Bag of Bones

by Stephen King

On a very hot day in August of 1994, my wife told me she was going down to the Derry Rite Aid to pick up a refill on her sinus medicine prescription—this is stuff you can buy over the counter these days, I believe.

On a very hot day in August of 1994, my wife told me she was going down to the Derry Rite Aid to pick up a refill on her sinus medicine prescription—this is stuff you can buy over the counter these days, I believe. I’d finished my writing for the day and offered to pick it up for her. She said thanks, but she wanted to get a piece of fish at the supermarket next door anyway; two birds with one stone and all of that. She blew a kiss at me off the palm of her hand and went out.

The next time I saw her, she was on TV. That’s how you identify the dead here in Derry—no

The next time I saw her, she was on TV. That’s how you identify the dead here in Derry—no walking down a subterranean corridor with green tiles on the walls and long fluorescent bars overhead, no naked body rolling out of a chilly drawer on casters; you just go into an office marked PRIVATE and look at a TV screen and say yep or nope.

There was something else in the bag, too—an item which had cost twenty-two-fifty. I looked at this other item for a long time, seeing it but not understanding it. I was surprised, maybe even stunned, but the idea that Johanna Arlen Noonan might have been leading another life, one I knew nothing about, never crossed my mind. Not then.

The autopsy revealed a brain aneurysm which she might have been living with, all unknown, for as long as five years. As she sprinted across the parking lot toward the accident, that weak vessel in her cerebral cortex had blown like a tire, drowning her control-centers in blood and killing her. Death had probably not been instantaneous, the assistant medical examiner told me, but it had still come swiftly enough . . . and she wouldn’t have suffered. Just one big black nova, all sensation and thought gone even before she hit the pavement.

I was glad for the arrival of Jo’s family, and particularly for the arrival of her oldest brother, Frank. It was Frank Arlen—fifty, red-cheeked, portly, and with a head of lush dark hair—who organized the arrangements . . . who wound up actually dickering with the funeral director.

The Arlens had come from Massachusetts, and I could still hear Malden in Frank’s voice—caught was coowat, car was cah, call was caul.

“She didn’t just buy sinus medicine before she died. She also bought one of those home pregnancy-testing kits.”

My brother is happy enough to chaperone the old folks, but he doesn’t fly, even if the tickets are on me. He claims there are no breakdown lanes in the sky if the engine quits.

They stood in front of our house—which had become solely my house by then—with three taxis lined up at the curb behind them, big galoots hugging one another amid the litter of tote-bags and saying their goodbyes in those foggy Massachusetts accents.

Most of the Arlens left the next day. Once more it was dog-hot, the sun glaring out of a white-haze sky and lying on everything like melted brass. They stood in front of our house—which had become solely my house by then—with three taxis lined up at the curb behind them, big galoots hugging one another amid the litter of tote-bags and saying their goodbyes in those foggy Massachusetts accents.

Yet the writer who had bound us closest together was no college-friendly poet or essayist but W. Somerset Maugham, that elderly globetrotting novelist-playwright with the reptile’s face (always obscured by cigarette smoke in his photographs, it seems) and the romantic’s heart.

“A hundred years from now,” she had said, “the shame of the mid-twentieth-century literary critics will be that they embraced Lawrence and ignored Maugham.”

The playing card marked pages 102 and 103—Dirk Stroeve has just discovered that his wife has left him for Strickland, Maugham’s version of Paul Gauguin.

She opened the book to her place, the playing card fluttering out, and placed Somerset Maugham over her face—a shroud of words.

I know what writer’s block is now, all right. I know more about it than I ever wanted to.

“No one’s ever going to confuse it with Look Homeward, Angel, are they?”

I stood just outside the magic circle of the mega-bestsellers, but I never minded that. We owned two homes by the time I was thirty-one: the lovely old Edwardian in Derry and, in western Maine, a lakeside log home almost big enough to be called a lodge—that was Sara Laughs, so called by the locals for nearly a century.

I wasn’t Thomas Wolfe (not even Tom Wolfe or Tobias Wolff), but I was being paid to do what I loved, and there’s no gig on earth better than that; it’s like a license to steal.

We weren’t rich enough to own a jet (Grisham) or a pro football team (Clancy), but by the standards of Derry, Maine, we were quite rolling in it.

