Rose Madder by Stephen King
Bill looked at the black woman. She shook her head slightly, indicating that she didn't understand, either. He realized a horrible thing: he needed to cough. The throbbing tickle behind his soft palate was almost overpowering. He dropped his mouth into the crook of his arm and tried to keep it back in his throat, aware of the woman's concerned eyes on him.
I can't hold it for long, he thought. Christ, Norman, why don't you move? You were fast enough before.
As if in reply to this thought: "Norr-munnn! You're so fucking SLOWWW, Norr-munnn!"
"Bitch," the thick voice on the other side of the temple said. "Oh you bitch."
Shoes, gritting on crumbled stone. A moment later Bill heard echoing footfalls and realized that Norman was inside the building which the black woman had called a temple. He realized something else as well: the urge to cough had passed, at least for the time being.
He leaned close to the woman in the blue dress and whispered into her ear: "What do we do now?"
Her whispered reply tickled his own ear: "Wait."
2
Discovering that the mask seemed to have become part of his flesh scared him for a moment or two, and badly, but before fright could escalate into panic, Norman saw something a short distance away that distracted him from the subject of the mask entirely. He hurried down the slope a little way and knelt. He picked up the sweater, looked at it, flung it aside. Then he picked up the jacket. It was the one she had been wearing, all right. A motorcycle jacket. The guy had a scoot and she'd been out riding with him, probably with her crotch pretty well banged into his ass. Jacket's too big for her, he thought. He loaned it to her. The thought infuriated him, and he spat on it before flinging it aside, leaping to his feet, and looking wildly around.
"You bitch," he murmured. "You dirty, cheating bitch."
"Norman!" It came drifting out of the darkness, stopping his breath in his throat for a second.
Close, he thought. Holy shit, she's close, I think she's in that building.
He stood stock-still, waiting to see if she'd yell again. After a moment, she did. "Norman, I'm down here!"
His hands went to the mask again, but this time they did not pull; they caressed. "Viva ze bool, " Norman said into it, and started down the hill toward the ruins of the building at the bottom. He thought he could see tracks going that way--broken swatches of high grass that might be places where feet had come down, anyway--but the moonlight made it difficult to tell for sure.
Then, as if to confirm his direction, her maddening, mocking cry came again: "Down heee-eeeere, Norman!" As if she wasn't afraid of him at all; as if she couldn't wait for him to get there, in fact. Bitch!
"Stay where you are, Rose, " he said. "Just stay put, that's the main thing." He still had the cop's gun stuffed into the waistband of his jeans, but it didn't loom large in his plans. He didn't know if you could fire a gun in a hallucination or not, and he had absolutely no desire to find out. He wanted to talk to his little rambling Rose much more personally than any gun would allow.
"Norman, you look so silly in that mask ... I'm not afraid of you anymore, Norman ..."
You're going to discover that's a passing fad, you bitch, he thought.
"Norman, you idiot!"
All right, maybe she wasn't in the building; she might already have gone through it to the other side. It doesn't matter. If she thought she could outrun him on a level playing-field, she was going to get the surprise of her life. The last surprise of her life.
"You're such a fool! ... did you really think you could catch me? Silly old bull!"
He moved to his right a little, trying to be quiet now, reminding himself that it wouldn't help to behave like, ha-ha, a bull in a china shop. He stopped near the foot of the cracked steps leading up to the temple (that was what it was, he saw that now, a temple like in one of those Greek fairy-tales that guys used to make up back then when they weren't too busy butt-punching each other), and surveyed it. The building was clearly abandoned and falling into ruin, but this place didn't feel spooky; it felt weirdly like home.
"Norrr-munnnn ... don't you want to taaalllk to me?"
"Oh, I'll talk to you, " he said. "I'll talk to you right up close, you cunt. " He caught sight of something in the high, tangled grass to the right of the steps: a big stone face in the weeds, staring raptly into the sky. Five paces took Norman to it, and he stared fixedly down at it for ten seconds or more, wanting to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. He was. The huge tumbled head bore the face of his father, and his empty eyes snarled with idiot moonlight.
