Skeleton Crew by Stephen King

This had raised the terrible specter of the woman, discorporeal but somehow still sentient, screaming in limbo… forever. Michaelson was convicted and executed.

In addition, Summers suggested, the Jaunt had been used by various tin-pot dictators to get rid of political dissidents and political adversaries; some thought that the Mafia had their own illegal Jaunt-Stations, tied into the central Jaunt computer through their CIA connections. It was suggested that the Mafia used the Jaunt’s Nil capability to get rid of bodies which, unlike that of the unfortunate Michaelson, were already dead. Seen in that light, the Jaunt became the ultimate Jimmy Hoffa machine, ever so much better than the local gravel pit or quarry.

All of this had led to Summer’s conclusions and theories about the Jaunt; and that, of course, led back to Patty’s persistent question about the mice.

“Well,” Mark said slowly, as his wife signaled with her eyes for him to be careful, “even now no one really knows, Patty. But all the experiments with animals—including the mice—seemed to lead to the conclusion that while the Jaunt is almost instantaneous physically, it takes a long, long time mentally.” “I don’t get it,” Patty said glumly. “I knew I wouldn’t. “But Ricky was looking at his father thoughtfully. “They went on thinking,” he said. “The test animals. And so would we, if we didn’t get knocked out.” “Yes,” Mark said. “That’s what we believe now. “Something was dawning in Ricky’s eyes.

Fright? Excitement? “It isn’t just teleportation, is it, Dad? It’s some kind of time warp. “It’s eternity in there, Mark thought. “In a way,” he said. “But that’s a comic-book phrase—it sounds good but doesn’t really mean anything, Rick. It seems to revolve around the idea of consciousness, and the fact that consciousness doesn’t particulate—it remains whole and constant. It also retains some screwy sense of time. But we don’t know how pure consciousness would measure time, or even if that concept has any meaning to pure mind. We can’t even conceive what pure mind might be.” Mark fell silent, troubled by his son’s eyes, which were suddenly so sharp and curious. He understands but he doesn’t understand, Mark thought. Your mind can be your best friend; it can keep you amused even when there’s nothing to read, nothing to do. But it can turn on you when it’s left with no input for too long. It can turn on you, which means that it turns on itself, savages itself, and perhaps consumes itself in an unthinkable act of auto-cannibalism. How long in there, in terms of years? 0.000000000067 seconds for the body to Jaunt, but how long for the unparticulated consciousness? A hundred years? A thousand? A million? A billion? How long alone with your thoughts in an endless field of white? And then, when a billion eternities have passed, the crashing return of light and form and body. Who wouldn’t go insane?

“Ricky—” he began, but the Jaunt attendants had arrived with their cart.

“Are you ready?” one asked.

Mark nodded.

“Daddy, I’m scared,” Patty said in a thin voice. “Will it hurt?” “No, honey, of course it won’t hurt,” Mark said, and his voice was calm enough, but his heart was beating a little fast—it always did, although this would be something like his twenty-fifth Jaunt. “I’ll go first and you’ll see how easy it is. “The Jaunt attendant looked at him questioningly.

Mark nodded and made a smile. The mask descended. Mark took it in his own hands and breathed deep of the dark.

The first thing he became aware of was the hard black Martian sky as seen through the top of the dome, which surrounded Whitehead City. It was night here, and the stars sprawled with a fiery brilliance undreamed of on earth.

The second thing he became aware of was some sort of disturbance in the recovery room – mutters, and then shouts, then a shrill scream. Oh dear God, that’s Marilys! he thought, and struggled up from his Jaunt couch, fighting the waves of dizziness.

