Bag of Bones

by Stephen King

Things conceived by minds and made by hands can never be quite the same, even when they try their best to be identical, because we’re never the same from day to day or even moment to moment.

“fear” stands for Face Everything And Recover. But, as I stood there and looked down at that spark of porch light (it looked very small in the growing darkness), it occurred to me that there’s another bit of wisdom, one not quite so good-morning-starshine, which suggests fear is actually an acronym for Fuck Everything And Run.

A loon cried on the lake, but the voice didn’t answer. I suppose it didn’t have to. There was no Mrs. Danvers, she was only a bag of bones in an old book, and the voice knew it.

And even without the moon of my dream, I could see the black square on the water, standing about fifty yards offshore. The swimming float.

There was a final whisper of weeping, then silence. In it, I could hear ticking from the kitchen. The clock by the stove, one of Jo’s rare lapses into bad taste, is Felix the Cat with big eyes that shift from side to side as his pendulum tail flicks back and forth. I think it’s been in every cheap horror movie ever made.

I saw the old cane-and-bamboo chairs; the old couch; the scarred dining-room table you had to balance by shimming one leg with a folded playing card or a couple of beer coasters; I saw no ghosts; I decided this was a seriously fucked-up carnival just the same.

any good marriage is secret territory, a necessary white space on society’s map. What others don’t know about it is what makes it yours.

There had been no dreams that I could remember, only a vague sensation that I had awakened sometime briefly in the night and heard a bell ringing, very thin and far away.

I’d gotten up late and spent most of the morning walking in the woods which run along the lakeshore, seeing what was the same and what had changed.

It was my first day back. I’d gotten up late and spent most of the morning walking in the woods which run along the lakeshore, seeing what was the same and what had changed. The water looked a little lower and there were fewer boats than I would have expected, especially on summer’s biggest holiday, but otherwise I might never have been away. I even seemed to be slapping at the same bugs.

“Her name is Kia? Did—” Before I could say anything else, the most extraordinary thing happened: my mouth was full of water. So full I felt a moment’s panic, like someone who is swimming in the ocean and swallows a wave-wash. Only this wasn’t a salt taste; it was cold and fresh, with a faint metal tang like blood.

Humor is almost always anger with its makeup on, I think, but in little towns the makeup tends to be thin.

The crying dwindled as it had before, seeming to diminish like something carried down a tunnel.

She is alive. Sara is alive.

“It was a dream,” I said. “Just another Manderley dream.” I knew better, but I also knew I was going back to sleep, and right then that seemed like the important thing. As I drifted off, I thought in a voice that was purely my own: She is alive. Sara is alive. And I understood something, too: she belonged to me. I had reclaimed her. For good or ill, I had come home.

Have you ever seen that Edvard Munch drawing, The Cry? Well, if you imagine that screaming face at rest, mouth closed and eyes watchful, you’ll have a pretty good image of the woman standing at the end of the dock with one long-fingered hand resting on the rail.

Hello there, you old bag of bones, you scared the living shit out of me but it doesn’t take much these days and I forgive you.

It ain’t nuthin but a barn-dance sugar It ain’t nuthin but a round-and-round Let me kiss you on your sweet lips sugar You the good thing that I found.

That made me think of Sara Tidwell, and the lyrics to one of her songs. She had never been recorded, but I owned the Blind Lemon Jefferson version of this particular tune. One verse went: It ain’t nuthin but a barn-dance sugar It ain’t nuthin but a round-and-round Let me kiss you on your sweet lips sugar You the good thing that I found. I loved that song, and had always wondered how it would have sounded coming out of a woman’s mouth instead of from that whiskey-voiced old troubadour. Out of Sara Tidwell’s mouth. I bet she sang sweet. And boy, I bet she could swing it.

It wasn’t the first time I’d spooked myself like that. I see things, that’s all. Write enough stories and every shadow on the floor looks like a footprint, every line in the dirt like a secret message. Which did not, of course, ease the task of deciding what was really peculiar at Sara Laughs and what was peculiar only because my mind was peculiar.

What if I hear the sobbing child tonight and the machine never kicks on?

