Lisey's Story

by Stephen King

her heart dipped with dread and her morning-empty stomach, usually sweet, foamed with unmotivated fear.

When what he’d really done that very night was go out to his study, put on the new Dylan CD, and work on a new short story.

“Yeah, exactly like that,” Lisey murmured, and shivered in spite of the late afternoon heat. The way those old memories kept bubbling to the surface in the present tense was disturbing. It was as if the past had never died; as if on some level of time’s great tower, everything was still happening.

When he puts the napkin down, he’s smiling. “Paul told me to be good when he was gone to Mulie’s and I did what Paul said. I always did. You know?” She nods. You’re good for the ones you love. You want to be good for the ones you love, because you know that your time with them will end up being too short, no matter how long it is.

Not rock and roll but country. It’s Hank Williams. Ole Hank is singing “Kaw-Liga.”

“How do you know?” He shook his head, still smiling. “I just do. The way a kid’s dog knows it’s time to go sit by the mailbox because the schoolbus will be right along. It’s almost sunset over there. It often is.”

What are you doing, Lisey? she asked herself . . . but the answer was obvious, wasn’t it? She was still following the trail her dead husband had left her. The one that led into the past.

She looked over at the digital clock on the bedside table and was astounded to see it was only twenty to eleven. Already this day seemed a thousand years long, but she suspected that was because she had spent so much of it re-living the past. Memories screwed up perspective, and the most vivid ones could annihilate time completely while they held sway.

But enough about the past; what was happening right now?

This place is a trap. She’s sure that anyone who stays at the pool for very long will find it impossible to leave. She understands that if you look at it for a little while, you’ll be able to see anything you want to. Lost loves, dead children, missed chances—anything.

Now the secret is out. In gaps between the trees to her left, sliding at what seems like express-train speed, is a great high river of meat.

Lisey nods. Her own fear is so great it’s incapacitating, and any sense of exhilaration at having him back is gone. Has he lived with this all his life? If so, how has he lived with it? But even now, in the extremity of her terror, she supposes she knows. Two things have tied him to the earth and saved him from the long boy. His writing is one. The other has a waist he can put his arms around and an ear into which he can whisper. “Concentrate, Lisey. Do it now. Bust your brains.”

The sound it makes is only the softest sigh (like the arguments against insanity falling into some ultimate basement),

trees snaps with an explosive rending noise as the thing over there begins to turn, and she closes her eyes again and sees the guest room as clearly as she has ever seen anything in her life, sees it with desperate intensity, and through a perfect magnifying lens of terror. “Now,” Scott murmurs, and the most amazing thing happens. She feels the air turn inside out. Suddenly Hank Williams is singing “Jambalaya.”

“It’s had my scent for a long time, and it knows the shape of my thoughts. After all these years, we’re practically old friends. It could probably take me if it wanted to, but it would be an effort, and that fella’s pretty lazy. Also . . . something watches out for me. Something on the bright side of the equation. There is a bright side, you know. You must know, because you’re a part of it.”

But you have to remember that I’ve been living in the past, and that takes up a surprising amount of a person’s time, she thought . . . and after a moment’s consideration let out a great, larruping laugh that probably would have sounded insane to anyone listening down the hall.

That she had decided Kurt Vonnegut was right, that mirrors weren’t reflective surfaces but leaks, portholes to another dimension? And really, wasn’t that what she did think?