Bag of Bones

by Stephen King

Like the country-house staff in an Agatha Christie.

“Yeah,” I said. “Phone slipped. Sorry.” The phone hadn’t slipped as much as an inch, but it came out sounding natural enough, I thought. And if it hadn’t, so what? When it came to Mattie, I would be—in John’s mind, at least—below suspicion. Like the country-house staff in an Agatha Christie. He was twenty-eight, maybe thirty. The idea that a man twelve years older might be sexually attracted to Mattie had probably never crossed his mind . . . or maybe just for a second or two there on the common, before he dismissed it as ludicrous. The way Mattie herself had dismissed the idea of Jo and the man in the brown sportcoat.

“You funny little man, said Strickland,” I told the empty room. It came out before I knew I was going to say anything, and when it did, the channel on the TV changed. It went from baseball to a rerun of All in the Family and then to Ren & Stimpy. I glanced down at the remote control. It was still on the coffee-table where I’d left it. The TV channel changed again, and this time I was looking at Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. There was an airplane in the background, and I didn’t need to pick up the remote and turn on the sound to know that Humphrey was telling Ingrid that she was getting on that plane. My wife’s all-time favorite movie. She bawled at the end without fail. “Jo?” I asked. “Are you here?” Bunter’s bell rang once. Very faintly. There had been several presences in the house, I was sure of it . . . but tonight, for the first time, I was positive it was Jo who was with me. “Who was he, hon?” I asked. “The guy at the softball field, who was he?” Bunter’s bell hung still and quiet. She was in the room, though. I sensed her, something like a held breath.

I remembered the ugly, gibing little message on the refrigerator after my dinner with Mattie and Ki: blue rose liar ha ha.

“I am not a liar!” some long-ago TV actress cried. For a moment she looked right out at me, and I was stunned breathless to see Jo’s eyes in that black-and-white fifties face. “I never lied, Mr. Burger, never!”

The TV switched away from Casablanca and here was everybody’s favorite lawyer, Perry Mason, on Nick at Nite. Perry’s nemesis, Hamilton Burger, was questioning a distraught-looking woman, and all at once the sound blared on, making me jump. “I am not a liar!” some long-ago TV actress cried. For a moment she looked right out at me, and I was stunned breathless to see Jo’s eyes in that black-and-white fifties face. “I never lied, Mr. Burger, never!” “I submit that you did!” Burger responded. He moved in on her, leering like a vampire. “I submit that you—” The TV suddenly went off. Bunter’s bell gave a single brisk shake, and then whatever had been here was gone. But I felt better. I am not a liar . . . I never lied, never. I could believe that if I chose to. If I chose. I went to bed, and there were no dreams.

“Do you care about your soul, Mr. Noonan? Your immortal soul? God’s butterfly caught in a cocoon of flesh that will soon stink like mine?”

“Get out of the TR, Noonan. I’m giving you good ad—”

I started to my left, meaning to go by him on that side, but in a flash he had turned the chair, shot it forward, and cut me off. “Get out of the TR, Noonan. I’m giving you good ad—” I broke to the right, this time on the lake side, and would have slipped by him quite neatly except for the fist, very small and hard, that hammered the left side of my face. The white-haired bitch was wearing a ring, and the stone cut me behind the ear. I felt the sting and the warm flow of blood. I pivoted, stuck out both hands, and pushed her. She fell to the needle-carpeted path with a squawk of surprised outrage. At the next instant something clouted me on the back of the head. A momentary orange glow lit up my sight. I staggered backward in what felt like slow motion, waving my arms, and Devore came into view again. He was slued around in his wheelchair, scaly head thrust forward, the cane he’d hit me with still upraised. If he had been ten years younger, I believe he would have fractured my skull instead of just creating that momentary orange light. I ran into my old friend the birch tree. I raised my hand to my ear and looked unbelievingly at the blood on the tips of my fingers. My head ached from the blow he had fetched me. Whitmore was struggling to her feet, brushing pine needles from her slacks and looking at me with a furious smile. Her cheeks had filled in with a thin pink flush. Her too-red lips were pulled back to show small teeth. In the light of the setting sun her eyes looked as if they were burning.