"Boo, you old sonofabitch," he said softly. "What you doing here?"
The stone father made no reply, but his wife did.
"Norrrr-munnnn ... you're so fucking SLOWWW, Norrr-munnnn !"
Nice language they taught her to use, too, the bull remarked, only now it was making its remarks from inside
Norman's head. These are great people she's got in with, no doubt about that--they've changed her whole life.
"Bitch," he said in a thick, trembling voice. "Oh you bitch. "
He wheeled away from the stone face in the grass, resisting an urge to go back and spit on it the way he had on the jacket . . . or to unzip his jeans and take a piss on it. No time for games now. He hurried up the cracked steps toward the black entrance to the temple. Each time his foot came down, it sent agonizing pain up his leg, up his back, into his violated lower jaw. It felt like only the mask was holding his jaw in place now, and it hurt like a mad bastard. He wished he'd brought the Charlie-David cops' aspirin with him.
How could she do that, Normie? the voice came whispering up from deep inside. It still sounded like his father's voice, but Norman couldn't remember ever hearing his father sound so unsure of himself, so worried. How could she dare do that? What's happened to her?
He stopped with his foot on the top step, face aching, his lower jaw feeling as loose as a tire with the lug-nuts working free. I don't know and I don't care, he told the ghost-voice. But I'll tell you one thing, Daddy--if that's who you are--when I find her, I'm going to unhappen it in a helluva hurry. That you can take to the bank.
Are you sure you want to try that? the voice asked, and Norman, in the act of starting forward, stopped again, listening, head cocked.
You know what might be wiser? it asked. It might be wiser to just call it a draw. I know how that sounds, but I'm giving you the benefit of my thinking just the same, Normie. If I was the one with my hands on the controls, I'd turn around and go back the way I came. Because nothing's right here. It's all hinky as hell, in fact. I don't know what it is, but I know what it feels like--a trap. And if you walk into it you may have a lot more to worry about than a wiggly jaw or a mask that doesn't want to come off. Why don't you turn around and go back the way you came? See if you can't find your way back into her rented room and maybe wait for her there?
Because they'll come, Daddy, Norman told the voice. He was shaken by this ghost's insistence and surety, but would not admit it. The cops will come and they will take me down. They'll take me down before I so much as smell her perfume. And because she said fuck to me. Because she's turned into a whore. I can tell it just by the way she talks now.
Never mind how she talks, you idiot! If she's gone rotten, leave her to spoil on the ground with her friends! Maybe it isn't too late to shut this thing down before it explodes in your face.
He actually considered it ... and then raised his eyes to the temple and read the words chiselled over the door. SHE WHO STEALS HER HUSBAND'S BANK CARD SHALL NOT BE SUFFERED TO LIVE, they read.
Doubt fled. He would listen to his craven, crotchgrabbing father no more. He passed through the yawning doorway and into the damp darkness beyond. Dark . . . but not too dark to see. Powdery shafts of moonlight fell steeply in through the narrow windows, illuminating a ruin that looked spookily like the church where Rose and her folks had worshipped back in Aubreyville. He walked through drifts of fallen leaves, and when a flock of whirlin
As he emerged onto a small stone stoop through the door to the right of the altar, he saw a fluff of something hanging from a bush. He leaned over, pulled it free, held it up in front of his eyes. It was hard to be sure in this light, but he thought it was red or pink. Had she been wearing clothes of such a color? He thought she'd had jeans on, but everything was mixed up in his mind. Even if it had been jeans, she'd taken off the jacket the cocksucker had loaned her, and maybe underneath--
There was a soft sound behind him, like a pennant rippling in a breeze. Norman turned and a brown bat flew into his face, snapping at him with its whiskery mouth as its wings battered against his cheeks.