Ghosts can’t hurt anyone.

So what? I asked myself. Even if it should be true, so what? Ghosts can’t hurt anyone. That’s what I thought then.

(give me that it’s my dust-catcher)

The object was covered with a gray plastic hood. I reached out to touch it, and my hand faltered an inch or two short as a memory of an old dream (give me that it’s my dust-catcher) slipped across my mind much as that queer draft had slipped across my face. Then it was gone, and I pulled the plastic cover off. Underneath it was my old green IBM Selectric, which I hadn’t seen or thought of in years. I leaned closer, knowing that the typewriter ball would be Courier—my old favorite—even before I saw it.

You write for both of us, Mike, she had said once. That’s all yours; I’ll just take a little taste of everything else.

When I was finished with my hunt, I leaned back in my chair (her chair) and looked at the little framed photo on her desk, one I couldn’t remember ever having seen before.

When I was finished with my hunt, I leaned back in my chair (her chair) and looked at the little framed photo on her desk, one I couldn’t remember ever having seen before. Jo had most likely printed it herself (the original might have come out of some local’s attic) and then hand-tinted the result. The final product looked like a wanted poster colorized by Ted Turner.

Sara Tidwell, known as Sara Laughs. Never recorded, but her songs had lived just the same.

In this photo she was only smiling. Sara Tidwell, known as Sara Laughs. Never recorded, but her songs had lived just the same. One of them, “Walk Me Baby,” bears a remarkable resemblance to “Walk This Way,” by Aerosmith. Today the lady would be known as an African-American. In 1984, when Johanna and I bought the lodge and consequently got interested in her, she would have been known as a Black. In her own time she would have been called a Negress or a darkie or possibly an octoroon. And a nigger, of course. There would have been plenty of folks free with that one. And did I believe that she had kissed Dickie Brooks’s father—a white man—in front of half of Castle County? No, I did not. Still, who could say for sure? No one. That was the entrancing thing about the past.

“It ain’t nuthin but a barn-dance sugar,” I sang, putting the picture back on the desk. “It ain’t nuthin but a round-and-round.”

“Cunnin as a cat a-runnin,”

“I hear Mattie Devore can be quite a dear,” he said—heah, Devoah, deah—and one of his crusty eyelids drooped. I have seen a fair number of salacious winks in my time, but none that was a patch on the one tipped me by that old man with the gold-headed cane. I felt a strong urge to knock his waxy beak of a nose off. The sound of it parting company from his face would be like the crack of a dead branch broken over a bent knee. “Do you hear a lot, old-timer?” I asked. “Oh, ayuh!” he said. His lips—dark as strips of liver—parted in a grin. His gums swarmed with white patches. He had a couple of yellow teeth still planted in the top one, and a couple more on the bottom. “And she gut that little one—cunnin, she is! Ayuh!” “Cunnin as a cat a-runnin,” I agreed. He blinked at me, a little surprised to hear such an old one out of my presumably newfangled mouth, and then that reprehensible grin widened. “Her don’t mind her, though,” he said. “Baby gut the run of the place, don’tcha know.”

The next morning, Monday, was the sort of day the tourists come to Maine for—the air so sunny-clean that the hills across the lake seemed to be under subtle magnification. Mount Washington, New England’s highest, floated in the farthest distance.

The Memo-Scriber’s counter, set to 000 when I went to bed, was now at 012.

I put on the coffee, then went into the living room, whistling. All my imaginings of the last few days seemed silly this morning. Then the whistle died away. The Memo-Scriber’s counter, set to 000 when I went to bed, was now at 012. I rewound it, hesitated with my finger over the PLAY button, told myself (in Jo’s voice) not to be a fool, and pushed it. “Oh Mike,” a voice whispered—mourned, almost—on the tape, and I found myself having to press the heel of one hand to my mouth to hold back a scream. It was what I had heard in Jo’s office when the draft rushed past the sides of my face . . . only now the words were slowed down just enough for me to understand them. “Oh Mike,” it said again. There was a faint click. The machine had shut down for some length of time. And then, once more, spoken in the living room as I had slept in the north wing: “Oh Mike.” Then it was gone.