“Get out of my way,” I said, but my voice sounded small and weak.

“Get out of my way,” I said, but my voice sounded small and weak. “No,” Devore said, and laid the black barrel of his cane on the nacelle that curved over the front of his chair. Now I could see the little boy who had been determined to have the sled no matter how badly he cut his hands getting it. I could see him very clearly. “No, you whore-fucking sissy. I won’t.” He shoved the silver toggle switch again and the wheelchair rushed silently at me. If I had stayed where I was, he would have run me through with his cane as surely as any evil duke was ever run through in an Alexandre Dumas story. He probably would have crushed the fragile bones in his right hand and torn his right arm clean out of its socket in the collision, but this man had never cared about such things; he left cost-counting to the little people. If I had hesitated out of shock or incredulity, he would have killed me, I’m sure of it. Instead, I rolled to my left. My sneakers slid on the needle-slippery embankment for a moment. Then they lost contact with the earth and I was falling.

I hit the water awkwardly and much too close to the bank. My left foot struck a submerged root and twisted. The pain was huge, something that felt like a thunderclap sounds. I opened my mouth to scream and the lake poured in—that cold metallic dark taste, this time for real. I coughed it out and sneezed it out and floundered away from where I had landed, thinking The boy, the dead boy’s down here, what if he reaches up and grabs me?

Devore had almost run himself over the embankment, I saw, and for a moment I thought he still might go.

Devore had almost run himself over the embankment, I saw, and for a moment I thought he still might go. The front of his chair jutted over the place where I had fallen (I could see the short tracks of my sneakers just to the left of the birch’s partially exposed roots), and although the forward wheels were still grounded, the crumbly earth was running out from beneath them in dry little avalanches that rolled down the slope and pit-a-patted into the water, creating interlocking ripple patterns. Whitmore was clinging to the back of the chair, yanking on it, but it was much too heavy for her; if Devore was to be saved, he would have to save himself. Standing waist-deep in the lake with my clothes floating around me, I rooted for him to go over. The purplish claw of his left hand recaptured the silver toggle switch after several attempts. One finger hooked it backward, and the chair reversed away from the embankment with a final shower of stones and dirt. Whitmore leaped prankishly to one side to keep her feet from being run over.

I was angry, hurt, and scared. Most of all I was embarrassed. I had been dunked in the lake by a man of eighty-five . . . a man who showed every sign of hanging around and making sport of me.

“Hey!” I shouted, more startled than afraid. Even after everything that had preceded it, I couldn’t believe this was happening.

One of her rocks struck me a hard, painful blow on the collarbone and bounced high into the air. I cried out, and she did, too: “Hai!,” like a karate fighter who’s gotten in a good kick. So much for orderly retreat. I turned, swam for deeper water, and the bitch brained me. The first two rocks she threw after I began to swim seemed to be range-finders. There was a pause when I had time to think I’m doing it, I’m getting beyond her area of . . . and then something hit the back of my head. I felt it and heard it the same way—it went CLONK!, like something you’d read in a Batman comic. The surface of the lake went from bright orange to bright red to dark scarlet. Faintly I could hear Devore yelling approval and Whitmore squealing her strange laugh. I took in another mouthful of iron-tasting water and was so dazed I had to remind myself to spit it out, not swallow it. My feet now felt too heavy for swimming, and my goddam sneakers weighed a ton. I put them down to stand up and couldn’t find the bottom—I had gotten beyond my depth. I looked in toward the shore. It was spectacular, blazing in the sunset like stage-scenery lit with bright orange and red gels. I was probably twenty feet out from the shore now. Devore and Whitmore were at the edge of The Street, watching. They looked like Dad and Mom in a Grant Wood painting. Devore was using the mask again, but I could see him grinning inside it. Whitmore was grinning, too.

