Desperation

by Stephen King

You know exactly, so don’t waste my time by being deliberately obtuse.

“It wasn’t really the cop who killed my mother and sister and Mary’s husband,” David said, and gave Johnny a look that reminded him eerily of Terry. That look used to drive him to the edge of insanity. You know what I’m talking about, it said. You know exactly, so don’t waste my time by being deliberately obtuse. “And whoever I talked to while I was unconscious, it was really God. Only God can’t come to people as himself; he’d scare them to death and never get any business done at all. He comes as other stuff. Birds, pillars of fire, burning bushes, whirlwinds . . .”

“You may want to pack your suitcases and travel Trans-God Airways with David, but I think I’ll pass.”

listening, Johnny was afraid, was only where it would start.

If it wasn’t for David, I think your personal bus would have crashed already, Terry said from Der Bitchen Bunker inside his head. I think you’d be dead and hung up on a hook somewhere. Listen to him, Johnny. For Christ’s sake, listen!

“Then why did he bring us here in the first place?” “He didn’t.” “What?” “He thinks he did, but he didn’t.” “I don’t have any idea what you’re—” “God brought us,” David said. “To stop him.”

“You speak as if we all had the same God, David,” he said. “I don’t mean to patronize you, but I hardly think that’s the case.”

“You speak as if we all had the same God, David,” he said. “I don’t mean to patronize you, but I hardly think that’s the case.” “But it is the case,” David replied calmly. “Compared to Tak, you and a cannibal king would have the same God. You’ve seen the can tahs, I know you have. And you’ve felt what they can do.”

He went through Desperation like a whirlwind—shot people, stabbed them, beat them, pushed them out windows, ran them down with his car—but he still couldn’t just come up to us, any of us, and take out his gun and say ‘You’re coming with me.’

He was a big blond policeman with skin problems. He planted a bag of dope in my saddlebag and then beat the shit out of me.” “Yes. I know. The dope came from Mary’s car. He put something like nails in the road to get us. It’s funny, when you think about it—funny-weird, not ha-ha. He went through Desperation like a whirlwind—shot people, stabbed them, beat them, pushed them out windows, ran them down with his car—but he still couldn’t just come up to us, any of us, and take out his gun and say ‘You’re coming with me.’ He had to have a . . . I don’t know the word.” He looked at Johnny. “Pretext,” Steve’s erstwhile boss said. “Yes, right, a pretext. It’s like how, in the old horror movies, a vampire can’t just come in on his own. You have to invite him in.” “Why?” Cynthia asked. “Maybe because Entragian—the real Entragian—was still inside his head. Like a shadow. Or a person that’s locked out of his house but can still look in the windows and pound on the doors. Now Tak’s in my mother—what’s left of her—and it would kill us if it could . . . but it could probably still make the best Key lime pie in the world, too. If it wanted to.”

“That he took us and let other people go. He thinks he took us at random, like a little kid in a supermarket, just pulling any can that catches his eye off the shelf and dropping it into his mom’s cart, but that’s not what happened.”

“Him needing a pretext to take us doesn’t really matter. Many times what he does or says doesn’t matter—it’s nonsense, or impulse. Although there are clues. Always clues. He gives himself away, shows his real self, like someone who says what he sees in inkblots.” Steve asked, “If that doesn’t matter, what does?” “That he took us and let other people go. He thinks he took us at random, like a little kid in a supermarket, just pulling any can that catches his eye off the shelf and dropping it into his mom’s cart, but that’s not what happened.”

We had a mark on us that told our Angel of Death—this guy Entragian—to stop and grab instead of just going on by.”

“It’s like the Angel of Death in Egypt, isn’t it?” Cynthia said in a curiously flat voice. “Only in reverse. We had a mark on us that told our Angel of Death—this guy Entragian—to stop and grab instead of just going on by.” David nodded. “Yeah. He didn’t know it then, but he does now—mi him en tow, he’d say—our God is strong, our God is with us.”

“Now Tak wants us to go,” David said, “and he knows that we can go. Because of the free-will covenant.

God never makes us do what he wants us to do.

‘God says take what you want, and pay for it.’

What matters is that God never makes us do what he wants us to do. He tells us, that’s all, then steps back to see how it turns out. Reverend Martin’s wife came in and listened for awhile while he was talking about the free-will covenant. She said her mother had a motto: ‘God says take what you want, and pay for it.’ Tak’s opened the door back to Highway 50 . . . but that isn’t where we’re supposed to go. If we do go, if we leave Desperation without doing what God sent us here to do, we’ll pay the price.”

