Misery

After reading the first three pages of Misery's Return, Annie tells Paul, "It's not right." Taken aback, Paul asks her what she means. Annie says it's beautiful but "it's a cheat" (112). Annie points out the continuity error between the end of Misery's Child and the explanation of how Misery survived giving birth. Annie describes how, in the previous book, Geoffrey fell off his horse on his way to get the doctor, so the doctor didn't get to Misery in time to save her. In the new book, the doctor made it in time to save Misery.

Annie tells Paul that as a young girl growing up in Bakersfield, California, she loved to go to "chapter-plays at the movies" with her older brother (114). She liked Rocket Man the best. Annie explains that each chapter-play ended with Rocket Man in a precarious situation of which it's unclear he'll be able to get out. She says, for example, Rocket Man was once unconscious in a crashing airplane at the end of one episode. At the beginning of the next, he woke up and found a parachute under his seat, surviving the crash.

Paul thinks these kinds of "deus ex machina" plot lines "went out of vogue around the year 1700," but he doesn't say so (115). Paul worries he's going to have a laughing fit over it and disguises it with a coughing fit. He tells Annie that what she's saying is fascinating. She continues, telling him that what happened in the Rocket Man films was "fair," not "realistic" (116). Annie tells Paul to listen closely so he can understand what's wrong with Misery's Return.

There was a "no-brakes chapter" in the Rocket Man series that ended with the car Rocket Man is trapped in driving off a cliff and bursting into flames (116). The next chapter starts with a scene from the previous week's episode but instead of staying in the car as it rolls off the cliff, Rocket Man busts open the car door and he flies out of the car just in time. Annie recalls, as a young girl in the theatre, yelling, "That isn't what happened last week!" (118). As she tells Paul the story, Annie becomes emotionally distraught. She yells at Paul, asking him if he understands what she's saying. Annie lunges at Paul but doesn't hit him this time. Instead, she grabs his robe and pulls his face towards hers. Paul tells her that he does understand.

Annie lets go of Paul's robe and tells him if he understands her story, then he knows what's wrong with Misery's Return, and now he needs to fix it.

Paul stares at the typewriter, which he imagines speaking to him in "the voice of a teen-age gunslinger in a Hollywood western." Paul thinks about how the pain in his legs is starting to "subside a little," and he feels good about having the Novrils he stashed under his mattress, just in case. Thinking more about it, he wonders if Annie knows he's "hooked on the stuff" (120). Paul decides he needs to cut down on his use, so he'll "duck one of the two capsules" Annie brings him "every other time she brings them" (121). Then Paul decides that he's not ready to start doing that yet.

Thinking more about the novel, Paul realizes that he doesn't like what he's written. Annie saw through Paul's cheap workarounds and half-assed efforts, which Paul chalks up to his physical pain and a "situation where he was not just writing for his supper but for his life" (122). Still, though, Paul feels unable to write. He tells the typewriter that he hates it.

The snow has continued for two days, dropping "eighteen inches of new fall" but the sun has just started to shine again (123). Paul watches the icicles outside begin to drip and puts a new sheet of paper into his typewriter. He titles it Misery's Return, Chapter 1 but writes nothing else.

Paul's mind drifts to a game he used to play as a young boy at the Malden Community Center day camp. The counselor called it "Can You?" (124). The kids would sit in a circle and the counselor would tell a story about a man named Careless Corrigan, always ending the story with Careless in a seemingly inescapable situation. The counselor would then call on a kid saying, 'Can you?' The kid then had ten seconds to provide the next part of the story, then the counselor would ask, 'Did he?' The other kids would vote as to whether they agreed with that version of the story. If they didn't, the kid who told the story had to leave the circle.

These memories leave Paul feeling capable of writing, but he continues to doze.

Paul rouses from his drifting and tries to concentrate on writing. He stares out the window, "trying to have an idea" (127). He recalls how easily the idea for Fast Cars came to him and wishes he could "have an idea" for the Misery novel (129).

