He was warming up by the bottom of the first page. By the bottom of the second he was in high gear.
After awhile Annie turned off the vacuum cleaner and stood in the doorway, watching him. Paul had no idea she was there — had no idea, in fact, that he was. He had finally escaped. He was in Little Dunthorpe's churchyard, breathing damp night air, smelling moss and earth and mist; he heard the clock in the tower of the Presbyterian church strike two and dumped it into the story without missing a beat. When it was very good, he could see through the paper. He could see through it now.
Annie watched him for a long time, her heavy face unsmiling, moveless, but somehow satisfied.
After awhile she went away. Her tread was heavy, but Paul didn't hear that, either.
He worked until three o'clock that afternoon, and at eight that night he asked her to help him back into the wheelchair again. He wrote another three hours, although by ten o'clock the pain had begun to be quite bad. Annie came in at eleven. He asked for another fifteen minutes.
'No, Paul, it's enough. You're white as salt.'
She got him into bed and he was asleep in three minutes. He slept the whole night through for the first time since coming out of the gray cloud, and his sleep was for the first time utterly without dreams.
He had been dreaming awake.
6
MISERY'S RETURN
By Paul Sheldon
For Annie Wilkes
CHAPTER 1
For a moment Geoffrey Alliburton was not sure who the old man at the door was, and this was not entirely because the bell had awakened him from a
deepening doze. The irritating thing about village life, he thought, was that there
weren't enough people for there to be any perfect strangers instead there were
just enough to keep one from knowing immediately who many of the villagers
were. Sometimes all one really had to go on was a family resemblance -- and
such resemblances, of course, never precluded the unlikely but hardly impossible
coincidence of bastardy. One could usually handle such moments -- no matter how
much one might feel one was entering one's dotage while trying to maintain an
ordinary conversation with a person whose name one should be able to recall but
could not; things only reached the more cosmic realms of embarrassment when
two such familiar faces arrived at the same time, and one felt called upon to
make introductions.
"I hope I'll not be disturber' ye, sair," this visitor said. He was twisting a cheap cloth cap restlessly in his hands, and in the light cast by the lamp
Geoffrey held up, his face looked lined and yellow and terribly worried --
frightened, even. "It's just that I didn't want to go to Dr. Bookings, nor did I want to disturb His Lordship. Not, at least, until I'd spoken to you, if ye take
my meaning, sair."
Geoffrey didn't, but quite suddenly he did know one thing -- who this late-
coming visitor was. The mention of Dr. Bookings, the C of E Minister, had done
it. Three days ago Dr. Bookings had performed Misery's few last rites in the
churchyard which lay behind the rectory, and this fellow had been there -- but
lurking considerately in the background, where he was less apt to be noticed.
His name was Colter. He was one of the church sextons. To be brutally
frank, the man was a gravedigger.
"Colter," he said. "What can I do for you?"
Colter spoke hesitantly. "It's the noises, sair. The noises in the churchyard.
Her Ladyship rests not easy, sair, so she doesn't, and I'm afeard. I -- "
Geoffrey felt as if someone had punched him i n the midsection. He pulled in
a gasp of air and hot pain needled his side, where his ribs had beers tightly
taped by Dr. Shinebone. Shinebone's gloomy assessment had been that Geoffrey
would almost certainly take pneumonia after lying in that ditch all night in the
chilly rain, but three days had passed and there had been no onset of fever and
coughing. He had known there would not be; God did not let off the guilty so easily. He believed that God would let him live to perpetuate his poor lost
darling's memory for a long, long time.
"Are ye all 'right, sair?" Colter asked. "I heard ye were turrible bunged up t'other night.'' He paused. "The night herself died."
"I'm fine," Geoffrey said slowly. "Colter, these sounds you say you hear . .
. you know they are just imaginings, don't you?"
Colter looked shocked.
"Imaginings?" he asked. "Sair! Next ye'll be tellin me ye have no belief in Jesus and the life everlastin'! Why, didn't Duncan Fromsley see old man Patterson
not two days after his funeral, glowin' just as white as marsh-fire (which was
just what it probably was, Geoffrey thought, marsh-fire plus whatever came out
of old Fromsley's last bottle)? And ain't half the bleedin' town seen that old