SO STRONG.
Your BIG THING.
But the phrase she kept returning to, the one which fed her rage most successfully, was that blasphemous perversion of the Communion ritual:... keep this picture "in remembrance of me."
Obscene images rose in Sally's mind, unbidden. Lester's mouth closing on one of Judy Libby's ni**les while she crooned: "Take, drink ye all of this, in remembrance of me." Lester on his knees between Judy Libby's spread legs while she told him to take, eat this in remembrance of me.
She crumpled the peach-colored sheet of paper into a ball and threw it onto the floor of the car. She sat bolt upright behind the wheel, breathing hard, her hair fuzzed out in sweaty tangles (she had been running her free hand distractedly through it as she studied the note). Then she bent, picked it up, smoothed it out, and stuffed both it and the photograph back into the envelope. Her hands were shaking so badly she had to try three times to get it in, and when she finally did, she tore the envelope halfway down the side.
"Chippie!" she cried again, and burst into tears. The tears were hot; they burned like acid. "Bitch! And you! You! Lying bastard!"
She jammed the key into the ignition. The Mustang awoke with a roar that sounded as angry as she felt. She dropped the gearshift into drive and tore out of the faculty parking lot in a cloud of blue smoke and a wailing shriek of burned rubber.
Billy Merchant, who was practicing nosies on his skateboard across the playground, looked up in surprise.
4
She was in her bedroom fifteen minutes later, digging through her underwear, looking for the splinter and not finding it. Her anger at Judy and her lying bastard of a boyfriend had been eclipsed by an overmastering terror-what if it was gone? What if it had been stolen after all?
Sally had brought the torn envelope in with her, and became aware that it was still clutched in her left hand. It was impeding her search. She threw it aside and tore her sensible cotton underwear out of her drawer in big double handfuls, throwing it everywhere. just as she felt she must scream with a combination of panic, rage, and frustration, she saw the splinter. She had pulled the drawer open so hard that it had slid all the way into the left rear corner of the drawer.
She snatched it up, and at once felt peace and serenity flood through her. She grabbed the envelope with her other hand and then held both hands in front of her, good and evil, sacred and profane, alpha and omega. Then she put the torn envelope in the drawer and tossed her underwear on top of it in helter-skelter piles.
She sat down, crossed her legs, and bowed her head over the splinter. She shut her eyes, expecting to feel the floor begin to sway gently beneath her, expecting the peace which came to her when she heard the voices of the animals, the poor dumb animals, saved in a time of wickedness by the grace of God.
Instead, she heard the voice of the man who had sold her the splinter. You really ought to take care of this, you know, Mr. Gaunt said from deep within the relic. You really ought to take care of this... this nasty business.
"Yes," Sally Ratcliffe said. "Yes, I know."
She sat there all afternoon in her hot maiden's bedroom, thinking and dreaming in the dark circle which the splinter spread around her, a darkness which was like the hood of a cobra.
5
"Lookit my king, all dressed in green... iko-iko one day... he's not a man, he's a lovin' machine..."
While Sally Ratcliffe was meditating in her new darkness, Polly Chalmers was sitting in a bar of brilliant sunlight by a window she had opened to let in a little of the unseasonably warm October afternoon.
She was running her Singer Dress-0-Matic and singing "lko Iko" in her clear, pleasant alto voice.
Rosalie Drake came over and said, "I know someone who's feeling better today. A lot better, by the sound."
Polly looked up and offered Rosalie a smile which was strangely complex. "I do and don't," she said.
"What you mean is that you do and can't help it."
Polly considered this for a few moments and then nodded her head.
It wasn't exactly right, but it would do. The two women who had died together yesterday were together again today, at the Samuels Funeral Home. They would be buried out of different churches tomorrow morning, but by tomorrow afternoon Nettle and Wilma would be neighbors again... in Homeland Cemetery, this time.
Polly counted herself partially responsible for their deaths-after all, Nettle would never have come back to Castle Rock if not for her.
She had written the necessary letters, attended the necessary hearings, had even found Netitia Cobb a place to live. And why?