of the worst—she had turned him into a painwracked animal with no moral options at all.
He slowly backed the wheelchair across the bathroom, glancing behind himself occasionally to make sure he wasn’t wandering off-course. Before, such a movement would have made him scream with pain, but now the pain was disappearing under a beautiful glassiness.
He rolled into the hall and then stopped as a terrible thought struck him: if the bathroom floor had been slightly damp, or even a bit dirty—
He stared at it, and for a moment the idea that he must have left tracks on those clean white tiles was so persuasive that he actually saw them. He shook his head and looked again. No tracks. But the door was open farther than it had been. He rolled forward, swung the wheelchair slightly to the right so he could lean over and grab the knob, and pulled the door half-closed. He eyed it, then pulled it a bit closer to the jamb. There. That looked right.
He was reaching for the wheels, meaning to pivot the chair so he could roll back to his room, when he realized he was pointed more or less toward the living room, and the living room was where most people kept their telephone and—
Light bursting in his mind like a flare over a foggy meadow.
“Listen to me, Officer Humbuggy. Listen very carefully and don’t interrupt, because I don’t know how much time I have. My name is Paul Sheldon. I’m calling you from Annie Wilkes’s house. I’ve been her prisoner here for at least two weeks, maybe as long as a month. I—”
“Annie Wilkes!”
“Get out here right away. Send an ambulance. And for Christ’s sake get here before she gets back....”
“Before she gets back,” Paul moaned. “Oh yeah. Far out.”
What makes you think she even has a phone? Who have you ever heard her call? Who would she call? Her good friends the Roydmans?
Just because she doesn’t have anyone to chatter with all day doesn’t mean she is incapable of understanding that accidents can happen; she could fall downstairs and break an arm or a leg, the barn might catch on fire—
How many times have you heard this supposed telephone ring?
So now there’s a requirement? Your phone has to ring at least once a day or Mountain Bell comes and takes it out? Besides, I haven’t even been conscious most of the time.
You’re pushing your luck. You’re pushing your luck and you know it.
Yes. He knew it, but the thought of that telephone, the imagined sensation of the cool black plastic under his fingers, the click of the rotary dial or the single booping sound as he touched-toned 0—these were seductions too great to resist.
He worked the wheelchair around until it was directly facing the parlor, and then he rolled down to it.
The place smelled musty, unaired, obscurely tired. Although the curtains guarding the bow windows were only half-drawn, affording a lovely view of the mountains, the room seemed too dark—because its colors were too dark, he thought. Dark red predominated, as if someone had spilled a great deal of venous blood in here.
Over the mantel was a tinted photograph portrait of a forbidding woman with tiny eyes buried in a fleshy face. The rosebud mouth was pursed. The photograph, enclosed in a rococo frame of gold gilt, was the size of the President’s photograph in the lobby of a big-city post office. Paul did not need a notarized statement to tell him that this was Annie’s sainted mother.
He rolled farther into the room. The left side of the wheelchair struck a small occasional table covered with ceramic gewgaws. They chattered together and one of them—a ceramic penguin sitting on a ceramic ice-block—fell off the side.
Without thinking, he reached out and grabbed it. The gesture was almost casual ... and then reaction set in. He held the penguin tightly in his curled fist, trying to will the shakes away. You caught it, no sweat, besides, there’s a rug on the floor, probably wouldn’t have broken anyway—
But if it HAD! his mind screamed back. If it HAD! Please, you have to go back to your room before you leave something ... a track....
No. Not yet. Not yet no matter how frightened he was. Because this had cost him too much. If there was a payoff, he was going to have it.
He looked around the room, which was stuffed with heavy graceless furniture. It should have been dominated by