Billy Summers

by Stephen King

It’s like a seatbelt. You don’t use it because you expect to be in a crash, but you never know who you might meet coming over a hill on your side of the road. This is also true on the road of life, where people veer all over the place and drive the wrong way on the turnpike.

Ronald Reagan had a point when he said trust but verify.

fiction wasn’t the truth, it was the way to the truth,

“This is where the power comes from.” Irv smacks himself again for emphasis. “Right here. You ask any NFL lineman or home run hitter. Ask José Altuve. Five-six, but he’s got an ass like a brick.”

“This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life.” And so on. The part I remember best is the part that says “Without me, my rifle is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless.”

Used to be a resort hotel there, but it burned flat many a moon ago.” He drops his voice. “It was reputed to be haunted.”

The Stanley Hotel perhaps?

“And way across, on the other side, this is crazy, but I thought I saw that hotel you talked about. Then I blinked my eyes—the wind was so strong they were tearing up—and when I looked again, it was gone.” Bucky doesn’t smile. “You’re not the only person who’s seen that. I’m not a superstitious man, but I wouldn’t go anywhere near where the Overlook Hotel used to stand. Bad stuff happened there.”

My hostage, he thinks. My Stockholm Syndrome hostage. Only that’s not what she is now, if she ever was.

He parks in the shade and uses another Porta-John, thinking of Taco Bell’s dictum: Never neglect a chance to piss before a firefight.

Of course it’s Edison, because every character in a story must be used at least twice: Dickens’s rule. And Zola’s.

A few Google searches would have shown him that he’d killed the son of a billionaire who also happened to be a pedophile.”

Billy asks where the picture came from. Bucky shrugs. “No idea, but I think those hedge animals used to be in front of the old Overlook. The hotel that burned. I’m pretty sure the picture was in the cabin when I bought this place. I don’t go up there much when I’m here. I call it the summerhouse, but it always seems cold, even in summer.”

It doesn’t last, the world always comes back, but before it does, it’s awesome. It’s everything. Because you can have things the way you want and I want you to still be alive and in the story you are and always will be.”