“I’ll stay no matter what, but to work, it really has to be all of us. We have to give our will over to God’s will, and we have to be ready to die. Because that’s what it might come to.”

“Stories have been my Achilles’ heel

“Billingsley told the legend, and like most legends, I guess, most of it was wrong. It wasn’t a cave-in that closed the China Shaft, that’s the first thing. The mine was brought down on purpose. And it didn’t happen in 1858, although that was when the first Chinese miners were brought in, but in September of 1859. Not forty Chinese down there when it happened but fifty-seven, not two white men but four. Sixty-one people in all. And the drift wasn’t a hundred and fifty feet deep, like Billingsley said, but nearly two hundred. Can you imagine? Two hundred feet deep in hornfels that could have fallen in on them at any moment.”

Inside the opening was a pile of those stone things. Thousands of them. Statues of certain animals, low animals, the timoh sen cah. Wolves, coyotes, snakes, spiders, rats, bats.

“At ten minutes past one on the afternoon of September twenty-first, the guys at the face broke through into what they at first thought was a cave. Inside the opening was a pile of those stone things. Thousands of them. Statues of certain animals, low animals, the timoh sen cah. Wolves, coyotes, snakes, spiders, rats, bats. The miners were amazed by these, and did the most natural thing in the world: bent over and picked them up.” “Bad idea,” Cynthia murmured. David nodded. “Some went crazy at once, turning on their friends—heck, turning on their relatives—and trying to rip their throats out. Others, not just the ones farther back in the shaft who didn’t actually handle the can tahs, but some who were close and actually did handle them, seemed all right, at least for awhile. Two of these were brothers from Tsingtao—Ch’an Lushan and Shih Lushan. Both saw through the break in the face and into the cave, which was really a kind of underground chamber. It was round, like the bottom of a well. The walls were made of faces, these stone animal faces. The faces of can taks, I think, although I’m not sure about that. There was a small kind of building to one side, the pirin moh—I don’t know what that means, I’m sorry—and in the middle, a round hole twelve feet across. Like a giant eye, or another well. A well in a well. Like the carvings, which are mostly animals with other animals in their mouths for tongues. Can tak in can tah, can tah in can tak.”

“That’s Tak’s place,” he said. “The ini, well of the worlds.” “I don’t understand you,” Steve said gently. David ignored him; it was still Marinville he seemed to be mostly talking to. “The force of evil from the ini filled the can tahs the same way the minerals fill the ground itself—blown into every particle of it, like smoke. And it filled the chamber I’m talking about the same way. It’s not smoke, but smoke is the best way to think about it, maybe. It affected the miners at different rates, like a disease germ. The ones who went nuts right away turned on the others. Some, their bodies started to change the way Audrey’s did at the end. Those were the ones who had touched the can tahs, sometimes picked up whole handfuls at once and then put them down so they could . . . you know . . . go at the others.

“The brothers felt it all around them, the stuff that was coming out of the chamber, but not as anything that was inside them, not then.

“The brothers felt it all around them, the stuff that was coming out of the chamber, but not as anything that was inside them, not then. One of the can tahs had fallen at Ch’an’s feet. He bent to pick it up, and Shih pulled him away. By then they were about the only ones left who seemed sane. Most of the others who weren’t affected right away had been killed, and there was a thing—like a snake made of smoke—coming out of the hole. It made a squealing sound, and the brothers ran from it. One of the white men was coming down the crosscut about sixty feet up, and he had his gun out. ‘What’s all the commotion about, chinkies?’ he asked.”

God was in them too, I think, the way he’s in us now. God could move them to his work, no matter if they were mi en tak or not, because—mi him en tow—our God is strong.

Yuan Ti had gone crazy, but that wasn’t all. He was bigger, so big he had to bend almost double in order to run up the shaft.

“Keroseners. They were like these little lighted boxes of oil you put on your forehead with a strip of rawhide. You’d fold a piece of cloth underneath to keep your skin from getting too hot. And then someone came running out of the darkness, someone they knew. It was Yuan Ti. He was a funny guy, I guess—he made animals out of pieces of cloth and then put on shows with them for the kids. Yuan Ti had gone crazy, but that wasn’t all. He was bigger, so big he had to bend almost double in order to run up the shaft. He was throwing rocks at them, calling them names in Mandarin, condemning their ancestors, commanding them to stop what they were doing. Shih shot him with the foreman’s gun. He had to shoot him a lot before Yuan Ti would lie down and be dead. But the others were coming, screaming for their blood. Tak knew what they were doing, you see.”