The float, I realized, might be my only chance—there wasn’t another one on this part of the shore, and it was at least ten yards beyond Whitmore’s longest rockshot so far.

“Thanks, Jo,” I said, then started up the railroad ties to the house. I got about halfway, then had to stop and sit down. I had never been so utterly tired in my whole life.

I put the typewriter on the deck table, rummaged out an extension cord, plugged in beneath Bunter’s watchful eye, and sat down facing the hazy blue-gray surface of the lake.

Like most kids raised on the coast of Maine, I can’t imagine ordering lobster in a restaurant—that’s for flatlanders.

I went out to the kitchen to get a glass of cold water. As I was filling it, I heard the magnets on the fridge begin sliding around. I whirled, spilling some of the water on my bare feet and hardly noticing. I was as excited as a kid who thinks he may glimpse Santa Claus before he shoots back up the chimney. I was barely in time to see nine plastic letters drawn into the circle from all points of the compass. CARLADEAN, they spelled . . . but only for a second. Some presence, tremendous but unseen, shot past me. Not a hair on my head stirred, but there was still a strong sense of being buffeted, the way you’re buffeted by the air of a passing express train if you’re standing near the platform yellow-line when the train bolts through. I cried out in surprise and groped my glass of water back onto the counter, spilling it. I no longer felt in need of cold water, because the temperature in the kitchen of Sara Laughs had dropped off the table. I blew out my breath and saw vapor, as you do on a cold day in January. One puff, maybe two, and it was gone—but it had been there, all right, and for perhaps five seconds the film of sweat on my body turned to what felt like a slime of ice. CARLADEAN exploded outward in all directions—it was like watching an atom being smashed in a cartoon. Magnetized letters, fruits, and vegetables flew off the front of the refrigerator and scattered across the kitchen. For a moment the fury which fuelled that scattering was something I could almost ta...

“Ella Speed was havin her lovin fun, John Martin shot Ella with a Colt forty-one . . .”

“What’s his name?” Ki asked, jumping the little dog back and forth across her Happy Meal box. “What doggy’s name, Mike?” And, without thinking, I said, “Strickland.” I thought she’d look puzzled, but she didn’t. She looked delighted. “Stricken!” she said, bouncing the dog back and forth in ever-higher leaps over the box. “Stricken! Stricken! My dog Stricken!” “Who’s this guy Strickland?” Mattie asked, smiling a little. She had begun to unwrap her hamburger. “A character in a book I read once,” I said, watching Ki play with the little puffball dog. “No one real.”

right now Grampy’s probably teaching Lord Jesus how to use Pixel Easel and asking if there might be a whore handy.

“It would be sad if Mattie died, and it would be sad if you died, but Grampy was old.” She said it as though I hadn’t quite grasped this concept the first time. “In heaven he’ll get all fixed up.”

“White nana didn’t really like me. She was just pretending to like me. That was her job.”

She grabbed Strickland and started to run off, then stopped and looked over her shoulder at me. “I guess it was the fridgeafator people,” she said, then corrected herself very carefully and seriously. “The ree-fridge-a-rator people.” My heart took a hard double beat in my chest. “It was the refrigerator people what, Ki?” I asked. “That said white nana didn’t really like me.” Then she ran off toward the juggler, oblivious to the heat.

Mattie watched her go, then turned back to me. “I haven’t talked to anybody about Ki’s fridgeafator people. Neither has she, until now. Not that there are any real people, but the letters seem to move around by themselves. It’s like a Ouija board.” “Do they spell things?” For a long time she said nothing. Then she nodded. “Not always, but sometimes.” Another pause. “Most times, actually. Ki calls it mail from the people in the refrigerator.” She smiled, but her eyes were a little scared. “Are they special magnetic letters, do you think? Or have we got a poltergeist working the lakefront?”

I thought about telling her I had my own fridgeafator people, then didn’t. She had enough to worry about without that . . . or so I told myself.

Somewhere out in the brilliant, gold-sparkling net of the lake, a loon called. Twice. Hoot once for yes, twice for no, I thought. Not a dream, Michael. I don’t know exactly what it is—spiritual time-travel, maybe—but it’s not a dream.

