Duma Key

by Stephen King

What Jack lifted out of the rusty old heart-shaped box was Libbit’s dolly, and seeing Noveen was like coming home. Ouuuu, her black eyes and scarlet smiling mouth seemed to be saying. Ouuu, I been in there all that time, you nasty man.

We left the ruin the way we’d entered it and found a Florida early evening full of clear light. The sky above was cloudless. The sun cast a brilliant silver sheen across the Gulf. In another hour or so that track would begin to tarnish and turn to gold, but not yet.

The two of us rolled Emery into the hole, then threw in the pieces of him that broke off—or as many as we could find. I still remember his stony coral grin as he tumbled into the dark to join his bride. And sometimes, of course, I dream about it. In these dreams I hear Adie and Em calling up to me from the dark, asking me if I wouldn’t like to come down and join them. And sometimes in those dreams I do. Sometimes I throw myself into that dark and stinking throat just to make an end to my memories. These are the dreams from which I wake up screaming, thrashing at the dark with a hand that is no longer there.

“You look well, Wireman. Rested.” He shrugged. “That Gulfstream’s the way to fly. No standing in line at security, no one pawing through your carry-on to make sure you didn’t turn your little shitass can of Foamy into a bomb. And for once in my life I managed to fly north without a stop at fucking Atlanta.

He saw me still standing there and his face lit in a grin. “Do the day, Edgar!” he cried. People turned to look, startled. “And let the day do you!” I called back.

He saluted me, laughing, then walked into the jetway. And of course I did eventually come south to his little town, but although he’s always alive for me in his sayings—I never think of them in anything but the present tense—I never saw the man himself again. He died of a heart attack two months later, in Tamazunchale’s open-air market, while dickering for fresh tomatoes. I thought there would be time, but we always think stuff like that, don’t we? We fool ourselves so much we could do it for a living.

I have taken liberties with the geography of Florida’s west coast, and with its history, as well. Although Dave Davis was real, and did indeed disappear, he is used here fictionally. And no one in Florida calls out-of-season storms “Alices” except me.