Desperation

by Stephen King

That’s the song that was playing when you died, wasn’t it, Johnny?”

“The Rascals,” David said. “Only back then they were still the Young Rascals. Felix Cavaliere on vocals. Very cool. That’s the song that was playing when you died, wasn’t it, Johnny?” Images beginning to slide downhill through his mind while Felix Cavaliere sang, I was feelin’ so bad: ARVN soldiers, many no bigger than American sixth-graders, pulling dead buttocks apart, looking for hidden treasure, a nasty scavenger hunt in a nasty war, can tah in can tak; coming back to Terry with a dose in his crotch and a monkey on his back, wanting to score so bad he was half out of his mind, slapping her in an airport concourse when she said something smart about the war (his war, she had called it, as if he had invented the fucking thing), slapping her so hard that her mouth and nose bled, and although the marriage had limped along for another year or so, it had really ended right there in Concourse B of the United terminal at LaGuardia, with the sound of that slap; Entragian kicking him as he lay writhing on Highway 50, not kicking a literary lion or a National Book Award winner or the only white male writer in America who mattered, but just some potbellied geezer in an overpriced motorcycle jacket, one who owed God a death like anyone else; Entragian saying that the proposed title of Johnny’s book made him furious, made him sick with rage.

“I won’t go back there,” Johnny said hoarsely. “Not for you, not for Steve Ames or your father, not for Mary, not for the world. I won’t.”

“Johnny,” David Carver said, “God can raise the dead.”

“At first I didn’t understand how it could have been you,” David said, as if he hadn’t heard. “It was the Land of the Dead—you even said so, Johnny. But you were alive. That’s what I thought, at least. Even when I saw the scar.” He pointed at Johnny’s wrist. “You died . . . when? 1966? 1968? I guess it doesn’t matter. When a person stops changing, stops feeling, they die. The times you’ve tried to kill yourself since, you were just playing catch-up. Weren’t you?” And the child smiled at him with a sympathy that was unspeakable in its innocence and kindness and lack of judgement. “Johnny,” David Carver said, “God can raise the dead.” “Oh Jesus, don’t tell me that,” he whispered. “I don’t want to be raised.” But his voice seemed to reach him from far away, and curiously doubled, as if he were coming apart in some strange but fundamental way. Fracturing like hornfels.

David said. He was still holding out the wallet, the one with the picture of Johnny and David Halberstam and Duffy Pinette standing outside that sleazy little bar, The Viet Cong Lookout.

That’s the song that was playing when you died, wasn’t it, Johnny?

“If you leave now, Tak will be waiting for you in a lot of places,”

“If you leave now, Tak will be waiting for you in a lot of places,” David said, his implacable would-be jailer, still holding out his wallet, the one in which that hateful picture was entombed. “Not just Austin. Hotel rooms. Speaking halls. Fancy lunches where people talk about books and things. When you’re with a woman, it’ll be you who undresses her and Tak who has sex with her. And the worst thing is that you may live like that for a long time. Can de lach is what you’ll be, heart of the unformed. Mi him can ini. The empty well of the eye.” I won’t! he tried to scream again, but this time no voice came out, and when he struck at the ore-cart again, the hammer dropped free of his fingers. The strength left his hand. His thighs turned watery and his knees began to unhinge. He slipped onto them with a choked and drowning cry. That sense of doubling, of twinning, was even stronger now, and he understood with both dismay and resignation that it was a true sensation. He was literally dividing himself in two. There was John Edward Marinville, who didn’t believe in God and didn’t want God to believe in him; that creature wanted to go, and understood that Austin would only be the first stop. And there was Johnny, who wanted to stay. More, who wanted to fight. Who had progressed far enough into this mad supernaturalism to want to die in David’s God, to burn his brain in it and go out like a moth in the chimney of a kerosene lamp.

Suicide! his heart cried out. Suicide, suicide!

“Oh God, please help me. Help me do what I was sent here to do, help me to be whole, help me to live. God, help me to live again.”

Tak ran at the woman lying in the road, screaming in soundless, hungry triumph as it closed the gap.

She threw herself into a full downhill run, eyes bulging, mouth sprung open in a full-jawed but silent scream.

Mary got on her feet, screaming herself now as the thing swooped down, reaching out, grasping for her with its fingers. She threw herself into a full downhill run, eyes bulging, mouth sprung open in a full-jawed but silent scream. A hand, sickeningly hot, slapped down between her shoulderblades and tried to twist itself into her shirt. Mary hunched forward and almost fell as her upper body swayed out beyond the point of balance, but the hand slipped away.

“Bitch!” An inhuman, guttural growl—from right behind her—and this time the hand closed in her hair.

