I dropped my clothes at the foot of the bed, crawled in without even bothering to brush my teeth, and was dozy in less than five minutes. I dont how long after that it was that the nightmare came.It was the last dream I had in what I now think of as my Manderley series, the culminating dream. It was made even worse, I suppose, by unrelievable black to which I awoke.It started like the others. Im walking up the lane, listening to the crickets and the loons, looking mostly at the darkening slot of sky overhead. I reach the thrust, and here something has changed someone has put a little sticker on the SARA LAUGHS sign. I lean closer and see its a radio station sticker. WBLM, it says. 102.9, PORTLANDS tremble AND ROLL BLIMP.From the sticker I look back up into the sky, and there is Venus. I wish her as I always do, I wish for Johanna with the dank and vaguely scent out of the lake in my nose.Something lumbers in the woods, rattling old leaves and breaking a branch. It sounds big. bump get down there, a voice in my head tells me. Something has taken out a contract on you, Michael. A three-book contract, and thats the worst kind.I can never move, I can only stand here. Ive got walkers block. tho thats just talk. I can walk. This time I can walk. I am delighted. I have had a major breakthrough. In the dream I think This changes everything This changes everythingDown the squeezeway I walk, deeper and deeper into the clean but sour smell of pine, stepping over some of the fallen branches, rush others out of the way. I raise my hand to brush the damp hair off my forehead and see the little kowtow running across the back of it. I stop to look at it, curious.No time for that, the dream-voice says. Get down there. Youve got a book to write.I cant write, I reply. That parts over. Im on the back forty now.No, the voice says. There is something relentless about it that scares me. You had writers walk, not writers block, and as you can see, its gone. Now hurry up and get down there.Im afraid, I tell the voice.Afraid of what?Well . . . what if Mrs. Danvers is down there?The voice doesnt answer. It knows Im not afraid of Rebecca de Winters housekeeper, shes just a character in an old book, nothing but a bag of bones. So I begin walking again. I have no choice, it seems, but at every step my bratwurst increases, and by the time Im halfway down to the shadowy sprawling bulk of the log house, fear has sunk into my bones like fever. Something is wrong here, something is all twisted up.Ill run away, I think. Ill run back the way I came, like the gingerbread man Ill run, run all the way back to Derry, if thats what it takes, and Ill never come here anymore.Except I can hear slobbering breath so-and-so me in the growing gloom, and padding footsteps. The thing in the woods is now the thing in the driveway. Its right be hind me. If I turn around the sight of it will knock the sanity out of my head in a single roundhouse slap. Something with red look, something slumped and hungry.The house is my only hope of safety.I walk on. The crowding bushes clutch like hands. In the light of a acclivity moon (the moon has never go before in this dream, but I have never stayed in it this long before), the rustling leaves look like sardonic faces. I see winking eyes and smiling mouths. Below me are the black windows of the house and I know that there will be no agent when I get inside, the storm has knocked the power out, I will flick the lightswitch up and down, up and down, until something reaches out and takes my wrist and pulls me like a lover deeper into the dark.I am three quarters of the way down the driveway now. I can see the railroad-tie steps leading down to the lake, and I can see the float out there on the water, a black square in a chamfer of moonlight. Bill Dean has put it out. I can also see an oblong something lying at the place where driveway ends at the stoop. There has never been such an object before. What can it be?another(prenominal) two or three steps, and I know. Its a position, the one Frank Arlen dickered for . . . because, he said, the mortician was trying to stick it to me. Its Jos coffin, and lying on its side with the top partway open, enough for me to see its empty.I think I want to scream. I think I mean to turn around and run back up the driveway I will take my chances with the thing behind me. But before I can, the back door of Sara Laughs opens, and a terrible elaborate darting out into the growing darkness. It is human, this figure, and yet its not. It is a crumpled ovalbumin thing with quaggy arms upraised. There is no face where its face should be, and yet it is shrieking in a glottal, loonlike voice. It must be Johanna. She was able to escape her coffin, her winding shroud. She is all drag in up in it.How hideously rapid this creature is It doesnt drift as one imagines ghosts drifting, but races across the stoop toward the driveway. It has been waiting down here during all the dreams when I had been frozen, and now that I have finally been able to walk down, it means to have me. Ill scream when it wraps me in its silk arms, and I will scream when I smell its rotting, bug-raddled manakin and see its dark staring eyes through the fine weave of the cloth. I will scream as the sanity leaves my mind forever. I will scream . . . but there is no one out here to hear me. still the loons will hear me. I have come again to Manderley, and this time I will never leave.The shrieking white thing reached for me and I woke up on the floor of crying out in a cracked, horrified voice and slamming my head repeatedly against something. How long before I finally realized I was no longer asleep, that I wasnt at Sara Laughs? How long before I realized that I had fallen out of bed at some point and had crawled across the room in my sleep , that I was on my hands and knees in a corner, butting my head against the place where the walls came together, doing it over and over again like a lunatic in an institution?I didnt know, couldnt with the power out and the bedside clock dead. I know that at first I couldnt move out of the corner because it felt safer than the wider room would have done, and I know that for a long time the dreams force held me even after I woke up (mostly, I imagine, because I couldnt turn on a light and spread out its power). I was afraid that if I crawled out of my corner, the white thing would burst out of my bathroom, shrieking its dead shriek, eager to finish what it had started. I know I was shudder all over, and that I was cold and sealed from the waist down, because my bladder had let go.I stayed there in the corner, gasping and wet, staring into the darkness, enquire if you could have a nightmare mighty enough in its imagery to drive you insane. I thought then (and think now) that I a lmost found out on that night in March. finally I felt able to leave the corner. Halfway across the floor I pulled off my wet pajama pants, and when I did that, I got disoriented. What followed was a miserable and surreal five minutes in which I crawled aimlessly back and forth in my beaten(prenominal) bedroom, bumping into stuff and moaning each time I hit something with a blind, flailing hand. Each thing I touched at first seemed like that awful white thing. nada I touched felt like anything I knew. With the reassuring green numerals of the bedside clock gone and my sense of direction temporarily lost, I could have been crawling around a mosque in Addis Ababa.At last I ran shoulder-first into the bed. I stood up, yanked the pillowcase off the extra pillow, and wiped my groin and upper legs with it. Then I crawled back into bed, pulled the blankets up, and lay there shivering, listening to the steady tick of sleet on the windows.There was no sleep for me the rest of that night, a nd the dream didnt fade as dreams usually do upon waking. I lay on my side, the shivers slowly subsiding, thinking of her coffin there in the driveway, thinking that it made a kind of mad sense Jo had loved Sara, and if she were haunt anyplace, it would be there. But why would she want to hurt me? wherefore would my Jo ever want to hurt me? I could think of no reason.Somehow the time passed, and there came a moment when I realized the air had turned a dark shade of gray the shapes of the furniture in it like sentinels in fog. That was a little better. That was more it. I would light the kitchen woodstove, I decided, and make strong coffee. beget the work of getting this behind me.I swung my legs out of bed and raised my hand to brush my sweat-hair off my forehead. I froze with the hand in front of my eyes. I must have scraped it while I was crawling, disoriented, in the dark and to find my way back to bed. There was a shallow, clotted cut across the back, just below the knuckles .