Desperation by Stephen King Read Free Book Online Page B

have any real idea, and then she had hit, she had cartwheeled, feet flying first upward and then backward, and there had been this sound, this awful sound like a branch breaking under a weight of ice, and suddenly everything about her had changed, he had seen the change even before she came to a stop at the foot of the stairs, as if that were no little girl down there but a stuffed dummy, headpiece full of straw.
    Don’t think it, don’t think it, don’t you dare think it.
    Except he had to. The way she had landed . . . the way she had lain at the foot of the stairs with her head on one side . . .
    Fresh blood was pattering down on his left hand, he saw. Apparently something was wrong with that side of his head. What had happened? Had the cop hit him, too, maybe with the butt of the monster sidearm he had been wearing? Maybe, but that part was mostly gone. He could remember the gruesome somersault she had done, and the way she had slid down the rest of the stairs, and how she had come to rest with her head cocked that way, and that was all. Christ, wasn’t it enough?
    â€œRalph?” Ellie was tugging at him and panting harshly. “Ralph, get up! Please get up!”
    â€œDad! Daddy, come on!” That was David, from farther away. “He okay, Mom? He’s bleeding again, isn’t he?”
    â€œNo . . . no, he—”
    â€œYes he is, I can see it from here. Daddy, are you okay?”
    â€œYes,” he said. He got one foot planted beneath him, groped for the bunk, and tottered upright. His left eye was bleary with blood. The lid felt as if it had been dipped in plaster of Paris. He wiped it with the heel of his hand, wincing as fresh pain stung him—the area above his left eye felt like freshly tenderized meat. He tried to turn around, toward the sound of his son’s voice, and staggered. It was like being on a boat. His balance was shot, and even when he stopped turning it felt to something in his head like he was still doing it, reeling and rocking, going round and round. Ellie grabbed him, supported him, helped him forward.
    â€œShe’s dead, isn’t she?” Ralph asked. His choked voice came out of a throat plated with dead blood. He couldn’t believe what he heard that voice saying, but he supposed that in time he would. That was the worst of it. In time he would. “Kirsten’s dead.”
    â€œI think so, yes.” Ellie staggered this time. “Grab the bars, Ralph, can you? You’re going to knock me over.”
    They were in a jail cell. In front of him, just out of reach, was the barred door. The bars were painted white, and in some places the paint had dried and hardened in thick runnels. Ralph lunged forward a step and grabbed them. He was looking out at a desk, sitting in the middle of a square of floor like the single bit of stage dressing in a minimalist play. There were papers on it, and a double-barrelled shotgun, and a strew of fat green shotgun shells. The old-fashioned wooden desk chair in the kneehole was on casters, and there was a faded blue pillow on the seat. Overhead was a light fixture encased in a mesh bowl. The dead flies inside the fixture made huge, grotesque shadows.
    There were jail cells on three sides of this room. The one in the middle, probably the drunk-tank, was large and empty. Ralph and Ellie Carver were in a smaller one. A second small cell to their right was empty. Across from them were two other closet-sized cells. In one of them was their eleven-year-old son, David, and a man with white hair. Ralph could see nothing else of this man, because he was sitting on the bunk with his head lowered onto his hands. When the woman screamed from below them again, David turned in that direction, where an open door gave on a flight of stairs
    (Kirsten, Kirsten falling, the snapping sound of her neck breaking)
    going down to street level, but the white-haired man did not shift his position