“Is this really happening?”

“Is this really happening?” I asked the day, and from somewhere back in the trees, where a track which would eventually come to be known as Lane Forty-two ran toward a dirt road which would eventually come to be known as Route 68, a crow cawed. Just once. I went to the birch hanging over the lake, slipped an arm around it (doing it lit a trace memory of slipping my hands around Mattie’s waist, feeling her dress slide over her skin), and peered into the water, half-wanting to see the drowned boy, half-fearing to see him. There was no boy there, but something lay on the bottom where he had been, among the rocks and roots and waterweed. I squinted and just then the wind died a little, stilling the glints on the water. It was a cane, one with a gold head. A Boston Post cane. Wrapped around it in a rising spiral, their ends waving lazily, were what appeared to be a pair of ribbons—white ones with bright red edges. Seeing Royce’s cane wrapped that way made me think of high-school graduations, and the baton the class marshal waves as he or she leads the gowned seniors to their seats. Now I understood why the old crock hadn’t answered the phone. Royce Merrill’s phone-answering days were all done. I knew that; I also knew I had come to a time before Royce had even been born. Sara Tidwell was here, I could hear her singing, and when Royce had been born in 1903, Sara had already been gone for two years, she and her whole Red-Top family.

WELCOME TO FRYEBURG FAIR WELCOME TO THE 20TH CENTURY

Standing at the front, wearing a guitar and whaling on it as she sang, was Sara Tidwell. She was alive. She was in her prime. She threw back her head and laughed at the October sky.

I started walking in that direction, aware of cows mooing and sheep blatting from the exhibition barns—the Fair’s version of my childhood Hi-Ho Dairy-O. I walked past the shooting gallery and the ringtoss and the penny-pitch; I walked past a stage where The Handmaidens of Angelina were weaving in a slow, snakelike dance with their hands pressed together as a guy with a turban on his head and shoe-polish on his face tooted a flute. The picture painted on stretched canvas suggested that Angelina—on view inside for just one tenth of a dollar, neighbor—would make these two look like old boots. I walked past the entrance to Freak Alley, the corn-roasting pit, the Ghost House, where more stretched canvas depicted spooks coming out of broken windows and crumbling chimneys. Everything in there is death, I thought . . . but from inside I could hear children who were very much alive laughing and squealing as they bumped into things in the dark. The older among them were likely stealing kisses. I passed the Test Your Strength pole, where the gradations leading to the brass bell at the top were marked BABY NEEDS HIS BOTTLE, SISSY, TRY AGAIN, BIG BOY, HE-MAN, and, just below the bell itself, in red: HERCULES! Standing at the center of a little crowd a young man with red hair was removing his shirt, revealing a heavily muscled upper torso. A cigar-smoking carny held a hammer out to him. I passed the quilting booth, a tent where people were sitting on benches and playing Bingo, the baseball pitch. I passed them all and hardly noticed. I was in the zone, tranced out. “You’ll have to call him back,” Jo had sometimes told Harold when he phoned, “Michael is currently in the Land of Big Make-Believe.” Only now nothing felt like pretend and the only thing that interested me was the stage at the base of the Ferris wheel. There were eight black folks up there on it, maybe ten. Standing at the front, wearing a guitar and whaling on it as she sang, was Sara Tidwell. She was alive. She was in her prime. She threw back her head and laughed at the October sky.

They stepped aside unconsciously, as if some kind of magnetism were at work here—ours positive, theirs negative.

Seeing them together like that, I realized that I had been right: they were brother and sister.

“Before you start in fishin you better check your line. Said before you start in fishin, honey, you better check on your line. I’ll pull on yours, darlin, and you best tug on mine.”