Things with the power to scare the living shit out of you on a thundery midnight in most cases seem only interesting in the bright light of a summer morning.

so many crosswords, so little time.

How did you tell your caretaker you thought your house was haunted?

“You’d do well to keep your distance from her,” he said. “She’s nice enough—almost a town girl, don’t you know—but she’s trouble.” He paused. “No, that ain’t quite fair to her. She’s in trouble.”

“Mad how?” I asked. “Mad like Charles Manson? Like Hannibal Lecter? How?”

“Mad how?” I asked. “Mad like Charles Manson? Like Hannibal Lecter? How?” “Say like Howard Hughes,” he said. “Ever read any of the stories about him? The lengths he’d go to to get the things he wanted? It didn’t matter if it was a special kind of hot dog they only sold in L.A. or an airplane designer he wanted to steal from Lockheed or McDonnell-Douglas, he had to have what he wanted, and he wouldn’t rest until it was under his hand. Devore is the same way. He always was—even as a boy he was willful, according to the stories you hear in town. “My own dad had one he used to tell. He said little Max Devore broke into Scant Larribee’s tack-shed one winter because he wanted the Flexible Flyer Scant give his boy Scooter for Christmas. Back around 1923, this would have been. Devore cut both his hands on broken glass, Dad said, but he got the sled. They found him near midnight, sliding down Sugar Maple Hill, holding his hands up to his chest when he went down. He’d bled all over his mittens and his snowsuit. There’s other stories you’ll hear about Maxie Devore as a kid—if you ask you’ll hear fifty different ones—and some may even be true. That one about the sled is true, though. I’d bet the farm on it. Because my father didn’t lie. It was against his religion.” “Baptist?” “Nosir, Yankee.”

Softball is a great thing for the Lance Devores of the world; when you’re standing at the plate with a bat in your hands, it doesn’t matter if you’re gangly. And it sure doesn’t matter if you stutter.

Lance Devore was accepted as a nice young fella who could hit a softball three hundred and fifty feet into the trees if he struck it just right.

Fitzgerald had it straight, although I guess he didn’t believe his own insight: the very rich are different from you and me.

Wealth is like the Richter scale—once you pass a certain point, the jumps from one level to the next aren’t double or triple but some amazing and ruinous multiple you don’t even want to think about. Fitzgerald had it straight, although I guess he didn’t believe his own insight: the very rich are different from you and me. I thought of telling Bill that, and decided to keep my mouth shut. He had a sump-pump to fix.

Kyra’s parents met over a keg of beer stuck in a mud-hole.

Kyra’s parents met over a keg of beer stuck in a mud-hole. Mattie was running the usual Tuesday-night keg out to the softball field from the main building on a handcart. She’d gotten it most of the way from the restaurant wing with no trouble, but there had been heavy rain earlier in the week, and the cart finally bogged down in a soft spot. Lance’s team was up, and Lance was sitting at the end of the bench, waiting his turn to hit. He saw the girl in the white shorts and blue Warrington’s polo shirt struggling with the bogged handcart, and got up to help her. Three weeks later they were inseparable and Mattie was pregnant; ten weeks later they were married; thirty-seven months later, Lance Devore was in a coffin, done with softball and cold beer on a summer evening, done with what he called “woodsing,” done with fatherhood, done with love for the beautiful princess. Just another early finish, hold the happily-ever-after.

“In July of last year, less’n a month before he died, Lance Devore shows up at the post-office counter in the Lakeview General. He’s got a manila envelope he wants to send, but first he needs to show Carla DeCinces what’s inside. She said he was all fluffed out, like daddies sometimes get over their kids when they’re small.”