After fifteen minutes, an idea comes. Paul begins to type, slowly at first, then continuously. Annie stops her chores and begins watching him write. Paul doesn't notice her. Paul writes until three o'clock in the afternoon, takes a short break, then resumes until ten o'clock in the evening. By then, the pain is bad. Annie tells him he's "white as salt" and puts him to bed (130). Paul sleeps through the night for the first time and has no dreams.

This chapter contains the first six chapters of the new version of Misery's Return. Chapter 1 begins with Colter, the fictional village of Little Dunthorpe's gravedigger, coming to Geoffrey's house at night. Colter tells Geoffrey that people have been complaining about "noises in the churchyard." He suspects that Her Ladyship, Misery, "rests not easy" (132). This kind of talk insults Geoffrey, but he asks Colter what kind of sounds people hear. Colter says they hear "scratchin' sounds," as though Misery were "still alive down there and tryin' to work her way back up to the land o' the livin'" (134).

In Chapter 2, Geoffrey, bandaged from the fall off his horse on the night Misery died, contemplates what to do. He decides that if there's even "the slightest chance" what Colter said is true, he must act immediately (135).

Chapter 3 finds Geoffrey riding his horse and carriage as fast as he can. He remembers the day after Misery died, her husband, Ian, had said to Geoffrey that it would be easier to accept Misery's death if she "looked more dead" (136). When Doctor Shinebone, the elderly village doctor, comes to examine Misery's body, Geoffrey hears him say to himself, "It's not a bit like Miss Evelyn-Hyde" (138). Geoffrey decides he needs to find out what this meant.

In Chapter 4, Mrs. Ramage, Ian and Misery's maid, awakens to Geoffrey's knocks at her cottage door. She answers the door in her nightgown, and Geoffrey asks her if the name Miss Evelyn-Hyde means anything to her. Mrs. Ramage realizes the reason for "the terrible thundery feeling" she'd had since Misery died. Mrs. Ramage asks Geoffrey if Misery's been "buried alive," then faints (141).

Chapter 5 opens with Geoffrey rousing Mrs. Ramage with an ammonia-soaked cloth. He tells her that he doesn't know for sure if Misery is buried alive, but he won't be able to do "all the digging" himself (141). Mrs. Ramage agrees to accompany Geoffrey to the graveyard.

In Chapter 6, Mrs. Ramage and Geoffrey ride in his carriage to the graveyard. Mrs. Ramage recalls the incident of Miss Evelyn-Hyde, which had happened during Misery's pregnancy when Ian and Geoffrey were out of the village for the day. Miss Charlotte Evelyn-Hyde had been found laid out on the lawn of her home with a bouquet of flowers in her hand. Though only eighteen, she was presumed dead of a heart attack by Dr. Billford. Dr. Shinebone confirmed the diagnosis. Days later, a woman noticed "something white" sticking out of the ground at the cemetery. The local constable inspected the scene and discovered that it was Miss Evelyn-Hyde's hand, with "blood-streaked bones" stripped of flesh from trying to dig herself out of her grave. Dr. Billford says Miss Evelyn-Hyde must have suffered from "catalepsy," or a kind of trance (145). The young woman had used her diamond engagement ring to try to dig herself out but to no avail.

Mrs. Ramage and Geoffrey arrive at the graveyard and approach Misery's headstone. Geoffrey puts his ear to the freshly tilled grave dirt, and his expression becomes one of "utter horror mingled with an almost demented hope" (147). Geoffrey tells Mrs. Ramage that he believes Misery is alive. He begins to yell to Misery that they're coming to save her, and the two begin digging.

Annie spends more time reading this version of Misery's Return; she says that it's good, even though it's "not like any of the other Misery books" (148). Paul asks Annie if he should keep writing, and she jokes that she'll kill him if he doesn't. As Annie leaves his room, she suggests to Paul that maybe it was a bee sting that left Miss Evelyn-Hyde unconscious. Paul considers this but doesn't commit to it. Annie apologizes for suggesting it and then leaves the room. As she does, Paul notices a black mark on the doorway from the wheelchair hubs from when he'd left his room. He worries Annie will notice it.