There was another scream, and he saw Jaunt attendants running toward their couches, their bright red jumpers flying around their knees. Marilys staggered toward him, pointing. She screamed again and then collapsed on the floor, sending an unoccupied Jaunt couch rolling slowly down the aisle with one weakly clutching hand. But Mark had already followed the direction of her pointing finger. He had seen. It hadn’t been fright in Ricky’s eyes; it had been excitement. He should have known, because he knew Ricky—Ricky, who had fallen out of the highest crotch of the tree in their backyard in Schenectady when he was only seven, who had broken his arm (and was lucky that had been all he’d broken); Ricky who dared to go faster and further on his Slideboard than any other kid in the neighborhood; Ricky who was first to take any dare. Ricky and fear were not well acquainted.

Until now.

Beside Ricky, his sister still mercifully slept. The thing that had been his son bounced and writhed on its Jaunt couch, a twelve-year-old boy with a snow-white fall of hair and eyes which were incredibly ancient, the corneas gone a sickly yellow. Here was a creature older than time masquerading as a boy; and yet it bounced and writhed with a kind of horrid, obscene glee, and at its choked, lunatic cackles the Jaunt attendants drew back in terror. Some of them fled, although they had been trained to cope with just such an unthinkable eventuality.

The old-young legs twitched and quivered. Claw hands beat and twisted and danced on the air; abruptly they descended and the thing that had been his son began to claw at its face.

“Longer than you think, Dad!” it cackled. “Longer than you think! Held my breath when they gave me the gas! Wanted to see! I saw! I saw! Longer than you think!” Cackling and screeching, the thing on the Jaunt couch suddenly clawed its own eyes out.

Blood gouted. The recovery room was an aviary of screaming voices now.

“Longer than you think, Dad! I saw! I saw! Long Jaunt! Longer than you think—”It said other things before the Jaunt attendants were finally able to bear it away, rolling its couch swiftly away as it screamed and clawed at the eyes that had seen the unseeable forever and ever; it said other things, and then it began to scream, but Mark Oates didn’t hear it because by then he was screaming himself.

The Wedding Gig

In the year 1927 we were playing jazz in a speak-easy just south of Morgan, Illinois, a town seventy miles from Chicago. It was real hick country, not another big town for twenty miles in any direction. But there were a lot of farm boys with a hankering for something stronger than Moxie after a hot day in the field, and a lot of would-be jazz-babies out stepping with their drugstore-cowboy boyfriends. There were also some married men (you always know them, friend; they might as well be wearing signs) coming far out of their way to be where no one would recognize them while they cut a rug with their not-quite-legit lassies.

That was when jazz was jazz, not noise. We had a five-man combination—drums, cornet, trombone, piano, trumpet—and we were pretty good. That was still three years before we made our first record and four years before talkies.

We were playing “Bamboo Bay” when this big fellow walked in, wearing a white suit and smoking a pipe with more squiggles in it than a French horn. The whole band was a little tight by that time but everyone in the crowd was absolutely blind and really ramping the joint. They were in a good mood, though; there hadn’t been a single fight all night. All of us guys were sweating rivers and Tommy Englander, the guy who ran the place, kept sending up rye as smooth as a varnished plank. Englander was a good joe to work for, and he liked our sound. Of course that made him aces in my book.

The guy in the white suit sat down at the bar and I forgot him. We finished up the set with “Aunt Hagar’s Blues,” which was a tune that passed for racy out in the boondocks back then, and got a good round of applause. Manny had a big grin on his face when he put his trumpet down, and I clapped him on the back as we left the bandstand. There was a lonely-looking girl in a green evening gown who had been giving me the eye all night. She was a redhead, and I’ve always been partial to those. I got a signal from her eyes and the tilt of her head, so I started weaving through the crowd to see if she wanted a drink.

I was halfway there when the man in the white suit stepped in front of me. Up close he looked like a pretty tough egg. His hair was bristling up in the back in spite of what smelled like a whole bottle of Wildroot Creme Oil and he had the flat, oddly shiny eyes that some deep-sea fish have. “Want to talk to you outside,” he said. The redhead looked away with a small pout. “It can wait,” I said. “Let me by.”