Gerald’s Game

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

At this point the Jessie handcuffed to the bed in the summer house on the north shore of Kashwakamak Lake, the Jessie who was not ten but thirty-nine and a widow of almost twelve hours, suddenly realized two things; that she was asleep, and that she was not so much dreaming about the day of the eclipse as reliving it. She had gone on awhile thinking it was a dream, only a dream, like her dream of Will’s birthday party, where most of the guests had either been dead or people she wouldn’t actually meet for years. This new mindmovie had the surreal-but-sensible quality of the earlier one, but that was an untrustworthy yardstick because that whole day had been surreal and dreamlike. First the eclipse, and then her father-

No more, Jessie decided. No more, I’m getting out of this.

She made a convulsive effort to rise out of the dream or retollection or whatever it was. Her mental effort translated into a wholebody twitch, and the handcuff chains jingled mutedly as she twisted violently from side to side. She almost made it; for a moment she was almost out. And she could have made it, would have made it, if she hadn’t thought better of it at the last moment. What stopped her was an inarticulate but overwhelming terror of a shape-some waiting shape that might make what had happened that day on the deck seem insignificant by comparison… if she had to face it, that was.

But maybe I don’t have to. Not yet.

And perhaps the urge to hide in sleep wasn’t all-there might have been something else, as well. Some part of her that intended to have this out in the open once and for all, no matter what the cost.

She sank back down on the pillow, eyes closed, arms held up and sacrificially spread, her face pale and tight with strain.

“Especially you girls,” she whispered into the darkness. “Especially all you girls.”

She sank back on the pillow, and the day of the eclipse claimed her again.