Desperation

by Stephen King

God help me, he thought. It didn’t seem like a prayer; it was maybe too scared and up against it to be a prayer. Please help me, don’t let me be stuck, please help me. Turn your head, the voice he sometimes heard now told him. As always, it spoke in an almost disinterested way, as if the things it was saying should have been self-evident, and as always David recognized it by the way it seemed to pass through him rather than to come from him. An image came to him then: hands pressing the front and back of a book, squeezing the pages together a little in spite of the boards and the binding. Could his head do that? David thought—or perhaps only hoped—that it could. But he would have to be in the right position. Turn your head, the voice had said. From somewhere behind him came a thick ripping sound, then Marinville’s voice, somehow amused, scared, and outraged all at the same time: “Do you know how much that thing cost?” David twisted around so he lay on his back instead of his side. Just having the pressure of the bar off his jaw was an incredible relief. Then he reached up and placed his palms against the bars. Is this right? No answer. So often there was no answer. Why was that? Because God is cruel, the Reverend Martin who kept school inside his head replied. God is cruel. I have popcorn, David, why don’t I make some? Maybe we can find one of those old horror movies on TV, something Universal, maybe even The Mummy. He pushed with his hands. At first nothing happened, but ...