Stephen King's N. Read Online Free PDF

looking.
    The fucking thing grinned at me, and its teeth were heads. Living human heads.
    Then I stepped on a dead branch. It snapped with a sound like a firecracker, and the paralysis broke. I don’t think it’s impossible that that thing floating inside the circle of stones was hypnotizing me, the way a snake is supposed to be able to do with a bird.
    I turned and ran. My lens-bag kept smacking my leg, and each smack seemed to be saying Wake up! Wake up! Get out! Get out! I pulled open the door of my 4Runner, and I heard the little bell dinging, the one that means you left your key in the ignition. I thought of some old movie where William Powell and Myrna Loy are at the desk of a fancy hotel and Powell rings the bell for service. Funny what goes through your mind at moments like that, isn’t it? There’s a gate in our heads, too—that’s what I think. One that keeps the insanity in all of us from flooding our intellects. And at critical moments, it swings open and all kinds of weird shit comes flooding through.
    I started the engine. I turned on the radio, turned it up loud, and rock music came roaring out of the speakers. It was The Who, I remember that. And I remember popping on the headlights. When I did, those stones seemed to jump toward me. I almost screamed. But there were eight, I counted them, and eight is safe.
    [There’s another long pause here. Almost a full minute.]
    The next thing I remember, I was back on Route 117. I don’t know how I got there, if I turned around or backed out. I don’t know how long it took me, but The Who song was over and I was listening to The Doors. God help me, it was “Break On Through to the Other Side.” I turned the radio off.
    I don’t think I can tell you any more, Doc, not today. I’m exhausted.
    [And he looks it.]
    [Next Session]
    I thought the effect the place had had on me would dissipate on the drive home—just a bad moment out in the woods, right?—and surely by the time I was in my own living room, with the lights and TV on, I’d be okay again. But I wasn’t. If anything, that feeling of dislocation—of having touched some other universe that was inimical to ours—seemed to be stronger. The conviction remained that I’d seen a face—worse, the suggestion of some huge reptilian body—in that circle of stones. I felt…infected. Infected by the thoughts in my own head. I felt dangerous, too—as if I could summon that thing just by thinking about it too much. And it wouldn’t be alone. That whole other cosmos would come spilling through, like vomit through the bottom of a wet paper bag.
    I went around and locked all the doors. Then I was sure that I’d forgotten a couple, so I went around and checked them all again. This time I counted: front door, back door, pantry door, bulkhead door, garage overhead door, back garage door. That was six, and it came to me that six was a good number. Like eight is a good number. They’re friendly numbers. Warm. Not cold, like five or…you know, seven. I relaxed a little, but I still went around one last time. Still six. “Six is a fix,” I remember saying. After that I thought I’d be able to sleep, but I couldn’t. Not even with an Ambien. I kept seeing the setting sun on the Androscoggin, turning it into a red snake. The mist coming out of the hay like tongues. And the thing in the stones. That most of all.
    I got up and counted all the books in my bedroom bookcase. There were ninety-three. That’s a bad number, and not just because it’s odd. Divide ninety-three by three and you come out with thirty-one: thirteen backwards. So I got a book from the little bookcase in the hall. But ninety-four is only a little better, because nine and four add up to thirteen. There are thirteens everywhere in this world of ours, Doc. You don’t know. Anyway, I added six more books to the bedroom case. I had to cram, but I got them in. A hundred is okay. Fine, in fact.
    I was heading back to bed, then started wondering about the hall bookcase. If I’d, you