“I don’t think God has to possess, that’s what makes him God. I think they wanted what God wanted—to keep Tak in the earth.

the screams for help changed to yelling and howling. The sounds of . . . well, of people who weren’t really people at all anymore.

Right around the time the mining engineers were getting off the stage in Desperation, there were two cave-ins— real cave-ins, big ones—at the mine.

Right around the time the mining engineers were getting off the stage in Desperation, there were two cave-ins— real cave-ins, big ones—at the mine. The first was on the adit side of the hanging wall the Lushan brothers had pulled down. It sealed off the last sixty feet of the drift like a cork in a bottle. And the thump it made coming down—tons and tons of skarn and hornfels—set off another one, deeper in. That ended the screams, at least the ones close enough to the surface for people to hear. It was all over before the mining engineers got up from town in an ore-wagon. They looked, they sank some core rods, they listened to the story, and when they heard about the second cave-in, which people said shook the ground like an earthquake and made the horses rear up, they shook their heads and said there was probably nobody left alive to rescue. And even if there was, they’d be risking more lives than they could hope to save if they tried to go back in.”

And while all this was going on, the two China-boys who had escaped were out in the desert near Rose Rock, going mad.

They’d been out in the desert, calling animals to them . . .

They ate whatever came—bats, buzzards, spiders, rattlesnakes.”

life is more than just steering a course around pain.

Sitting in a circle around the mouth of the ini were coyotes and buzzards.

Well, there was Mary. It didn’t quite dare take her yet, not until it knew what the others were going to do.

Well, there was Mary. It didn’t quite dare take her yet, not until it knew what the others were going to do. If the writer won out and took them back to the highway, it would jump to Mary and take one of the ATVs (loaded down with as many can tahs as it could transport) up into the hills. It already knew where to go: Alphaville, a vegan commune in the Desatoyas. They wouldn’t be vegans for long after Tak arrived. If the wretched little prayboy prevailed and they came south, Mary might serve as bait. Or as a hostage. She would serve as neither, however, if the prayboy sensed she was no longer human.

It sat down on the edge of the ini and stared into it.

It sat down on the edge of the ini and stared into it. The ini was shaped like a funnel, its rough walls sliding in toward each other until, twenty-five or thirty-feet down, nothing was left of the mouth’s twelve-foot diameter but a hole less than an inch across. Baleful scarlet light, almost too bright to look at, stormed out of this hole in pulses. It was a hole like an eye.

Tak had hoped looking into the ini would be calming, would help it decide what to do next (for the ini was where it really lived; Ellen Carver was just an outpost), but it only seemed to increase its disquiet.

Looking back, it saw clearly that some other force had perhaps been working against it from the start.

The others would be weakened by their doubts, the boy would be weakened by his human concerns—especially his concern for his mother—and if the boy died, it could close the door to the outside again, close it with a bang, and then take the others.

It was afraid of the boy, especially in its current weakness. Most of all it was terrified of being completely shut up beyond the narrow throat of the ini again, like a genie in a bottle. But that didn’t have to be. Even if the boy brought them, it didn’t have to be. The others would be weakened by their doubts, the boy would be weakened by his human concerns—especially his concern for his mother—and if the boy died, it could close the door to the outside again, close it with a bang, and then take the others. The writer and the boy’s father would have to die, but the two younger ones it would try to sedate and save. Later, it might very well want to use their bodies. It rocked forward, oblivious to the blood squelching between Ellen’s thighs, as it had been oblivious of the teeth falling out of Ellen’s head or the three knuckles that had exploded like pine-knots in a fireplace when it had clipped Mary on the chin. It looked into the funnel of the well, and the constricted red eye at the bottom. The eye of Tak. The boy could die. He was, after all, only a boy . . . not a demon, a god, or a savior.

From below, deep in the humming red silence of the ini, came the wet-tongue sound of something slithering.

Tak leaned farther over the funnel with its jagged crystal sides and murky reddish light. Now it could hear a sound, very faint—a kind of low, atonal humming. It was an idiot sound . . . but it was also wonderful, compelling. It closed its stolen eyes and breathed deeply, sucking at the force it felt, trying to get as much inside as it could, wanting to slow—at least temporarily—this body’s degeneration. It would need Ellen awhile longer. And besides, now it felt the ini’s peace. At last. “Tak,” it whispered into the darkness. “Tak en tow ini, tak ah lah, tak ah wan.” Then it was silent. From below, deep in the humming red silence of the ini, came the wet-tongue sound of something slithering.