Was it Shaw or Oscar Wilde who said a writer was a man who had taught his mind to misbehave?

I remember an American Lit lecturer’s once saying that of modern American writers, only Harper Lee had found a foolproof way of avoiding the second-book blues.

The Edwardian on Benton Street in Derry was still two years in the future at that point, but we had purchased Sara Laughs, the place on Dark Score (not anywhere near as furnished as it later became, and Jo’s studio not yet built, but nice), and that’s where we were.

It was mid-September, most of the summer people were gone, and the crying of the loons on the lake sounded inexpressibly lovely.

“Ooo,” she said, looking up and marking her place. “Champagne, what’s the occasion?”

“I’m done,” I said. “Mon livre est tout fini.”

On the lake, one last loon cried down dark, that call that always sounds to me like something rusty turning slowly in the wind.

“The book, such as it is, is dedicated to you, and I want you to put down the last bit.”

“‘He slipped the chain over her head, and then the two of them walked down the steps to where the car was parked.’”

“‘ He slipped the chain over her head, and then the two of them walked down the steps to where the car was parked.’” She typed it, then looked around and up at me expectantly. “That’s it,” I said. “You can write The End, I guess.” Jo hit the RETURN button twice, centered the carriage, and typed The End under the last line of prose, the IBM’s Courier type ball (my favorite) spinning out the letters in their obedient dance. “What’s the chain he slips over her head?” she asked me. “You’ll have to read the book to find out.”

And except for notes, grocery lists, and checks, that was the last writing I did for four years.

“Here’s to you, babe,” I said. “I wish you were here. I miss you like hell.” My voice wavered a little on that last word, but didn’t break. I drank the Taittinger, saved my final line of copy, transferred the whole works to floppy disks, then backed them up. And except for notes, grocery lists, and checks, that was the last writing I did for four years.

Bill Dean, the caretaker, took down the storm shutters every spring and put them back up every fall, drained the pipes in the fall and made sure the pump was running in the spring, checked the generator and took care to see that all the maintenance tags were current, anchored the swimming float fifty yards or so off our little lick of beach after each Memorial Day.

I paid him quarterly, as is the custom with caretakers in that part of the world; Bill Dean, an old Yankee from a long line of them, cashed my checks and didn’t ask why I never used my place anymore.

“Compared to the dullest human being actually walking about on the face of the earth and casting his shadow there,” Hardy supposedly said, “the most brilliantly drawn character in a novel is but a bag of bones.”

“Compared to the dullest human being actually walking about on the face of the earth and casting his shadow there,” Hardy supposedly said, “the most brilliantly drawn character in a novel is but a bag of bones.” I understood because that was what I felt like in those interminable, dissembling days: a bag of bones.

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. If there is any more beautiful and haunting first line in English fiction, I’ve never read it. And it was a line I had cause to think of a lot during the fall of 1997 and the winter of 1998. I didn’t dream of Manderley, of course, but of Sara Laughs, which Jo sometimes called “the hideout.” A fair enough description, I guess, for a place so far up in the western Maine woods that it’s not really even in a town at all, but in an unincorporated area designated on state maps as TR-90.

Like most novelists (and in this regard the successful are no different from the unsuccessful, indicating there might be some merit to the idea as well as the usual free-floating paranoia), I never trusted publishers’ promises.

I’m not afraid of Rebecca de Winter’s housekeeper, she’s just a character in an old book, nothing but a bag of bones.

I’ll run back the way I came, like the gingerbread man I’ll run, run all the way back to Derry, if that’s what it takes, and I’ll never come here anymore.

The thing in the woods is now the thing in the driveway.

I can hear slobbering breath behind me in the growing gloom, and padding footsteps. The thing in the woods is now the thing in the driveway. It’s right behind me. If I turn around the sight of it will knock the sanity out of my head in a single roundhouse slap. Something with red eyes, something slumped and hungry.

The house is my only hope of safety.

(the moon has never risen before in this dream, but I have never stayed in it this long before),

It’s Jo’s coffin, and lying on its side with the top partway open, enough for me to see it’s empty.