Paul is sitting drinking coffee in bed on a "pile of pillows" when Annie rushes into the room holding a dust cloth in one hand and handcuffs in the other (151). She stuffs the cloth into Paul's mouth and handcuffs him to the bed. Paul hears a car pulling into the driveway. Annie tells him that if she or whoever is in the car hears Paul, she'll kill the person, then Paul, and then herself.

From his bed, Paul sees a "well-preserved Chevy Bel Air” pull up behind Annie's Cherokee. An old but "well-preserved" man gets out of the car (152). Paul sees Annie heading straight at the man, "talking before she even reached him" (153). The man hands Annie a sheet of paper. He and Annie go out of Paul's sight for about five minutes then return to the car. Annie yells at the man but the man's face is "carefully blank" (154). He gets into his car and drives away as Annie yells insults at him.

Annie comes into Paul's room with the paper, ranting. She says it's a "ten-percent tax increase" (156). Paul, choking on the dust cleaner on the cloth in his mouth, begins to gag. Annie takes the cloth out of his mouth and removes his handcuffs. She calms down a bit and asks Paul what a lien is. Paul explains that it means Annie can't sell her house. Annie admits that she forgot to pay her property tax this quarter, blaming Paul for her forgetfulness.

Paul offers her the four hundred dollars in his wallet to pay the bill. Annie accepts, and Paul tells her to go pay the bill as soon as possible. Annie says that everyone in town hates her. Paul points out that she can't be the only person around who's behind on property taxes. He agrees that "they are on the prod" for Annie (160). Paul suggests that she go pay the bill right away, thinking to himself that while she's gone, he'll clean the black mark of the doorway and try to escape again.

Annie brings Paul his wallet, which she'd taken from him after the accident. She's removed everything but his cash. Annie asks Paul if he's crying. Paul says he is, "thinking about how good" Annie's been to him (161). Annie kisses him on the lips and says she loves him. Paul asks Annie to put him in his wheelchair before she leaves so he can write. She hugs him and says, "Of course, my dear" (162).

Annie leaves Paul locked in his room, but he's prepared this time. He has four bobby pins hid under his mattress for such occasions. Paul wheels himself to the door, picks the lock with relative ease, then scrubs the black marks from the doorway with Kleenex and water. Afterwards, Paul feels "no urge to go farther or dare more today" (163). Instead, he starts to write again. By the time Annie returns, he's got almost five pages done.

Paul marvels at how much work he's able to get done while living this "amazingly straight life" (165). With Fast Cars, he'd write two to four pages a day, but with Misery's Return, he's been writing twelve pages each day. By the time the snow turns to rain, he's written an "amazingly clean" first draft of "two hundred and sixty-seven pages" (165).

His daily routine varies little. Paul has taken Annie's suggestion about the bee sting to heart. One afternoon, Paul is "drowsing his way into his afternoon nap" when he's struck by a major idea (167). He yells for Annie, who rushes into his bedroom, thinking he's in major pain. Paul apologizes for scaring her, asking her forcefully to put him in his wheelchair so he can write. He scrawls some notes on a sheet of paper about the novel.

Paul decides that Misery and Miss Evelyn-Hyde must be related. This way, the reader will feel more confident believing that bees "affected them both the same way" (168). Misery, whom Paul had written as an orphan, would share a mother with Miss Evelyn-Hyde and that woman, Mrs. Evelyn-Hyde, might have even known that both of her daughters were buried alive. Paul decides Mrs. Ramage, Ian, and Misery's maid, should be the one to discover this.

After his flood of inspiration, Paul apologizes again for sounding mad. Annie, though, is awed by his work. Paul begins to feel excited by his latest work, "a Goth novel" (170). 

For a week in April, there's nice enough weather that Annie begins to take Paul out to sit on the back porch during the day. After that week, though, Annie changes. Paul blames the "falling barometer." That morning, Annie comes to Paul's room two hours later than usual. She's only wearing one slipper and has "red marks [...] on her cheeks and arms" (171). She hasn't brought Paul breakfast.