“In July of last year, less’n a month before he died, Lance Devore shows up at the post-office counter in the Lakeview General. He’s got a manila envelope he wants to send, but first he needs to show Carla DeCinces what’s inside. She said he was all fluffed out, like daddies sometimes get over their kids when they’re small.” I nodded, amused at the idea of skinny, stuttery Lance Devore all fluffed out. But I could see it in my mind’s eye, and the image was also sort of sweet. “It was a studio pitcher they’d gotten taken over in the Rock. Showed the kid . . . what’s her name? Kayla?” “Kyra.” “Ayuh, they call em anything these days, don’t they? It showed Kyra sittin in a big leather chair, with a pair of joke spectacles on her little snub of a nose, lookin at one of the aerial photos of the woods over across the lake in TR-100 or TR-110—part of what the old man had picked up, anyway. Carla said the baby had a surprised look on her face, as if she hadn’t suspected there could be so much woods in the whole world. Said it was awful cunnin, she did.” “Cunnin as a cat a-runnin,” I murmured. “And the envelope—Registered, Express Mail—was addressed to Maxwell Devore, in Palm Springs, California.” “Leading you to deduce that the old man either thawed enough to ask for a picture of his only grandchild, or that Lance Devore thought a picture might thaw him.” Bill nodded, looking as pleased as a parent whose child has managed a difficult sum. “Don’t know if it did,” he said. “Wasn’t enough time to tell, one way or the other. Lance had bought one of those little satellite dishes, like what you’ve got here. There was a bad storm the day he put it up—hail, high wind, blow-downs along the lakeshore, lots of lightnin. That was along toward evening. Lance put his dish up in the afternoon, all done and safe, except around the time the storm commenced he remembered he’d left his socket wrench on the trailer roof. He went up to get it so it wouldn’t get all wet n rusty—” “He was struck by lightning? Jesus, Bill!” “Lightnin struck, all right, but it hit across the way. You go past the place where Wasp Hill Road runs into 68 and you’ll see the stump of the tree that stroke knocked over. Lance was comin down the ladder with his socket wrench when it hit. If you’ve never had a lightnin bolt tear right over your head, you don’t know how scary it is—it’s like havin a drunk driver veer across into your lane, headed right for you, and then swing back onto his own side just in time. Close lightnin makes your hair stand up—makes your damned prick stand up. It’s apt to play the radio on your steel fillins, it makes your ears hum, and it makes the air taste roasted. Lance fell off the ladder. If he had time to think anything before he hit the ground, I bet he thought he was electrocuted. Poor boy. He loved the TR, but it wasn’t lucky for him.” “Broke his neck?” “Ayuh. With all the thunder, Mattie never heard him fall or yell or anything. She looked out a minute or two later when it started to hail and he still wasn’t in. And there he was, layin on the ground and lookin up into the friggin hail with his eyes open.”

“The old man wouldn’t come for their weddin, but he came for his son’s funeral and he’s been here ever since. He didn’t want nawthin to do with the young woman—”

“If you get a chance, you ought to look for the owls.”

He slammed the door of his Ram, started the engine, reached for the gearshift, then dropped his hand again as something else occurred to him. “If you get a chance, you ought to look for the owls.” “What owls?” “There’s a couple of plastic owls around here someplace. They might be in y’basement or out in Jo’s studio. They come in by mail-order the fall before she passed on.” “The fall of 1993?” “Ayuh.” “That can’t be right.” We hadn’t used Sara in the fall of 1993. “’Tis, though. I was down here puttin on the storm doors when Jo showed up. We had us a natter, and then the UPS truck come. I lugged the box into the entry and had a coffee—I was still drinkin it then—while she took the owls out of the carton and showed em off to me. Gorry, but they looked real! She left not ten minutes after. It was like she’d come down to do that errand special, although why anyone’d drive all the way from Derry to take delivery of a couple of plastic owls I don’t know.”

“Ayuh, long’s you move em every now and then so the crows don’t get suspicious. Crows are just about the smartest birds going, you know. You look for those owls, save yourself a lot of mess.” “I will,” I said. Plastic owls to scare the crows away—it was exactly the sort of knowledge Jo would come by (she was like a crow herself in that way, picking up glittery pieces of information that happened to catch her interest) and act upon without bothering to tell me. All at once I was lonely for her again—missing her like hell.

why had she felt the need to come down here personally when she could have just called someone and asked them to meet the delivery truck?