His hand had dropped to the butt of the gun. Now he let go of it and seized the bat, crumpling the bones in its wings back against its body like a lunatic concertina player. He twisted it against itself and tore it in two with such force that its rudimentary guts fell out on his shoes. "Shoulda stayed out of my face, asshole, " Norman told it, and then flung the pieces back into the temple's shadows.
"You're great at killing bats, Norman."
Jesus Christ, that was close--that was right behind him!
He spun around so fast this time that he almost lost his balance and tumbled off the stone stoop.
The ground behind the temple sloped toward a stream, and standing there halfway down, in what looked like the world's deadest garden, was his sweet little rambling Rose--just standing there in the moonlight, looking up at him. Three things struck him in rapid succession. The first was that she was no longer wearing jeans, if she ever had been; she was wearing a minidress that looked like it belonged at a frathouse toga-party. The second was that she had changed her hair. It was blonde and pulled back from her face.
The third thing was that she was beautiful.
"Bats and women," she said coldly. "That's about it for you, isn't it? I almost feel sorry for you, Norman. You're a miserable excuse for a man. You're not a man, not really. And that stupid mask you're wearing will never make you into one. "
"I'LL KILL YOU, YOU BITCH!" Norman jumped from the stoop and sprinted down the hill toward where she stood, his horned shadow trailing along beside him over the dead grass in the bony moonlight.
3
For a moment she stood where she was, frozen in place, every muscle in her body seemingly locked down as he rushed forward, screaming inside the hideous mask he was wearing. What got her moving was a sudden gruesome image--sent by Practical-Sensible, she had an idea--of the tennis racket he'd used on her, its handle wet with blood.
She turned then, the skirt of the zat flaring, and ran for the stream.
The stones, Rosie ... if you fall in that water ...
But she wasn't going to. She was really Rosie, she was Rosie Real, and she wasn't going to. Not, that was, unless she let herself think about what would happen if she did. The smell of the water came to her powerfully enough to make her eyes sting ... and to make her mouth cramp with desire. Rosie reached up with her left hand, pinched her nostrils shut between the knuckles of her second and third fingers, and jumped onto the second stone. From there she leaped to the fourth, and from there to the other bank. Easy. Nothing to it. At least until her feet went out from under her and she went sprawling full-length and started to slide back down on the slippery grass toward the black water.
4
Norman saw her fall and laughed. She was going to get wet, it looked like.
Don't worry, Rose, he thought. I'll fish you out, and I'll pat you dry. Yes indeed.
Then she was up again, clawing at the bank and casting one terrified glance back over her shoulder . . . except it wasn't him she appeared to be afraid of; she was looking at the water. As she got up, he caught a flash of her butt, as bare as the day she'd been born, and the most amazing thing happened: he started getting hard in his pants.
"Coming, Rose, " he panted. Yes, and maybe soon he'd be coming in another way, as well. Coming as she was going, you might say.
He hurried down to the stream, trampling the delicate prints of Rose 's feet beneath Hump Peterson 's square-toed boots, reaching the edge of the running water just as Rosie gained the top of the other bank. She stood there for a moment, looking back, and this time it was clearly him she was looking at. Then she did something that brought him to a dead halt, momentarily too amazed to move.
She gave him the finger.
She did it right, too, kissing the tip of it at him before running for the grove of dead trees ahead.
Did you see that, Norm old buddy? ze bool asked from its place inside his head. The bitch just flipped you off. Did you see it?
"Yes," he breathed. "I saw it. I'll take care of it, too. I'll take care of everything. "
But he had no intention of charging wildly across the stream, and maybe falling in. There was something about the water Rose hadn't liked, and he'd do well to be very careful; to watch his step in the most literal sense. The damned brook might be full of those little South American fish with the big teeth, the ones that could strip a whole cow down to its skeleton on a good day. He didn't know if you could be killed by things in a delusion, but this felt less like make-believe all the time.
