What the hell -?
He was totally disoriented. She was standing there in the shadows as if she had never been away, wearing one of her woolly skirts and frumpy sweaters; he saw the needle in her hand and understood it hadn't been a sting but an injection. What the fuck - either way it was the same thing. He had been gotten by the goddess. But what had she -?
That bright panic tried to come again, and once again it hit a dead circuit. All he could feel was a kind of academic surprise. That, and some intellectual curiosity about where she had come from, and why now. He tried to lift his hands and they came up a little… but only a little. It felt as if there were invisible weights dangling from them. They dropped back onto the sheet with little dull thumps.
Doesn't matter what she shot me up with. It's like what you write on the last page of a book. It's THE END.
The thought brought no fear. Instead he felt a kind of calm euphoria.
At least she's tried to make it kind… to make it…
“Ah, there you are!” Annie said, and added with lumbering coquettishness: “I see you, Paul… those blue eyes. Did I ever tell you what lovely blue eyes you have? But I suppose other women have - women who were much prettier than I am, and much bolder about their affections, as well.” Came back. Came creeping in the night and killed me, hypo or bee-sting, no difference, and so much for the knife under the bed. All I am now is the latest number in Annie's considerable body-count. And then, as the numbing euphoria of the injection began to spread, he thought almost with humor: Some lousy Scheherazade I turned out to be.
He thought that in a moment sleep would return - a more final sleep - but it did not. He saw her slip the hypo into the pocket of her skirt and then she sat down on the bed… not where she usually sat, however; she sat on its foot and for a moment he saw only her solid, impervious back as she bent over, as if to check on something. He heard a wooden thunk, a metallic clunk, and then a shaking sound he had heard some place before. After a moment he placed it. Take the matches, Paul.
Diamond Blue Tips. He didn't know what else she might have there at the foot of the bed, but one of them was a box of Diamond Blue Tip matches.
Annie turned to him and smiled again. Whatever else might have happened, her apocalyptic depression had passed. She brushed an errant lock of hair back behind her ear with a girlish gesture. It went oddly with the lock's dull dirty half-shine.
Dull dirty half-shine oh boy you gotta remember that one that one ain't half-bad oh boy I am stoned now, all the past was prologue to this shit hey baby this here is the mainline oh fuck I'm tucked but this is crystal top-end shit this is going out on a mile-high wave in a fucking Rolls this is - “What do you want first, Paul?” she asked. “The good news or the bad news?”
“Good news first.” He managed a big foolish grin. “Guess the bad news is that this is THE END, huh? Guess you didn't like the book so great, huh? Too bad I tried. It was even working. I was just starting to… you know… starting to drive on it.” She looked at him reproachfully. “I love the book, Paul. I told you that, and I never lie. I love it so much I don't want to read any more until the very end. I'm sorry to have to make you fill in the n's yourself, but… it's like peeking.” His big foolish grin stretched even wider; he thought soon it would meet in the back, tie a lover's knot there, and most of his poor old bean would just topple off. Maybe it would land in the bedpan beside the bed. In some deep, dim part of his mind where the dope hadn't yet reached, alarm bells were going off. She loved the book, which meant she didn't mean to kill him. Whatever was going on, she didn't mean to kill him. And unless his assessment of Annie Wilkes was totally off the beam, that meant she had something even worse in store.
Now the light in the room did not look dull; it looked marvellously pure, marvellously full of its own gray and eldritch charm; he could imagine cranes half-glimpsed in gunmetal mist standing in one-legged silence beside upland lakes in that light, could imagine the mica flecks in rocks jutting from spring grasses in upland meadows shining with the shaggy glow of glazed window-glass in that light, could imagine elves shucking their busy selves off to work in lines under the dew-soaked leaves of early ivy in that light…
Oh BOY are you stoned, Paul thought, and giggled faintly.
Annie smiled in return. “The good news,” she said, “is that your car is gone. I've been very worried about your car, Paul. I knew it would take a storm like this to get rid of it and maybe even that wouldn't do the trick. The spring run-off got rid of that Pomeroy dirty bird, but a car is ever so much heavier than a man, isn't it? Even a man as full of cockadoodie as he was. But the storm and the run-off combined was enough to do the trick. Your car is gone. That's the good news.”
“What…” More faint alarm bells. Pomeroy… he knew that name, but couldn't think exactly how he knew it. Then it came to him. Pomeroy. The late great Andrew Pomeroy, twenty-three, of Cold Stream Harbor, New York. Found in the Grider Wildlife Preserve, wherever that was.
“Now Paul,” she said, in the prim voice he knew so well. “No need to be coy. I know you know who Andy Pomeroy was, because I know you've read my book. I suppose that I sort of hoped you would read it, you know; otherwise, why would I have left it out? But I made sure, you know - I make sure of everything. And sure enough, the threads were broken.”
“The threads,” he said faintly.
“Oh yes. I read once about a way you're supposed to find out for sure if someone has been snooping around in your drawers. You tape a very fine thread across each one, and if you come back and find one broken, why you know, don't you? You know someone's been snooping. You see how easy it is?”
“Yes, Annie.” He was listening, but what he really wanted to do was trip out on the marvellous quality of the light.
Again she bent over to check whatever it was she had at the foot of the bed; again he heard a faint dull clunk/clank, wood thumping against some metallic object, and then she turned back, brushing absently at her hair again.
“I did that with my book - only I didn't really use threads, you know; I used hairs from my own head. I put them across the thickness of the book in three different places and when I came in this morning - very early, creeping like a little mousie so I wouldn't wake you up - all three threads were broken, so I knew you had been looking at my book.” She paused, and smiled. It was, for Annie, a very winning smile, yet it had an unpleasant quality he could not quite put his finger on. “Not that I was surprised. I knew you had been out of the room. That's the bad news. I've known for a long, long time, Paul.” He should feel angry and dismayed, he supposed. She had known, known almost from the start, it seemed… but he could only feel that dreamy, floating euphoria, and what she was saying did not seem nearly as important as the glorious quality of the strengthening light as the day hovered on the edge of becoming.
“But,” she said with the air of one returning to business, “we were talking about your car. I have studded tires, Paul, and at my place in the hills I keep a set of 10X tire chains. Early yesterday afternoon I felt ever so much better - I spent most of my time up there on my knees, deep in prayer, and the answer came, as it often does, and it was quite simple, as it often is. What you take to the Lord in prayer, Paul, He giveth back a thousandfold. So I put the chains on and I crept back down here. It was not easy, and I knew I might well have an accident in spite of the studs and the chains. I also knew that there is rarely such a thing as a “minor accident” on those twisty upcountry roads. But I felt easy in my mind, because I felt safe in the will of the Lord.”
“That's very uplifting, Annie,” Paul croaked.
She gave him a look which was momentarily startled and narrowly suspicious… and then she relaxed and smiled “I've got a present for you, Paul,” she said softly, and before he could ask her what it was - he wasn't sure he wanted any sort of present from Annie - she went on: “The roads were terribly icy. I almost went off twice… The second time Old Bessie slid all the way around in a circle and kept right on going downhill while she did it!” Annie laughed cheerily “Then I got stuck in a snowbank - this was around midnight - but a sanding-crew from the Eustice Public Works Department came along and helped me out.”