Desperation by Stephen King Read Free Book Online Page A

don’t care if you’re a Jew or a Hindu,” the cop said, hugging Peter against him. He squeezed Peter’s shoulder chummily with his left hand as he cocked the .45 with his right. “In Desperation we don’t care about those things much.”
    He pulled the trigger at least three times. There might have been more, but three reports were all Peter Jackson heard. They were muffled by his stomach, but still very loud. An incredible heat shot up through his chest and down through his legs at the same time, and he heard something wet drop on his shoes. He heard Mary, still screaming, but the sound seemed to come from far, far away.
    Now I’ll wake up in my bed, Peter thought as his knees buckled and the world began to draw away, as bright as afternoon sunlight on the chrome side of a receding railroad car. Now I’ll—
    That was all. His last thought as the darkness swallowed him forever really wasn’t a thought at all, but an image: the bear on the dashboard next to the cop’s compass. Head jiggling. Painted eyes staring. The eyes turned into holes, the dark rushed out of them, and then he was gone.

CHAPTER 2
    1
    Ralph Carver was somewhere deep in the black and didn’t want to come up. He sensed physical pain waiting—a hangover, perhaps, and a really spectacular one if he could feel his head aching even in his sleep—but not just that. Something else. Something to do with
    (Kirsten)
    this morning. Something to do with
    (Kirsten)
    their vacation. He had gotten drunk, he supposed, pulled a real horror show, Ellie was undoubtedly pissed at him, but even that didn’t seem enough to account for how horrible he felt . . .
    Screaming. Someone was screaming. But distant.
    Ralph tried to burrow even deeper into the black, but now hands seized his shoulder and began shaking him. Every shake sent a monstrous bolt of pain through his poor hungover head.
    â€œRalph! Ralph, wake up! You have to wake up!”
    Ellie shaking him. Was he late for work? How could he be late for work? They were on vacation.
    Then, shockingly loud, penetrating the blackness like the beam of a powerful light, gunshots. Three of them, then a pause, then a fourth.
    His eyes flew open and he bolted into a sitting position, no idea for a moment where he was or what was happening, only knowing that his head hurt horribly and felt the size of a float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Something sticky that felt like jam or maple syrup all down the side of his face. Ellen looking at him, one eye wide and frantic, the other nearly lost in a puffy complication of blue-black flesh.
    Screaming. Somewhere. A woman. From below them. Maybe—
    He tried to get on his feet but his knees wouldn’t lock. He fell forward off the bed he was sitting on (except it wasn’t a bed, it was a cot) and landed on his hands and knees. A fresh bolt of pain passed through his head, and for a moment he thought his skull would split open like an eggshell. Then he was looking down at his hands through clotted clumps of hair. Both hands were streaked with blood, the left considerably redder than the right. As he looked at them, sudden memory
    (Kirsten oh Jesus Ellie catch her)
    burst in his head like a poison firework and he screamed himself, screamed down at his bloodstained hands, screamed as what he had been trying to burrow away from dropped into his mind like a stone into a pond. Kirsten had fallen down the stairs—
    No. Pushed.
    The crazy bastard who had brought them here had pushed his seven-year-old daughter down the stairs. Ellie had reached for her and the crazy bastard had punched his wife in the eye and knocked her down. But Ellie had fallen on the stairs and Kirsten had plunged down them, her eyes wide open, full of shocked surprise, Ralph didn’t think she’d known what was happening, and if he could hold onto anything he would hold onto that, that it had all happened too fast for her to