Annie throws Paul's pills at him and he notices her arms are covered with "mixed streaks of goo." As Annie turns to leave, Paul asks her if she's alright and she says 'no.' Annie turns back to him and twists her lower lip until it bleeds. Then she leaves the room and Paul hears her sit in her favorite chair. He hears nothing for a while. Suddenly, he hears a "damned hard" slap (172). From researching mental illness for a Misery novel, Paul recalls that when people with bipolar disorder enter a depressive period, they may begin "self-punishment" (173). This frightens Paul.

Despite this disruption, Paul decides to try to continue working. Instead of calling Annie to help him into his wheelchair, Paul gets himself into it on his own. He wheels himself to the window and starts looking at his manuscript. Annie comes into the room and stands staring at Paul for a while, silent. Then she tells Paul that if he can get himself into the chair on his own, he can fill in his own "fucking n's" (174). She locks the door behind her.

Later that afternoon, Paul finds himself unable to write. He tries to get himself back into bed but comes down on one of his bad legs. He screams, hoping that will bring Annie in to help him, but she doesn't come. Paul takes two Novril from his stash and passes out.

When he wakes up, he thinks he's dreaming. Annie stands by the bed, holding a rat in a trap. It has a broken back but it's not dead. Annie's breath smells like "a corpse decomposing in rotted food" (175). Her face looks lifeless and her skirt is on inside out. She has more food splattered on his clothes. She tells Paul that the rats come into the cellar when it rains then trails off for a while into a "waxy catatonia" (176). She resumes talking, about how the rats sometimes drown. Annie takes the rat out of its trap and squeezes it with her bare hand until it dies. She flings it into a corner then tells Paul she'll go get her gun and end it for both of them.

Paul says he wants to finish the novel, and Annie, after another hazy silence, agrees with Paul. She begins to suck some of the rat's blood off her fingers then offers again to get her gun. She tells Paul that she supposes he "thinks of escape" as the rat does "in its way," but she knows that he'll never leave without her (178). Paul thanks her for the offer to end it all but insists he wants to finish the Misery novel. Annie agrees with Paul and tells him that she has to go away for a while to her "laughing place" (179). She leaves him with some Novril to take at his discretion then drives off in her Cherokee.

Paul gets himself out of his bedroom and wheels himself into the parlor. He finds it disheveled and strewn with the remnants of Annie's recent sweets binge: ice cream bowls, cake crumbs, and empty Pepsi bottles. Paul wheels to the front door and finds it locked with three locks, including two Kriegs, "the best locks in the whole world" (183). He then wheels into the kitchen and finds three doors: one to the kitchen closet, the other two both triple-locked with two Kriegs. Paul considers that even if he could get the doors open, he'd have to wheel himself down a step set of stairs and into "cold puddles and melting snow" (185).

Paul wheels towards the pantry and finds another door, but this one opens to the basement, where he hears "low squeaking sounds" (186). He flashes back to Annie crushing the rat in her bare hand. Paul moves to the pantry to see what he can take without Annie noticing and realizes this means she's given up on the idea that Paul can escape.

Annie's pantry reminds Paul of a "survivalist's bomb shelter" (187). He takes down some tinned food, cereal, and Slim Jims, and then wheels back into the parlor. He spots a thick scrapbook under the coffee table labeled 'Memory Lane.' Paul picks it up and begins to read.

On the first page, he finds a newspaper announcement for Annie's parents' wedding in Bakersfield, CA in 1938. Next, a birth announcement for Annie's older brother, Paul in 1939, followed by Annie's in 1943. The next page is a clipping about a fire in the Wilkes' apartment building that killed five: a bachelor and four members of the Krenmitz family, including three young children. The Wilkes had left the building the day before because of "a water leak in the kitchen." The fire chief thinks "a wino" accidentally started the fire in the basement (190). 

