Thinner

Thinner

Stephen King

Language: English

Pages: 432

ISBN: 150114376X

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


The “extraordinary” (Booklist) novel of one man’s quest to find the source of his nightmare and to reverse it before he becomes…nothing at all. This #1 national bestseller from Stephen King, writing as Richard Bachman, “pulsates with evil…it will have you on the edge of your seat” (Publishers Weekly).

“You can’t do anything…It’s gone too far. You understand, Halleck? Too…far.”

Attorney Billy Halleck seriously enjoys living his life of upper-class excess. He’s got it all­—an expensive home in Connecticut, a loving family…and fifty extra pounds that his doctor repeatedly warns will be the death of him. Then, in a moment of carelessness, Halleck commits vehicular manslaughter when he strikes a jaywalking old woman crossing the street. But Halleck has some powerful local connections, and gets off with a slap on the wrist…much to the fury of the woman’s mysterious and ancient father, who exacts revenge with a single word: “Thinner.” Now a terrified Halleck finds the weight once so difficult to shed dropping effortlessly—and rapidly—by the week. Soon there will be nothing left of Billy Halleck…unless he can somehow locate the source of his living nightmare and reverse what’s happened to him before he utterly wastes away…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

almost black. “Thinner,” the old man had said, and in spite of his callused flesh, his caress had been the caress of a lover. Delaware plates, Billy thought suddenly. His rig had Delaware plates. And a bumper sticker, something ... Billy’s arms dimpled out in goose flesh and for one moment he thought he might scream, as he had once heard a woman scream right here when she thought her child was drowning in the pool. Billy Halleck remembered how they had seen the Gypsies for the first time; the

wagons with the NRA stickers on the back bumpers, the sooner we saw the rear ends of their home-carpentered trailers and camper caps, the better. The sooner the— —thinner. Heidi snuffed her cigarette and said, “Shit on your housing starts. I know you better.” Billy supposed so. And he supposed she had been thinking about it, too. Her face was too pale. She looked her age—thirty-five—and that was rare. They had married very, very young, and he still remembered the traveling salesman who had

in time. That it was my wife’s fault, because of what she was doing to me. That it was Rossington’s fault for whitewashing it, and yours for going easy on the investigation and then humping them out of town.” Billy swallowed. “And then I’ll tell him it was her fault, too. Yes. She was jaywalking, Hopley, and so okay, it’s not a crime they give you the gas chamber for, but the reason it’s against the law is that it can get you killed the way she got killed.” “You want to tell him that?” “I

he knew it was a dream this time, he knew what was going to happen and he wanted to tell her to stop what she was doing, that he had to concentrate all his attention on his driving because pretty soon an old Gypsy woman was going to dart out from between two parked cars—from between a yellow Subaru and a dark green Firebird, to be exact—and this old woman was going to have a child’s five-and-dime plastic barrettes in her graying grizzled hair and she was not going to be looking anywhere but

opened. So he continued to pull and release as he spoke. Billy was unable to look away. “So . . . you have convinced yourself that it is ... What did you call it? A poosh. That what happened to my Susanna is no more your fault than my fault, or her fault, or God’s fault. You tell yourself you can’t be asked to pay for it—there is no blame, you say. It slides off you because your shoulders are broken. No blame, you say. You tell yourself and tell yourself and tell yourself. But there is no poosh,

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