“Bitch!” An inhuman, guttural growl—from right behind her—and this time the hand closed in her hair. It might have held if the hair had been dry, but it was slick—almost slimy—with sweat. For a moment she felt the thing’s fingers on the back of her neck and then they were gone. She ran down the slope in lengthening leaps, her fear now mingling with a kind of crazy exhilaration.

She never even registered the large shape which passed silently above her.

It rolled over onto Ellen’s back, staring up at the star-filled sky, moaning with pain and hate.

It held up Ellen’s dying arms, and the golden eagle fluttered down into them, staring into Tak’s dying face with rapt eyes.

It was all just part of an idea he’d had for a new novel. A fantasy tale, perhaps even an outright horror novel.

David climbed into the front passenger seat of the vehicle, which looked like a high-slung, oversized golf-cart. Johnny turned the key and the engine caught at once. As he ran it out through the open door, it occurred to him that none of this was happening. It was all just part of an idea he’d had for a new novel. A fantasy tale, perhaps even an outright horror novel. Something of a departure for John Edward Marinville, either way. Not the sort of stuff of which serious literature was made, but so what? He was getting on, and if he wanted to take himself a little less seriously, surely he had that right. There was no need to shoulder each book like a backpack filled with rocks and then sprint uphill with it. That might be okay for the kids, the bootcamp recruits, but those days were behind him now. And it was sort of a relief that they were.

“You’re going to come out of this all right, too, I think. Maybe you’ll write about it.”

“You’re going to come out of this all right, too, I think. Maybe you’ll write about it.” “I usually write about the stuff that happens to me. Dress it up a little and it does fine. But this . . . I don’t know.”

Boris Karloff was our favorite monster. Frankenstein was good, but we liked The Mummy even better. We were always going to each other, ‘Oh shit, the mummy’s after us, we better walk a little faster.’

After what’s happened to me since this afternoon, a little thing like that seems perfectly sane and reasonable.”

“Let me guess the rest. You prayed to God that your friend would be all right, and two days later, bingo, that boy be walkin n talkin, praise Jesus my lord n savior.” “You don’t believe it?” Johnny laughed. “Actually, I do. After what’s happened to me since this afternoon, a little thing like that seems perfectly sane and reasonable.”

“I went to a place that was special to me and Brian to pray. A platform we built in a tree. We called it the Viet Cong Lookout.”

“What I said was, ‘God, make him better. If you do, I’ll do something for you. I promise.’ ”

All the Bible I knew was John three-sixteen, on account of it’s always on the signs the zellies hold up at the ballpark. For God so loved the world.”

“The really bad part is that God knew I’d be coming out here, and he already knew what he wanted me to do. And he knew what I’d have to know to do it. My folks aren’t religious—Christmas and Easter, mostly—and until Brian’s accident, I wasn’t, either. All the Bible I knew was John three-sixteen, on account of it’s always on the signs the zellies hold up at the ballpark. For God so loved the world.” They were passing the bodega with its fallen sign now. The LP tanks had torn off the side of the building and lay in the desert sixty or seventy yards away. China Pit loomed ahead. In the starlight it looked like a whited sepulchre. “What are zellies?” “Zealots. That’s my friend Reverend Martin’s word. I think he’s . . . I think something may have happened to him.” David fell silent for a moment, staring at the road. Its edges had been blurred by the sandstorm, and out here there were drifts as well as ridges spilled across their path. The ATV took them easily. “Anyway, I didn’t know anything about Jacob and Esau or Joseph’s coat of many colors or Potiphar’s wife until Brian’s accident. Mostly what I was interested in back in those days”—he spoke, Johnny thought, like a nonagenarian war veteran describing ancient battles and forgotten campaigns—“ was whether or not Albert Belle would ever win the American League MVP.”

“The bad thing isn’t that God would put me in a position where I’d owe him a favor, but that he’d hurt Brian to do it.”

“But God’s cruelty is refining . . . that’s the rumor, anyway.

Tak is the ancient one, the unformed heart.

“David, this thing that’s out there—Tak—what is it? Do you have any idea? An Indian spirit? Something like a manitou, or a wendigo?” “I don’t think so. I think it’s more like a disease than a spirit, or even a demon. The Indians may not have even known it was here, and it was here before they were. Long before. Tak is the ancient one, the unformed heart. And the place where it really is, on the other side of the throat at the bottom of the well . . . I’m not sure that place is on earth at all, or even in normal space. Tak is a complete outsider, so different from us that we can’t even get our minds around him.”

hungry as he was, he wouldn’t even turn his nose up at a plate of cold lima beans—when

“Was it a God-bomb?”

