Duma Key: A Novel Read online

  It disappeared.

  A bird cried somewhere again. Dawn came in breathless silence then, over the frost-rimmed fields of rural Connecticut.

  —

  The farmer’s name was Will Reuss.

  He was on his way to Placer’s Glen to get the inspection sticker renewed on his farm truck when he saw the late morning sun twinkle on something in the ravine beside the road. He pulled over and saw the Plymouth lying at a drunken, canted angle in the ditch, barbed wire tangled in its grille like a snarl of steel knitting.

  He worked his way down, and then sucked in his breath sharply. “Holy moley,” he muttered to the bright November day. There was a guy sitting bolt upright behind the wheel, eyes open and glaring emptily into eternity. The Roper organization was never going to include him in its presidential poll again. His face was smeared with blood. He was still wearing his seat belt.

  The driver’s door had been crimped shut, but Reuss managed to get it open by yanking with both hands. He leaned in and unstrapped the seat belt, planning to check for ID. He was reaching for the coat when he noticed that the dead guy’s shirt was rippling, just above the belt buckle. Rippling … and bulging. Splotches of blood began to bloom there like sinister roses.

  “What the Christ?” He reached out, grasped the dead man’s shirt, and pulled it up.

  Will Reuss looked—and screamed.

  Above Halston’s navel, a ragged hole had been clawed in his flesh. Looking out was the gore-streaked black-and-white face of a cat, its eyes huge and glaring.

  Reuss staggered back, shrieking, hands clapped to his face. A score of crows took cawing wing from a nearby field.

  The cat forced its body out and stretched in obscene languor.

  Then it leaped out the open window. Reuss caught sight of it moving through the high dead grass and then it was gone.

  It seemed to be in a hurry, he later told a reporter from the local paper.

  As if it had unfinished business.

  STEPHEN KING is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. Among his most recent are Lisey’s Story, the Dark Tower novels, Cell, From a Buick 8, Everything’s Eventual, Hearts in Atlantis, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and Bag of Bones. His acclaimed nonfiction book, On Writing, was also a bestseller. He is the recipient of the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and the 2007 Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.

  Author photo by Amy Guip

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  “Animals,” from The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara by Frank O’Hara, edited by Donald Allen, copyright © 1971 by Maureen Granville-Smith, Administratrix of the Estate of Frank O’Hara. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

  Permission to use lyrics from “Dig” by Shark Puppy (R. Tozier, W. Denbrough), granted by Bad Nineteen Music, copyright © 1986.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2008 by Stephen King

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  Cover design and photo illustration by Jae Song Photograph © John Lund / Jupiter Images

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-5296-3

  ISBN-10: 1-4165-5296-0

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-8791-0(eBook)