Sara backed away from Son, shaking her ungirdled, unbustled fanny and laughing. He strolled back to his spot and she turned to the crowd as the band played the turnaround. She sang the next verse looking directly at me. “Before you start in fishin you better check your line. Said before you start in fishin, honey, you better check on your line. I’ll pull on yours, darlin, and you best tug on mine.” The crowd roared happily. In my arms, Kyra was shaking harder than ever. “I’m scared, Mike,” she said. “I don’t like that lady. She’s a scary lady. She stole Mattie’s dress. I want to go home.”

before I could move, the sense of the woman—I don’t know how else to say it—fell upon me and held me.

“I ain’t gonna hurt her, honey, not for all the treasure in the worl’. Said I wouldn’t hurt your baby, not for diamonds or for pearls. Only one black-hearted bastard dare to touch that little girl.”

She led the band to the turnaround once more, then into another verse. Not one you’d find in any written version of the song, though: “I ain’t gonna hurt her, honey, not for all the treasure in the worl’. Said I wouldn’t hurt your baby, not for diamonds or for pearls. Only one black-hearted bastard dare to touch that little girl.” The crowd roared as if it were the funniest thing they’d ever heard, but Kyra began to cry. Sara saw this and stuck out her breasts—much bigger breasts than Mattie’s—and shook them at her, laughing her trademark laugh as she did. There was a parodic coldness about this gesture . . . and an emptiness, too. A sadness. Yet I could feel no compassion for her. It was as if the heart had been burned out of her and the sadness which remained was just another ghost, the memory of love haunting the bones of hate.

It was as if the heart had been burned out of her and the sadness which remained was just another ghost, the memory of love haunting the bones of hate.

Her shadow wavered on the canvas backdrop, which was a painting of Fryeburg, and as I looked at it I realized I had found the Shape from my Manderley dreams.

And how her laughing teeth leered. Sara raised her arms over her head and this time shook it all the way down, as if reading my thoughts and mocking them. Just like jelly on a plate, as some other old song of the time has it. Her shadow wavered on the canvas backdrop, which was a painting of Fryeburg, and as I looked at it I realized I had found the Shape from my Manderley dreams. It was Sara. Sara was the Shape and always had been. No, Mike. That’s close, but it’s not right.

“There’s no town drunk here, you meddling son of a bitch,” he said, never looking at me and never missing a beat as he clapped. “We all just take turns.”

And they didn’t. Onstage Son Tidwell had taken the band from E to G, someone began to bang a tambourine, and Sara went from “Fishin Blues” to “Dog My Cats” without a single pause. Out here, in front of the stage and below it, the crowd once more drew back from me and my little girl without looking at us or missing a beat as they clapped their work-swollen hands together. One young man with a port-wine stain swimming across the side of his face opened his mouth—at twenty he was already missing half his teeth—and hollered “Yee-HAW!” around a melting glob of tobacco. It was Buddy Jellison from the Village Cafe, I realized . . . Buddy Jellison magically rolled back in age from sixty-eight to twenty. Then I realized the hair was the wrong shade—light brown instead of black (although he was pushing seventy and looking it in every other way, Bud hadn’t a single white hair in his head). This was Buddy’s grandfather, maybe even his great-grandfather. I didn’t give a shit either way. I only wanted to get out of here. “Excuse me,” I said, brushing by him. “There’s no town drunk here, you meddling son of a bitch,” he said, never looking at me and never missing a beat as he clapped. “We all just take turns.”

They came out of Freak Alley, perhaps twenty yards ahead.

They came out of Freak Alley, perhaps twenty yards ahead. I saw them and stopped. There were seven in all, long-striding men dressed in cutters’ clothes, but four didn’t matter—those four looked faded and white and ghostly. They were sick fellows, maybe dead fellows, and no more dangerous than daguerreotypes. The other three, though, were real. As real as the rest of this place, anyway. The leader was an old man wearing a faded blue Union Army cap. He looked at me with eyes I knew. Eyes I had seen measuring me over the top of an oxygen mask.

They were sick fellows, maybe dead fellows, and no more dangerous than daguerreotypes.