Pie’s dead, and Mr. Billingsley, and everyone else in Desperation, because one man hated the Mining Safety and Health Administration and another was too curious and hated being tied to his desk.

The man who hates MSHA is Cary Ripton, pit-foreman of the new Rattlesnake operation.

When Kirk Turner runs into the field office this afternoon, face blazing with excitement, to tell him that the last blast-pattern has uncovered an old drift-mine and that there are bones inside, they can see them, Ripton’s first impulse is to tell him to organize a party of volunteers, they’re going in.

he sees a ribcage which is almost certainly human. Farther back, tantalizingly close but still just a little too far for even a powerful flashlight to show clearly, is something that could be a skull.

There are at least nine red-letter regulations expressly forbidding entry into “unsafe and unimproved structures.” Which this of course is.

Turner wants to take some pictures of the exposed drift after he clocks out. Ripton lets him. It seems the quickest way to get rid of him.

early the next morning, around two o’clock, a much larger version of Cary Ripton will enter the bedroom Turner shares with his wife and shoot the man as he sleeps. His wife, too. Tak!

“You ain’t gonna do nothin dumb after I’m gone, are you?” Turner asks. “Nope,” Ripton says. “I have too much damned respect for Mining Safety to even think of such a thing.” “Yeah, right,” Turner says, laughing, and early the next morning, around two o’clock, a much larger version of Cary Ripton will enter the bedroom Turner shares with his wife and shoot the man as he sleeps. His wife, too. Tak!

He spends most of the night placing these relics, leaving them in odd corners, mailboxes, glove compartments.

Each of the animals coming out of the China Shaft carries a can tah in its mouth.

The can tahs are useful in many ways, but they spoil a man or woman for Tak’s greater work.

Ripton calls the Owl’s Club in town. The Owl’s is open twenty-four hours a day (although, like a vampire, it’s never really alive). It’s where Brad Josephson, he of the gorgeous chocolate skin and long, sloping gut, eats breakfast six days a week . . . and always at this brutally early hour. That will come in handy now. Ripton wants Brad on hand, and quickly, before the black man can be polluted by the can tahs. The can tahs are useful in many ways, but they spoil a man or woman for Tak’s greater work. Ripton knows he can take someone from Martinez’s crew if he needs to, perhaps even Pascal himself, but he wants (well, Tak wants, actually) Brad. Brad will be useful in other ways.

How long do the bodies last if they’re healthy? he asks himself as he approaches the phone. How long if the one you push into overdrive hasn’t been incubating a juicy case of cancer to start with?

Ripton leans back against the poster taped up in the corner, the one showing a dirty miner pointing like Uncle Sam and saying GO AHEAD, BAN MINING, LET THE BASTARDS FREEZE IN THE DARK!

he spreads his arms like an evangelist and speaks to the animals in the language of the unformed. All of them either fly away or withdraw into the mine. It will not do for Brad Josephson to see them. No, that would not do at all.

Josephson squawks indignantly. Later he will be scared, and still later he’ll be terrified,

“Come in here,” Ripton says. “Got something to show you.” “Something you brought out?” “That’s right,” Ripton says, and in a way it’s true, in a way he does want to show Brad something he brought out. Josephson is still frowning down at his swinging cameras, trying to sort out the straps, when Ripton grabs him and throws him to the back of the room. Josephson squawks indignantly. Later he will be scared, and still later he’ll be terrified, but right now he hasn’t noticed Joe Prudum’s body and is only indignant. “For the last time, cool your jets!” Ripton says as he steps outside and locks the door. “Gosh! Relax!”

Ripton sticks the shotgun out the window, still smiling, and shoots both of them.

Pretty soon Pascal Martínez shows up for some of that good old Saturday-morning time and a half. He’s got Miguel Rivera, his amigo, with him. Ripton waves. Pascal waves back. He parks on the other side of the field office, and then he and Mig walk around to see what Ripton’s doing here on Saturday morning, and at this ungodly hour. Ripton sticks the shotgun out the window, still smiling, and shoots both of them.

By seven forty-five, Ripton has killed everyone on Pascal Martínez’s A-crew.