“Was it a God-bomb?” “What?” “A big one. Like Saul in Damascus, when the cataracts or whatever they were fell out of his eyes and he could see again. Reverend Martin calls those God-bombs. You just had one, didn’t you?” All at once he didn’t want to look at David, was afraid of what David might see in his eyes. He looked at the Ryder’s taillights instead.

Fix your eyes, Johnny, Terry said. Fix your eyes so you can look at him without a single blink. You know how to do that, don’t you?

Lying is fiction, this crusty old reptile had proclaimed with a dry and cynical grin, fiction is art, and therefore all art is a lie.

“No God-bombs, David. Sorry to disappoint you.”

And now, ladies and gentlemen, stand back as I prepare to practice art on this unsuspecting young prophet. He turned to David and met David’s concerned gaze with a rueful little smile. “No God-bombs, David. Sorry to disappoint you.” “Then what just happened?” “I had a seizure. Everything just came down on me at once and I had a seizure. As a young man, I used to have one every three or four months. Petit mal. Took medication and they went away. When I started drinking heavily around the age of forty—well, thirty-five, and there was a little more involved than just booze, I guess—they came back. Not so petit by then, either. The seizures are the main reason I keep trying to go on the wagon. What you just saw was the first one in almost”—he paused, pretending to count back—“ eleven months. No booze or cocaine involved this time, either. Just plain old stress.” He got rolling again. He didn’t want to look around now; if he did he would be looking to see how much of it David was buying, and the kid might pick up on that. It sounded crazy, paranoid, but Johnny knew it wasn’t. The kid was amazing and spooky . . . like an Old Testament prophet who has just come striding out of an Old Testament desert, skinburned by the sun and brainburned by God’s inside information. Better to tuck his gaze away, keep it to himself, at least for the time being.

David asked no more questions . . . but he kept glancing over at him. Johnny discovered he could actually feel that glance, like soft, skilled fingers patting their way along the top of a window, feeling for the catch that would unlock it.

Tak sat on the north side of the rim, talons digging into the rotted hide of an old fallen tree.

Tak sat on the north side of the rim, talons digging into the rotted hide of an old fallen tree. Now literally eagle-eyed, it had no trouble picking out the vehicles below. It could even see the two people in the ATV: the writer behind the wheel, and, next to him, the boy.

Tak had met the boy briefly in the boy’s vision and had tried to divert him, frighten him, send him away before he could find the one that had summoned him.

Tak had met the boy briefly in the boy’s vision and had tried to divert him, frighten him, send him away before he could find the one that had summoned him. It hadn’t been able to do it. My God is strong, the boy had said, and that was clearly true.

(It was losing its human language rapidly now, the eagle’s small can toi brain incapable of holding it, and reverting back to the simple but powerful tongue of the unformed.)

Yet all was not lost. The eagle’s body wouldn’t last long—an hour, two at the most—but right now it was strong and hot and eager, a honed weapon which Tak grasped in the most intimate way. It ruffled the bird’s wings and rose into the air as the dama embraced his damane. (It was losing its human language rapidly now, the eagle’s small can toi brain incapable of holding it, and reverting back to the simple but powerful tongue of the unformed.)

When Johnny and David pulled up in the ATV, Mary Jackson had this blanket wrapped around her shoulders like a tartan shawl.

I ran for my life, she thought, and that’s something I’ll never be able to explain, not by talking, probably not even in a poem—how it is to run not for a meal or a medal or a prize or to catch a train but for your very fucking life.

“We’re not done, even if it is stuck in there. Are we? We’re supposed to close the drift.”

“That’s not our problem—that’s God’s problem. Ours is to close the an tak and the tunnel from there to the outside. Then we ride away and never look back.

If the Desperation Mining Corporation comes back in and starts working the China Pit again, they’ll most likely reopen the China Shaft. Won’t they? So what good is it?” David actually grinned. To Mary he looked relieved, as if he had expected a much tougher question. “That’s not our problem—that’s God’s problem. Ours is to close the an tak and the tunnel from there to the outside. Then we ride away and never look back.

Don’t do it, don’t come back here and tell well-meaning lies, you can only make things worse. They’ve been in Desperation, they’ve seen what’s there, don’t try to kid them about what’s out here.

The world—the one she had always thought to be the only world—also seemed to be drawing away from her now.

“Do you know how Tak got into Ripton in the first place?”

“I suspect I may miss a lecture tomorrow evening,” he said to the ceiling. “It was to be on the subject ‘Punks and Post-literates: American Writing in the Twenty-first Century.’ I shall have to return the advance. ‘Sad, sad, sad, George and Martha.’ That’s from—”

“I suspect I may miss a lecture tomorrow evening,” he said to the ceiling. “It was to be on the subject ‘Punks and Post-literates: American Writing in the Twenty-first Century.’ I shall have to return the advance. ‘Sad, sad, sad, George and Martha.’ That’s from—” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” Mary said. “Edward Albee. We’re not all bozos on this bus.”