He looked at me with eyes I knew. Eyes I had seen measuring me over the top of an oxygen mask.

they were no more flesh than the thing which had thumped the insulation of the cellar wall . . . but what if I was wrong?

It was Max Devore, he had come back, even in death he was seeking custody.

“Give her over, son,” the old man said. His voice was reedy and implacable. He held out his hands. It was Max Devore, he had come back, even in death he was seeking custody. Yet it wasn’t him. I knew it wasn’t. The planes of this man’s face were subtly different, the cheeks gaunter, the eyes a brighter blue. “Where am I?” I called to him, accenting the last word heavily, and in front of Angelina’s booth, the man in the turban (a Hindu who perhaps hailed from Sandusky, Ohio) put down his flute and simply watched. The snake-girls stopped dancing and watched, too, slipping their arms around each other and drawing together for comfort. “Where am I, Devore? If our great-grandfathers shit in the same pit, then where am I?”

“I’ll take her, Jared,” one of the younger men—one of those who were really there—said. He looked at Devore with a kind of fawning eagerness that sickened me, mostly because I knew who he was: Bill Dean’s father. A man who had grown up to be one of the most respected elders in Castle County was all but licking Devore’s boots. Don’t think too badly of him, Jo whispered. Don’t think too badly of any of them. They were very young. “You don’t need to do nothing,” Devore said. His reedy voice was irritated; Fred Dean looked abashed. “He’s going to hand her over on his own. And if he don’t, we’ll take her together.” I looked at the man on the far left, the third of those that seemed totally real, totally there. Was this me? It didn’t look like me. There was something in the face that seemed familiar but— “Hand her over, Irish,” Devore said. “Last chance.” “No.” Devore nodded as if this was exactly what he had expected. “Then we’ll take her. This has got to end. Come on, boys.” They started toward me and as they did I realized who the one on the end—the one in the caulked tree-walker boots and flannel loggers’ pants—reminded me of: Kenny Auster, whose wolfhound would eat cake ’til it busted. Kenny Auster, whose baby brother had been drowned under the pump by Kenny’s father.

And I realized I could smell it, too. Spoiled meat and swampgas. Burst tissue and simmering guts. Devore was the most alive of all of them, generating the same crude but powerful magnetism I had felt around his great-grandson, but he was as dead as the rest of them, too: as he neared I could see the tiny bugs which were feeding in his nostrils and the pink corners of his eyes. Everything down here is death, I thought. Didn’t my own wife tell me so?

“Stop him!” Devore shouted. “He’s a goddam punk thief! That ain’t his young ’un he’s got! Stop him!” But no one did and I rushed into the darkness of the Ghost House with Ki in my arms.

I could hear Devore cursing, too, but he no longer seemed so . . . well, so eminent.

We must have walked a quarter of a mile. How could any county fair Ghost House be so big?

We went down another narrow corridor. It smelled of the fragrant pine from which it had been constructed. Behind one of these walls, two “ghosts” were clanking chains as mechanically as men working on a shoe-factory assembly line, talking about where they were going to take their girls tonight and who was going to bring some “red-eye engine,” whatever that was. I could no longer hear anyone behind us. Kyra led the way confidently, one of her little hands holding one of my big ones, pulling me along. When we came to a door painted with glowing flames and marked THIS WAY TO HADES, she pushed through it with no hesitation at all. Here red isinglass topped the passage like a tinted skylight, imparting a rosy glow I thought far too pleasant for Hades. We went on for what felt like a very long time, and I realized I could no longer hear the calliope, the hearty bong! of the Test Your Strength bell, or Sara and the Red-Tops. Nor was that exactly surprising. We must have walked a quarter of a mile. How could any county fair Ghost House be so big?

That’s Scooter Larribee’s, I thought. That’s the one Devore stole. A rash of gooseflesh broke out on my arms and back.

You better get going yourself, Jo told me. If you don’t want to find yourself trapped here, maybe forever, you better get going yourself.

None of it had the quality of dreams on waking, where what seemed plausible becomes immediately ridiculous and all the colors—both those bright and those ominous—fade at once.