Gwendy's Final Task (Gwendy's Button Box Trilogy)

by Stephen King

Which, I want to emphasize, is not yet proven. At this point simple stress seems more likely to me.”

it wants me to take it out,

understand that my chief suspect is a fabulously wealthy man, but he may not be in charge. Whoever is, they’re thinking years ahead, and that scares me.

Adesh goes to the door of the big containment facility, then turns back and gives her a gentle smile in which one gold tooth twinkles. “Kill,” he says.

She immediately recognizes the car as the same vehicle in which she’d seen Gareth Winston sitting beside the blond man when she touched Winston’s hand outside of the lavatory on Eagle Heavy.

This isn’t what they look like at all. It’s as if they’re wearing costumes and masks to make them appear human, but the disguises are only temporary, and I’m sitting here watching as they fade in and out of reality. Even the goddamn car is wearing one. It’s lost its edges. Its shape no longer looks quite solid.

Were they all working for Sombra? Gwendy guesses they were. Are.

Just because you hear it, she reminds herself, doesn’t mean you have to listen to it.

“Once… I’d just turned off the water after taking a shower… someone called out to me from inside the drain. And then they started laughing.”

“Back when I was a rookie, I started having bad dreams. They got so horrible I was afraid to go to sleep at night. I was being chased in the sewers by someone dressed as a clown.”

The clown made me do it.” And then he never spoke a single word again. Ever. He’s still up at Juniper Hill as far as I know.”

“Yup,” Mitchell says agreeably, “he wasn’t human.”

“Do you know a man named Gareth Winston?” “No, but I’ve heard the name.”

she notices her laptop sitting open on the coffee table and thinks: Wait a minute, didn’t I close that before I left? And put it away?

Plus, paranoid fantasies sometimes accompany Alzheimer’s.

There’s even a name for it: sundowning. And since sundown up here happens roughly every ninety minutes, that leaves plenty of opportunity for weird thoughts.

Maybe thirty yards behind them, where the inner wall of the corridor curves out of sight, someone is standing in the shadow of the big overhead air purifier, watching them. Before Gwendy can call out or get a better look, the figure disappears. Winston? she wonders.

Ever since the upsetting incident involving her running shoes, the button box’s voice has grown louder and more insistent and more difficult to push away.

All of this is a miracle, she thinks, staring out at the dark expanse of… everything. How many other worlds exist in this endless sea of stars and planets and galaxies? How many other life forms might be staring back at me right at this very moment?

“Exactly,” Mrs. Peterson said, ruffling Gwendy’s hair. “But believing… now that’s something different. Something much more… personal.” “You mean like Olive Kepnes believing in the Loch Ness monster and aliens? Those are personal choices for her?”

take a good long look at yourself in the mirror—those are the reasons why I believe. Do you think all those miracles could exist without a God? I don’t. And do you think—”

“And do you think God would’ve bothered to create all those miracles and not have created a heaven to go right along with them?” She shook her head. “Not me.”

“For me, you were the biggest miracle of all, Mom.”

Who am I kidding? she thinks; for the first time in probably five or six years!—Gwendy Peterson enjoyed an uninterrupted night of sleep.

Don’t forget hope, she’d told her reflection in the steamed-up mirror after a long, relaxing shower. Two more days and all of this madness will be over.

I don’t want to go all Snidely Whiplash on you, dear, but why would I set you free to roam before I get my hands on the button box? And once I do… goodness! Who knows what might happen?”

All you have to do is point, then twist the little metal loop in the base. One spray and it turns your insides into jelly. There’s plenty of juice inside this canister to take care of the entire crew if necessary.”

“Allow me to properly introduce myself.” He extends his right hand. “You can call me Bobby.”

“Power. Control. Territory. “There are other worlds than these. Many. You can rule one of them. Not just a company, not just a continent, but an entire world. And you can do it for an eternity.”

He likes the idea of ruling a world;

but the Tower is strong.” “What tower?” Winston asks in a voice that sounds nothing like his own.

“Gwendolyn Peterson has what we need to destroy the Tower. You must find it and bring it to us. Because of your enormous wealth and political connections, you are uniquely fitted for this task.”

In exchange for their loyalty and labor, you might allow them to grow their own food tax-free.”

“Here, in your world, you’ll look this way forever.

Your father stole from you the most important gift a young man can possess: self-confidence.”

“I have been back to Genesis many times,” he says. “That’s what I call my world. Nice, eh?” “Very,” Gwendy says, doing the wide-eyed thing for all she’s worth.

‘When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer.’ ”

“1512253… and presto!” He opens the steel box. He looks inside. His eager smile dissolves. “What… the fuck… is this?” He takes out a white feather. When he lets it go, it floats in front of his face. Winston bats it away. He turns the security case so she can see inside. With the feather now out of it, the case is completely empty.

“You’re not going to believe this, Gareth, and I know you won’t like it, but it’s true. I can’t remember.”

And she does. According to Winston, he met Bobby four years later, and what reason would he have to lie? All their cards are pretty much on the table now.

From the fourth comes Boris. Pandinus imperator. He rises, tail cocked.

Gwendy is savagely delighted to see Boris’s stinger bury itself dead center between Winston’s eyes.

“There are twelve worlds,” Bobby says. “Six beams, twelve worlds, one at each end of each beam. And in the center is the Tower. We call it Black Thirteen.” “Who is we?” “The taheen.” This means nothing to Gwendy. “The beams hold the worlds and the Tower powers the beams,” Bobby says in a lecturely tone. “Only one thing can destroy it, now that the Crimson King is dead.”

“You must not send the box away, Gwendy. What you need to do is push the black button. Destroy the Tower, destroy the beams, destroy the worlds.”

“Because chaos is the only answer.”

“Chaos is the only answer,” she whispers. “Existence is a dead equation.”

right before she and Kathy Lundgren suit up for their spacewalk at 0800 hours.

“Gwendy. Is there a problem?” “A solution, I think. I need to talk to you.” “All right.” No hesitation. “Come to my quarters.”

“But they’re dangerous, like everything to do with the button box. And the box is getting stronger while I get weaker. When I woke up, just before I called you, I had it in my hands and I was getting ready to push the black button. My thumb was actually on it.”

“I want to go with it.”