I am three quarters of the way down the driveway now. I can see the railroad-tie steps leading down to the lake, and I can see the float out there on the water, a black square in a track of moonlight. Bill Dean has put it out. I can also see an oblong something lying at the place where the driveway ends at the stoop. There has never been such an object before. What can it be? Another two or three steps, and I know. It’s a coffin, the one Frank Arlen dickered for . . . because, he said, the mortician was trying to stick it to me. It’s Jo’s coffin, and lying on its side with the top partway open, enough for me to see it’s empty.

the back door of Sara Laughs opens, and a terrible figure comes darting out into the growing darkness.

I think I want to scream. I think I mean to turn around and run back up the driveway—I will take my chances with the thing behind me. But before I can, the back door of Sara Laughs opens, and a terrible figure comes darting out into the growing darkness. It is human, this figure, and yet it’s not. It is a crumpled white thing with baggy arms upraised. There is no face where its face should be, and yet it is shrieking in a glottal, loonlike voice. It must be Johanna. She was able to escape her coffin, but not her winding shroud. She is all tangled up in it.

I will scream as the sanity leaves my mind forever. I will scream . . . but there is no one out here to hear me. Only the loons will hear me. I have come again to Manderley, and this time I will never leave.

How hideously speedy this creature is! It doesn’t drift as one imagines ghosts drifting, but races across the stoop toward the driveway. It has been waiting down here during all the dreams when I had been frozen, and now that I have finally been able to walk down, it means to have me. I’ll scream when it wraps me in its silk arms, and I will scream when I smell its rotting, bug-raddled flesh and see its dark staring eyes through the fine weave of the cloth. I will scream as the sanity leaves my mind forever. I will scream . . . but there is no one out here to hear me. Only the loons will hear me. I have come again to Manderley, and this time I will never leave.

When an imaginative person gets into mental trouble, the line between seeming and being has a way of disappearing.

Sometimes even an untalented photographer can take a good picture—if seven hundred monkeys spent seven hundred years bashing away at seven hundred typewriters, and all that—and this was good. In it Jo was standing on the float with the sun going down red-gold behind her. She was just out of the water, dripping wet, wearing a two-piece swimming suit, gray with red piping. I had caught her laughing and brushing her soaked hair back from her forehead and temples. Her nipples were very prominent against the cups of her halter. She looked like an actress on a movie poster for one of those guilty-pleasure B-pictures about monsters at Party Beach or a serial killer stalking the campus.

She didn’t do it in any ostentatious Lady Bountiful way, either, but unobtrusively and humbly, with her head lowered (often to hide a rather sharp smile, I should add—my Jo had a Biercean sense of humor).

Certainly Jo and I had cast a shadow in the area; we had made significant contributions to the little library which served the Motton–Kashwakamak–Castle View area, and Jo had headed the successful fund drive to get an area bookmobile up and running. In addition to that, she had been part of a ladies’ sewing circle (afghans were her specialty), and a member in good standing of the Castle County Crafts Co-op. Visits to the sick . . . helping out with the annual volunteer fire department blood drive . . . womaning a booth during Summerfest in Castle Rock . . . and stuff like that was only where she had started. She didn’t do it in any ostentatious Lady Bountiful way, either, but unobtrusively and humbly, with her head lowered (often to hide a rather sharp smile, I should add—my Jo had a Biercean sense of humor).

Grief is like a drunken houseguest, always coming back for one more goodbye hug.

Bill had filled out the roll with various views of the house, most conveying that subtle air of neglect a place gets when it’s not used enough . . . even a place that’s caretook (to use Bill’s word) gets that neglected feel after awhile.

Four days later, I got a little package with this laconic return address: DEAN/ GEN DELIV/ TR-90 (DARK SCORE). I opened it and shook out twenty photographs which had been taken with one of those little cameras you use once and then throw away. Bill had filled out the roll with various views of the house, most conveying that subtle air of neglect a place gets when it’s not used enough . . . even a place that’s caretook (to use Bill’s word) gets that neglected feel after awhile.

My idea of a spree is three days in Boston, a Red Sox game, a trip to Tower Records and Video, plus a visit to the Wordsworth bookstore in Cambridge.

Bookreaders are just as willing as anyone else to start out with the weather, but as a general rule they can actually go on from there.

It was a sense that reality was thin. I think it is thin, you know, thin as lake ice after a thaw, and we fill our lives with noise and light and motion to hide that thinness from ourselves.

The water was glassy and calm, still candy-colored in the afterglow of sunset, without a single ripple or a single small craft to be seen.