“Be quiet, you Texas longhorn! We’re discussing literature back here!”

Steve pounded on the back of the cab. It was impossible to tell if his muffled voice was amused or alarmed. “What’s going on?” In his best lion’s voice, Johnny Marinville roared back: “Be quiet, you Texas longhorn! We’re discussing literature back here!” Mary screamed with laughter, one hand pressed to the base of her throat, the other curled against her throbbing belly. She wasn’t able to stop until the truck reached the crest of the embankment, crossed the rim, and started down the far side. Then all the humor went out of her at once. The others stopped at about the same time.

“That’s it,” David said. “China Shaft.” “Can tak in can tah,” his father said, as if in a dream. “Yes.” “And we have to blow it up?” Steve asked. “Just how do we go about that?” David pointed to the concrete cube near the field office. “First we have to get inside there.” They walked over to the powder magazine. Ralph yanked at the padlock on the door, as if to get the feel of it, then racked the Ruger. The metallic clack-clack sound it made was very loud in the stillness of the pit. “The rest of you stand back,” he said. “This always works great in the movies, but in real life, who knows.”

She wondered why Tak hadn’t sent the animals against them as it had sent them against so many of the people in town. Because the six of them together were something special? Maybe. If so, it was David who had made them special, the way a single great player can elevate a whole team.

“He wanted to make sure you didn’t have a few of those can tahs on you, didn’t he? Like Audrey.”

I had a moment of revelation on the way up here.

“And this really does have to be speedy. David already suspects I’m up to something; that’s another reason why he wanted me to turn out my pockets. There’ll come a moment—very soon now—when you’re going to have to grab David. When you do, make sure you get a good grip, because he’s going to fight like hell. And make sure you don’t let go.” “Why?” “Will your pal with the creative hairdo help if you ask her to?” “Probably, but—” “Steve, you have to trust me.” “Why should I?” “Because I had a moment of revelation on the way up here. Except that’s way too stiff; I like David’s phrase better. He asked me if I got hit by a God-bomb. I told him no, but that was another lie. Do you suppose that’s why God picked me in the end? Because I’m an accomplished liar? That’s sort of funny, but also sort of awful, you know it?” “What’s going to happen? Do you even know?” “No, not completely.” Johnny picked up the .30-.06 in one hand and the black-visored helmet in the other. He looked back and forth between them, as if comparing their relative worth. “I can’t do what you want,” Steve said flatly. “I don’t trust you enough to do what you want.” “You have to,” Johnny said, and handed him the rifle. “I’m all you have now.” “But—” Johnny came a step closer. To Steve he no longer looked like the same man who had gotten on the Harley-Davidson back in Connecticut, his absurd new leathers creaking, showing every tooth in his head as the photographers from Life and People and the Daily News circled him and clicked away. The change was a lot more than a few bruises and a broken nose. He looked younger, stronger. The pomposity had gone out of his face, and the somehow frantic vagueness as well. It was only now, observing its absence, that Steve realized how much of the time that look had been there—as if, no matter what he was saying or doing, most of Marinville’s attention was taken up by something that wasn’t. Something like a misplaced item or a forgotten chore.

“David thinks God means him to die in order to close Tak up in his bolthole again. The final sacrifice, so to speak. But David’s wrong.”

“David thinks God means him to die in order to close Tak up in his bolthole again. The final sacrifice, so to speak. But David’s wrong.” Johnny’s voice cracked on the last word, and Steve was astonished to see that the boss was almost crying. “It’s not going to be that easy for him.” “What—” Johnny grabbed his arm. His grip so tight it was painful. “Shut up, Steve. Just grab him when the time comes. It’s up to you. Come on now.” He bent into the chest, grabbed a bag of ANFO by its drawstring, and tossed it to Steve. He got another for himself. “Do you know how to set this shit off without any dyno or blasting caps?” Steve asked. “You think you do, don’t you? What’s going to happen? Is God going to send down a lightning-bolt?” “That’s what David thinks,” Johnny said, “and after the sardines and crackers, I’m not surprised. I don’t think it’ll come to anything that extreme, though. Come on. The hour groweth late.” They walked out into what was left of the night and joined the others.

David was in the lead, his father behind him. Steve and Cynthia next. Johnny and Mary Jackson brought up the rear.

“Ask not for whom the Bell tolls,” he said. “It tolls for thee, thou storied honeydew.”

Steve thought the boss knew what was going on, but in fact the boss knew precious little. He was being handed the script a page ahead of the rest of them, that was all.