She flashed her ass at me, he thought. Her bare ass. Maybe I've got something to flash at her . . . don't they say turnabout's fair play?
Norman wrinkled his lips back from his teeth, making a grisly expression that wasn't a grin, and put one of Hump's boots on the first white stone. The moon sailed behind a cloud as he did. When it came out again, it caught Norman halfway across the little stream. He looked down at the water, at first just curious, then fascinated and horrified. The moonlight penetrated the water no more than it would have penetrated a flowing stream of mud, but that wasn't what took the breath out of him and brought him to a stop. The moon reflected up at him in that black water wasn't the moon at all. It was a bleached and grinning human skull.
Have a drink of this shit, Normie, the skull on the surface of the water whispered. Hell, take a goddamned bath, if you want. Just forget all this foolishness. Drink and you will. Drink and it will never trouble you again; nothing will.
It sounded so plausible, so right. He looked up, perhaps to see if the moon in the sky looked as much like a skull as the one in the water, and instead saw Rose. She was standing at the place where the path entered a grove of dead trees, beside a statue of a kid with his arms up and his crank hanging out in front of him.
"You're not getting away that easy," he breathed. "I dont--"
The stone boy moved then. Its arms came down and seized Rosie's right wrist. Rosie screamed and beat fruitlessly against its two-handed grip. The stone boy was grinning, and as Norman watched, it stuck out its marble tongue and waggled it at Rosie suggestively.
"Attaboy," " Norman whispered. "Hold her--just hold her. "
He jumped up on the other bank and ran for his wayward wife, big hands outstretched.
5
Want to do the dog with me?" the stone boy enquired of her in a grating, uninflected voice. The hands clamping her wrist were all angles and squeezing, bitter weight. She looked over her shoulder and saw Norman leap onto the bank, the horns of the mask he had on digging at the night air. He stumbled on the slick grass but did not fall. For the first time since realizing it was Norman in the police car, she felt close to panic. He was going to get her, and then what? He'd bite her to pieces and she would die screaming, with the smell of his English Leather in her nostrils. He would--
"Want to do the dog?" the stone boy spat. "Want to get down, Rosie, do some low-ridin, put all four on the fl--"
"No!" she shrieked, her fury spilling out again, spreading across her thoughts like a red curtain. "No, leave me alone, quit that high-school bullshit and leave me ALONE!"
She swung with her left hand, not thinking of how much it was going to hurt to drive her fi
Rosie turned, feeling one of his outstretched fingers skate over the zat's single shoulder-strap, and bolted.
Now it would be a footrace.
6
She ran as she had when she was a girl, before her practical, sensible mother had begun the weighty task of teaching Rose Diana McClendon what was ladylike and what was not (running, especially once you were at an age where you had breasts bouncing in front of you when you did it, was definitely not). She went all out, in other words, with her head down and her fisted hands pumping at her sides. She was aware of Norman at her heels to begin with, less aware of his starting to slip back, at first by mere feet, then by yards. She could hear him grunting and blowing even when he had fallen behind a little, and he sounded exactly as Erinyes had sounded in the maze. She was aware of her own lighter breathing, and of the plait bouncing up and down and side to side on her back. Mostly, though, what she was aware of was a mad exhilaration, of blood filling her head until she felt it must burst, but bursting would be ecstasy. She looked up once and saw the moon racing with her, speeding through the starshot sky behind the branches of dead trees that stood here like the hands of giants who had been buried alive and had died struggling to disinter themselves. Once, when Norman growled at her to stop running and quit being such a cunt, she actually laughed. He thinks I'm playing hard to get, she thought.
Then she came around a bend in the path and saw the lightning-struck tree blocking her course. There was no time to swerve, and if she tried to put on the brakes she would succeed only in being impaled on one or more of the tree's dead, jutting branches. Even if she avoided that, there was Norman. She had gotten ahead of him a little, but if she stopped, even for a moment, he would be on her like a dog on a rabbit.