Free Umney's Last Case by Stephen King

the barn on a snowy morning.
    He shrugged. ``Dead, maybe. Or maybe I really have left a physical self--a husk-sitting catatonic in some mental
    institution. I don't think either of those things is really the case, though--all of
    this feels too real. No, I think I made it
    all the way, Clyde. I think that back home they're looking for a missing writer . . .
    with no idea that he's disappeared
    into the storage banks of his own word-processor. And the truth is I really don't
    care.''
    `Ànd me? What happens to me?''
    ``Clyde,'' he said, `Ì don't care about that, either.''
    He bent over his gadget again.
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    ``Don't!'' I said sharply.
    He looked up.
    `Ì . . .'' I heard the quiver in my voice, tried to control it, and found I couldn't.
    ``Mister, I'm afraid. Please leave me
    alone. I know it's not really my world out there anymore--hell, in here, either--but
    it's the only world I'll ever come
    close to knowing. Let me have what's left of it. Please.''
    ``Too late, Clyde.'' Again I heard that merciless regret in his voice. ``Close your
    eyes. I'll make it as fast as I can.''
    I tried to jump him--I tried as hard as I could. I didn't move so much as an iota. And
    as far as closing my eyes went, I
    discovered I didn't need to. All the light had gone out of the day, and the office was
    as dark as midnight in a coalsack.
    I sensed rather than saw him lean over the desk toward me. I tried to draw back and
    discovered I couldn't even do that.
    Something dry and rustly touched my hand and I screamed.
    ``Take it easy, Clyde.'' His voice, coming out of the darkness. Coming not just from
    in front of me but from
    everywhere. Of course, I thought. After all, I'm a figment of his imagination. `Ìt's
    only a check.''
    `À . . . check?''
    ``Yes. For five thousand dollars. You've sold me the business. The painters will
    scratch your name off the door and
    paint mine on before they leave tonight.'' He sounded dreamy. ``Samuel D. Landry,
    Private Detective. It's got a great
    ring, doesn't it?''
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    I tried to beg and found I couldn't. Now even my voice had failed me.
    ``Get ready,'' he said. `Ì don't know exactly what's coming, Clyde, but it's coming
    now. I don't think it'll hurt.'' But I
    don't really care if it does--that was the part he didn't say.
    That faint whirring sound came out of the blackness. I felt my chair melt away beneath
    me, and suddenly I was falling.
    Landry's voice fell with me, reciting along with the clicks and taps of his fabulous
    futuristic steno machine, reciting the
    last two sentences of a novel called Umney's Last Case.
    `` `So I left town, and as to where I finished up . . . well, mister, I think that's
    my business. Don't you?' ''
    There was a brilliant green light below me. I was falling toward it. Soon it would
    consume me, and the only feeling I
    had was one of relief.
    `` `THE END,' '' Landry's voice boomed, and then I fell into the green light, it was
    shining through me, in me, and
    Clyde Umney was no more.
    So long, shamus.
    _______________________________________________________________________
    VII. The Other Side of the Light.
    All that was six months ago.
    I came to on the floor of a gloomy room with a humming in my ears, pushed myself to my
    knees, shook my head to
    clear it, and looked up into the bright green glare I'd fallen through, like Alice
    through the looking glass. I saw a Buck
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    Rogers machine that was the big brother of the one Landry had brought into my office.
    Green letters shone on it and I
    pushed myself to my feet so I could read them, absently running my fingernails up and
    down over my lower arms as I
    did so:
    So I left town, and as to where I finished up . . . well, mister, I think that's my
    business. Don't you?
    And below that, capitalized and