“I’m looking for two plastic owls,” I said. Ward probably thought I was talking to him, but I’m not sure I was. “I know that sounds weird, but it’s what I’m doing. Can you call me back?”

I stood in the dark at the top of the stairs, feeling for the lightswitch, smelling that oozy smell that even good concrete foundations get after awhile if there is no proper airing-out. It was cold, much colder than it had been on the other side of the door. I wasn’t alone and I knew it. I was afraid, I’d be a liar to say I wasn’t . . . but I was also fascinated. Something was with me. Something was in here with me.

I should have felt silly, perhaps, standing there in the dark and calling to the ghosts.

Something was in here with me. Very likely something dead.

“Tap once for yes, twice for no,”

“Tap once for yes, twice for no,” I said. “Can you do that?” Thud. It was on the stairs below me . . . but not too far below. Five steps down, six or seven at most. Not quite close enough to touch if I should reach out and wave my hand in the black basement air . . . a thing I could imagine, but not actually imagine doing. “Are you . . .” My voice trailed off. There was simply no strength in my diaphragm. Chilly air lay on my chest like a flatiron. I gathered all my will and tried again. “Are you Jo?” Thud. That soft fist on the insulation. A pause, and then: Thud-thud. Yes and no. Then, with no idea why I was asking such an inane question: “Are the owls down here?” Thud-thud. “Do you know where they are?” Thud. “Should I look for them?” Thud! Very hard.

“Is it safe for me at Sara? Am I safe?”

“Are you Lance Devore?” Thud-thud, at once. “Is it safe for me at Sara? Am I safe?” Thud. A pause. And I knew it was a pause, that the thing on the stairs wasn’t finished. Then: Thud-thud. Yes, I was safe. No, I wasn’t safe.

“Are you the person who cries in the night?”

“Are you the person who cries in the night?” I asked. Thud-thud from below me, and between the two thuds, I flicked the switch. The cellar globes came on. So did a brilliant hanging bulb—at least a hundred and twenty-five watts—over the landing. There was no time for anyone to hide, let alone get away, and no one there to try, either. Also, Mrs. Meserve—admirable in so many ways—had neglected to sweep the cellar stairs. When I went down to where I estimated the thudding sounds had been coming from, I left tracks in the light dust. But mine were the only ones. I blew out breath in front of me and could see it. So it had been cold, still was cold . . . but it was warming up fast. I blew out another breath and could see just a hint of fog. A third exhale and there was nothing. I ran my palm over one of the insulated squares. Smooth. I pushed a finger at it, and although I didn’t push with any real force, my finger left a dimple in the silvery surface. Easy as pie. If someone had been thumping a fist down here, this stuff should be pitted, the thin silver skin perhaps even broken to reveal the pink fill underneath. But all the squares were smooth. “Are you still there?” I asked. No response, and yet I had a sense that my visitor was still there. Somewhere.

There was nothing.

Suddenly—so suddenly I almost lost my balance and tumbled down the stairs—I whirled around, convinced the shroud-creature was behind me, that it had been the thing knocking, it, no polite M. R. James ghost but a horror from around the rim of the universe. There was nothing.

It says ‘S-Ks of Maine, Freep, 11 A.M.’

“Hi, Mike. It’s Ward.” “That was quick.” “The file-room’s just a short walk down the hall,” he said. “Easy as pie. There’s only one thing on Jo’s calendar for the second week of November in 1993. It says ‘S-Ks of Maine, Freep, 11 A.M.’ That’s on Tuesday the sixteenth. Does it help?” “Yes,” I said. “Thank you, Ward. It helps a lot.” I broke the connection and put the phone back in its cradle. Yes, it helped. S-Ks of Maine was Soup Kitchens of Maine. Jo had been on their board of directors from 1992 until her death. Freep was Freeport. It must have been a board meeting. They had probably discussed plans for feeding the homeless on Thanksgiving . . . and then Jo had driven the seventy or so miles to the TR in order to take delivery delivery of two plastic owls. It didn’t answer all the questions, but aren’t there always questions in the wake of a loved one’s death? And no statute of limitations on when they come up.