Free 1990 - Mine v4 by Robert McCammon Page A

falling like a weak bellows.
    She looked at her hands. There was blood on them: dark red and thick.
    She felt a sudden stabbing pain. She looked at her belly, and saw the scars ripping open and something reddish-black and hideous oozing through.
    The blood was streaming from her in torrents, washing over the barren field. She heard her voice scream: "NO!" Lord Jack tried to sit up, and she caught a glimpse of his face: not Lord Jack anymore, but the pallid face of a stranger. "NO! NO!" Mary screamed. The stranger made a gasping, groaning noise and fell back again. She looked around, the red walls quivering and the music flaying her ears. She saw an open door and beyond it a toilet. The bathroom! she thought as her mind lurched toward reality. Bad trip! Bad trip!
    She scrambled up, flooding blood from the widening wounds in her belly, and groped toward the bathroom. Her legs were rubbery, and her foot caught in a tangle of sheet. She fell, making the record skip as she hit. She couldn't stand up, and she gritted her teeth together and crawled toward the bathroom in a tide of blood.
    Pulling herself across the tiles, she felt the madness beating in her brain like the wings of ravens. She gripped the edge of the bathtub with crimson fingers and hauled herself over into it. She wrenched on the tap; the showerhead erupted, stabbing her skin with cold water. Then she curled up beneath the flow, her body shivering and convulsing. Her teeth chattered, the blood flowing away down the drain, down the drain, down the drain drain drain…
    Bad trip, she thought. Oh… bad fucking trip…
    Mary Terror placed her hand against the scars. They had closed up again. The water was no longer red as it flowed away. Flowers were growing from the walls of the shower stall, but they were white and coated with ice. Mary drew her knees up against her chin and shivered in the chill. Dark batlike things spun around in the shower for a moment, and then they were caught in the spray and they, too, went down the drain. Mary offered her face to the water, and it flowed into her eyes, mouth, and through her hair.
    She turned off the tap and sat in the tub. Her teeth clicked like dice. I'm all right, she told herself. Coming out of it now. I'm all right. The flowers on the walls were wilting, and after a while they fluttered down into the tub around her and vanished like soap bubbles. She closed her eyes and thought of her new baby, waiting in the closet to be born. What would she name him? Jack, she decided. There had been many Jacks, and many Jims, Robbys, Rays, and Johns, after God and his band. This one would be the best Jack of all, and look just like his old man.
    When she could, she stood up. Still shaky. Hold on, wait a minute. She got out of the tub, pulled a towel off the rack, and dried herself. Little squiggly things squirmed on the bathroom's walls like Day-Glo paisley amoebas. She was coming out of it, though, and she was going to be all right. She staggered into the bedroom, feeling her way along the wall. The music had stopped, and the needle was ticking against the record's label. Who was that sprawled in the bed? She knew his name, but it wouldn't come to her. Something with a G. Oh, right: Gordie. Her brain felt fried, and she could feel the little quivers of nerves and muscles in her face. The inside of her mouth tasted ratty. She walked toward the kitchen, her hands clinging to the walls and her knees still in jeopardy of folding, but she made it without going down.
    In the kitchen, her vision began to go dark around the edges, as if she were peering into a tunnel. She opened the freezer and rubbed her face and eye sockets with ice cubes, and slowly her vision cleared up again. She got a beer from the fridge, popped the tab, and took a long, deep drink. Zigzagged blue and red lightning bolts played around her for a few seconds, as if she were standing at the center of a laser show. Then they faded, and Mary finished her beer and put the