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up like steam in a teakettle, "I'm not going to be put off, Reynard.
Every word that comes out of your mouth makes me more
determined to see that room. Now are you going to agree to it or do
I have to go down to that village and ... ?"
"Please." Something in the quiet hopelessness of the word made
Wharton look up. Reynard looked directly into his eyes for the first
time and they were haunted, haggard eyes. "Please, Mr. Wharton.
Take my word that your sister died naturally and go away. I don't
want to see you die!" His voice rose to a wail. "I didn't want to see
anybody die!"
Wharton felt a quiet chill steal over him. His gaze skipped from the
grinning fireplace gargoyle to the dusty, empty-eyed bust of Cicero
in the corner to the strange wainscoting carvings. And a voice
came from within him: Go away from here. A thousand living yet
insentient eyes seemed to stare at him from the darkness, and again
the voice spoke... "Go away from here."
Only this time it was Reynard.
"Go away from here," he repeated. "Your sister is beyond caring
and beyond revenge. I give you my word...
"Damn your word!" Wharton said harshly. "I'm going down to the
sheriff, Reynard. And if the sheriff won't help me, I'll go to the
county commissioner. And if the county commissioner won't help
me ...
"Very well." The words were like the faraway tolling of a
churchyard bell.
"Come."
Reynard led the way into the hall, down past the kitchen, the empty
dining room with the chandelier catching and reflecting the last
light of day, past the pantry, toward the blind plaster of the
corridor's end.
This is it, he thought, and suddenly there was a strange crawling in
the pit of his stomach.
"I..." he began involuntarily.
"What?" Reynard asked, hope glittering in his eyes.
"Nothing. "
They stopped at the end of the hall, stopped in the twilight gloom.
There seemed to be no electric light. On the floor Wharton could
see the still-damp plasterer's trowel Reynard had used to wall up
the doorway, and a straggling remnant of Poe's "Black Cat"
clanged through his mind:
"I had walled the monster up within the tomb...
Reynard handed the trowel to him blindly. "Do whatever you have
to do, Wharton. I won't be party to it. I wash my hands of it.
Wharton watched him move off down the hall with misgivings, his
hand opening and closing on the handle of the trowel. The faces of
the Little-boy weathervane, the fire-dog gargoyle, the wizened
housemaid all seemed to mix and mingle before him, all grinning
at something he could not understand. Go away from here ...
With a sudden bitter curse he attacked the wall, hacking into the
soft, new plaster until the trowel scraped across the door of the
East Room. He dug away plaster until he could reach the
doorknob. He twisted, then yanked on it until the veins stood out in
his temples .
The plaster cracked, schismed, and finally split. The door swung
ponderously open, shedding plaster like a dead skin.
Wharton stared into the shimmering quicksilver pool.
It seemed to glow with a light of its own in the darkness, ethereal
and fairy-like. Wharton stepped in, half-expecting to sink into
warm, pliant fluid.
But the floor was solid.
His own reflection hung suspended below him, attached only by
the feet, seeming to stand on its head in thin air. It made him dizzy
just to look at it.
Slowly his gaze shifted around the room. The ladder was still
there, stretching up into the glimmering depths of the mirror. The
room was high, he saw. High enough for a fall to he winced - to
kill.
It was ringed with empty bookcases, all seeming to lean over him
on the very threshold of imbalance. They added to the room's
strange, distorting effect.
He went over to the ladder and stared down at the feet. They were
rubbershod, as Reynard had said, and seemed solid enough. But if
the ladder had not slid, how had Janine fallen?
Somehow he found himself staring through the floor again. No, he
corrected himself. Not through the floor. At the mirror; into the
mirror . . .
He wasn't standing on the floor at all he fancied. He Was poised in
thin air halfway between the identical ceiling and floor, held up
only by the stupid idea that he was on the floor. That was silly, as
anyone could see, for there was the floor, way down there.. . .
Snap out of it!' he yelled at himself suddenly. He was on the floor,
and that was nothing but a harmless reflection of the ceiling. It
would only be the floor if I was standing on my head, and I'm not;
the other me is the one standing on his head... .
He began to feel vertigo, and a sudden lump of nausea rose in his
throat. He tried to look away from the glittering quicksilver depths
of the mirror, but he couldn't.
The door.. where was the door? He suddenly wanted out very
badly.
Wharton turned around clumsily, but there were only crazily-tilted
bookcases and the jutting ladder and the horrible chasm beneath
his feet.
"Reynard!" He screamed. "I'm falling! "
Reynard came running, the sickness already a gray lesion on his
heart. It was done; it had happened again.
He stopped at the door's threshold, Staring in at the Siamese twins
staring at each other in the middle of the two-roofed, no-floored
room.
"Louise," he croaked around the dry ball of sickness in his throat.
"Bring the pole."
Louise came shuffling out of the darkness and handed the hook-
ended pole to Reynard. He slid it out across the shining quicksilver
pond and caught the body sprawled on the glass. He dragged it
slowly toward the door, and when he could reach it, he pulled it
out. He stared down into the contorted face and gently shut the
staring eyes.
"I'll want the plaster," he said quietly.
"Yes, sir."
She turned to go, and Reynard stared somberly into the room. Not
for the first time he wondered if there was really a mirror there at
all. In the room, a small pool of blood showed on the floor and
ceiling, seeming to meet in the center, blood which hung there
quietly and one could wait forever for it to drip.
The King Family &
The Wicked Witch
STEPHEN KING
Illustrated by King's children
Flint Magazine
EDITOR'S NOTE:
Stephen King and I went to college together. No, we were not the
best of friends, but we did share a few brews together at University
Motor Inn. We did work for the school newspaper at the same
time. No, Steve and I are not best friends. But I sure am glad he
made it. He worked hard and believed in himself. After eight
million book sales, it's hard to remember him as a typically broke
student. We all knew he'd make it through.
Last January I wrote of a visit with Steve over the holiday
vacation. We talked about his books, Carrie - Salems Lot. The
Shinning. and the soon to be released, The Stand. We talked about
how Stanley Kubrick wants to do the film versions of his new
books. We didn't talk about the past much though. We talked of the
future - his kids, FLINT ...
He gave me a copy of a story he had written for his children. We
almost ran it then, but there was much concern on the staff as to
how it would be received by our readers. We didn't run it. Well,
we've debated long enough. It's too cute for you not to read it. We
made the final decision after spending in evening watching TV last
week. There were at least 57 more offensive things said, not to
mention all the murders, rapes, and wars...we decided to let you be
the judge. If some of you parents might be offended by the word
'fart', you'd better not read it - but don't stop your kids, they'll love
it!
On the Secret Road in the town of Bridgton, there lived a wicked
witch. Her name was Witch Hazel.
How wicked was Witch Hazel? Well, once she had changed a
Prince from the Kingdom of New Hampshire into a woodchuck.
She turned a little kid's favorite kitty into whipped cream. And she
liked to turn mommies' baby carriages into big piles of horse-turds
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