Riding the Bullet
Stephen King
Language: English
Pages: 34
ISBN: 0743525876
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Riding the Bullet is "a ghost story in the grand manner" from the bestselling author of Bag of Bones, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and The Green Mile—a short story about a young man who hitches a ride with a driver from the other side.
patient. He’s very good. He’ll be on the floor tomorrow afternoon and you can ask him—” “Tell me what you think.” “I think she’s going to be fine,” the nurse said, leading me back down the hall toward the elevator lobby. “Her vital signs are strong, and all the residual effects suggest a very light stroke.” She frowned a little. “She’s going to have to make some changes, of course. In her diet . . . her lifestyle . . .” “Her smoking, you mean.” “Oh yes. That has to go.” She said it as if my
on my jeans, put it in my pocket. Throwing it away had been the wrong idea. It was my button now—good luck charm or bad luck charm, it was mine. I left the hospital, giving Yvonne a little wave on my way by. Outside, the moon rode the roof of the sky, flooding the world with its strange and perfectly dreamy light. I had never felt so tired or so dispirited in my whole life. I wished I had the choice to make again. I would have made a different one. Which was funny—if I’d found her dead, as I’d
his spare time, because that was what townie kids did: drank beer, smoked a little rope, fixed up their cars. Or their motorcycles. “My brother’s getting married. I’m going to be his best man.” I told this lie with absolutely no premeditation. I didn’t want him to know about my mother, although I didn’t know why. Something was wrong here. I didn’t know what it was or why I should think such a thing in the first place, but I knew. I was positive. “The rehearsal’s tomorrow. Plus a stag party
that, too. I’d read it in Psych 101. I doubted if this fellow knew much about Freud, I didn’t think many Freudian scholars wore sleeveless tee shirts and baseball caps turned around backwards, but he knew enough. Funeral, I’d said. Dear Christ, I’d said funeral. It came to me then that he was playing me. I didn’t want to let him know I knew he was dead. He didn’t want to let me know that he knew I knew he was dead. And so I couldn’t let him know that I knew that he knew that . . . The world
know.” He laughed. “That’s quite a story, huh?” “Why wouldn’t he call home?” It was my mouth, talking all by itself. My brain was frozen. “He’s gone for two weeks on a business trip and he never calls home once to see how his wife’s doing?” “Well,” the driver said, “that’s sorta beside the point, wouldn’t you say? I mean hey, what a bargain—that’s the point. Who wouldn’t be tempted? After all, you could always drive the car with the fuckin windows open, right? And it’s basically just a story.