Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Acknowledgments
By Stephen King and published by Hodder & Stoughton
NOVELS:
Carrie
’Salem’s Lot
The Shining
The Stand
The Dead Zone
Firestarter
Cujo
Cycle of the Werewolf
Christine
Pet Sematary
IT
The Eyes of the Dragon
Misery
The Tommyknockers
The Dark Half
Needful Things
Gerald’s Game
Dolores Claiborne
Insomnia
Rose Madder
Desperation
Bag of Bones
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
Dreamcatcher
From a Buick 8
Cell
Lisey’s Story
Duma Key
Under the Dome
11.22.63
Doctor Sleep
Mr Mercedes
Revival
Finders Keepers
End of Watch
Sleeping Beauties (with Owen King)
The Outsider
Elevation
The Institute
The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger
The Dark Tower II:
The Drawing of the Three
The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands
The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass
The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla
The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah
The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower
The Wind through the Keyhole:
A Dark Tower Novel
As Richard Bachman
Thinner
The Running Man
The Bachman Books
The Regulators
Blaze
STORY COLLECTIONS:
Night Shift
Different Seasons
Skeleton Crew
Four Past Midnight
Nightmares and Dreamscapes
Hearts in Atlantis
Everything’s Eventual
Just After Sunset
Stephen King Goes to the Movies
Full Dark, No Stars
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams
If It Bleeds
NON-FICTION:
Danse Macabre
On Writing (A Memoir of the Craft)
STEPHEN KING
Billy Summers
A NOVEL
Thinking of Raymond and Sarah Jane Spruce
‘I once was lost, but now am found.’
Amazing Grace
CHAPTER 1
1
Billy Summers sits in the hotel lobby, waiting for his ride. It’s Friday noon. Although he’s reading a digest-sized comic book called Archie’s Pals ’n’ Gals, he’s thinking about Émile Zola, and Zola’s third novel, his breakthrough, Thérèse Raquin. He’s thinking it’s very much a young man’s book. He’s thinking that Zola was just beginning to mine what would turn out to be a deep and fabulous vein of ore. He’s thinking that Zola was – is – the nightmare version of Charles Dickens. He’s thinking that would make a good thesis for an essay. Not that he’s ever written one.
At two minutes past twelve the door opens and two men come into the lobby. One is tall with black hair combed in a 50s pompadour. The other is short and bespectacled. Both are wearing suits. All of Nick’s men wear suits. Billy knows the tall one from out west. He’s been with Nick a long time. His name is Frank Macintosh. Because of the pomp, some of Nick’s men call him Frankie Elvis, or – now that he has a tiny bald spot in back – Solar Elvis. But not to his face. Billy doesn’t know the other one. He must be local.
Macintosh holds out his hand. Billy rises and shakes it.
‘Hey, Billy, been awhile. Good to see you.’
‘Good to see you too, Frank.’
‘This is Paulie Logan.’
‘Hi, Paulie.’ Billy shakes with the short one.
‘Pleased to meet you, Billy.’
Macintosh takes the Archie digest from Billy’s hand. ‘Still reading the comics, I see.’
‘Yeah,’ Billy says. ‘Yeah. I like them quite a bit. The funny ones. Sometimes the superheroes but I don’t like them as much.’
Macintosh breezes through the pages and shows something to Paulie Logan. ‘Look at these chicks. Man, I could jack off to these.’
‘Betty and Veronica,’ Billy says, taking the comic back. ‘Veronica is Archie’s girlfriend and Betty wants to be.’
‘You read books, too?’ Logan asks.
‘Some, if I’m going on a long trip. And magazines. But mostly comic books.’
‘Good, good,’ Logan says, and drops Macintosh a wink. Not very subtle, and Macintosh frowns, but Billy’s okay with it.
‘You ready to take a ride?’ Macintosh asks.
‘Sure.’ Billy tucks his digest into his back pocket. Archie and his bosomy gal pals. There’s an essay waiting to be written there, too. About the comfort of haircuts and attitudes that don’t change. About Riverdale, and how time stands still there.
‘Then let’s go,’ Macintosh says. ‘Nick’s waiting.’
2
Macintosh drives. Logan says he’ll sit in back because he’s short. Billy expects them to go west, because that’s where the fancy part of this town is, and Nick Majarian likes to live large whether home or away. And he doesn’t do hotels. But they go northeast instead.
Two miles from downtown they enter a neighborhood that looks lower middle-class to Billy. Three or four steps better than the trailer park he grew up in, but far from fancy. No big gated houses, not here. This is a neighborhood of ranch houses with lawn sprinklers twirling on small patches of grass. Most are one-story. Most are well maintained, but a few need paint and there’s crabgrass taking over some of the lawns. He sees one house with a piece of cardboard blocking a broken window. In front of another, a fat man in Bermuda shorts and a wifebeater sits in a lawn chair from Costco or Sam’s Club, drinking a beer and watching them go by. Times have been good in America for awhile now, but maybe that is going to change. Billy knows neighborhoods like this. They are a barometer, and this one has started to go down. The people who live here are working the kind of jobs where you punch a clock.