Paul recalls Annie talking about having to watch "Mrs. Krenmitz's four brats downstairs" and realizes that Annie set the fire (191). The next article is Annie's father's death announcement from 1957. He passed after tripping and falling down the staircase at home. The next article is a death announcement for Annie's roommate at University of Southern California, who also tripped, this time over their cat's dead body, and fell down stairs. Annie claimed the cat had accidentally eaten rat poison and died on its own. Paul speculates as to why Annie would kill her roommate and also wonders why no one ever made a connection between the two deaths.

The next pages follow a pattern: Annie's hiring announcement at a hospital, then death announcements for elderly patients in that hospital. The cause of death for each patient is either "long illness" or "short illness" (196). Annie never stayed at one hospital for too long, moving "steadily westward" from Pennsylvania in 1970 to Colorado by 1978 (197). A marriage announcement between Annie and Ralph Dugan, a physical therapist, interrupts the pattern of the previous articles. The couple buys the house together, but the marriage lasts less than a year. Ralph files for divorce in 1980, citing "mental cruelty" (200).

Annie's pattern of murdering her elderly patients resumes in 1981; in 1982, Annie is appointed "head maternity nurse" and begins murdering infants (201). She comes under investigation for one of the infant's deaths in June 1982 but no charges are filed until July. Annie stands trial in Denver, earning her the nickname "Dragon Lady." The prosecution does not have sufficient evidence to get a conviction. Annie is found not guilty though the jurors have "very grave doubts as to her innocence" (206). The district attorney says he'll prosecute Annie for the other deaths but never does.

The next article in the scrapbook is about the murder of a young man near Grider Wildlife Preserve. The "mutilated and partly dismembered" body of the young man is found off Highway 9 (206). The last clipping in the book is about the disappearance of Paul Sheldon, described as a novelist known for his series of "romances about sexy, bubble headed, unsinkable Misery Chastain" (207). Paul puts the book away and tries not to cry.

Paul resolves that the only way out of his situation is to kill Annie.

The rainstorm continues but the temperature drops to twenty-five degrees. From his bed, Paul hears Annie's pig, Misery, squealing. Paul decides that Africa will be the setting for Misery Return's second half. Ian, Geoffrey, and Misery travel to visit the Bourkas, "Africa's most dangerous natives." The Bourkas worship a goddess whose image, carved into a nearby rock face, conceals "a hive of giant albino bees" that produce "infinite poison…and infinite magic." Misery would discover her mysterious father "down there in Africa hanging out with the Bourka Bee-People" (210).

Paul begins plotting how to murder Annie. He wheels himself out to the kitchen and takes "the longer butcher-knife" and hides it under his mattress (212). He returns to bed and falls asleep. Annie returns home at four o'clock in the morning, but Paul doesn't awaken—even when Annie plunges a hypodermic needle into his neck.

Paul awakens from his sleep severely drugged and disoriented. Annie sits at the foot of his bed. Paul hears sounds he can't quite identify, "a wooden thunk, a metallic clink" and a shaking sound he recognized as a box of Diamond Blue Tip matches. Annie asks Paul if he wants the good news or bad news first. Paul asks for the good news with a "big foolish grin" on his face. He tells Annie that he knows this is "the end" because Annie didn't like the book (214). Annie says she loves the book.

The good news, she says, is that Paul's car is gone. The heavy rain swept the car away, just as it had the body of the young hitchhiker she'd killed. Annie tells Paul she knows that he knows about the hitchhiker. She knows he read her scrapbook because she taped three of her hairs across the book and found "all three threads broken" when she got home (216). Annie tells Paul that she brought him home because it seemed like "the hand of Providence" to find him on the road in the same place she "got rid of that Pomeroy creep" (218). Annie tells Paul about how Pomeroy, the hitchhiker, had lied to her about being an artist sent to Colorado to do sketches of an old burned out hotel. When Annie snooped through his sketchbook and realized Pomeroy was a terrible artist, he confronted her, and Annie killed him.

Annie washed Pomeroy's body to get rid of the forensic evidence and then dumped him a bit further from the road than where she found Paul's car. She knew the "spring melt would carry him away," which it did (220). The police didn't find his body for a year.

Annie says she knows no one will find Paul's car for years. Now he can finish the Misery novel. Annie also tells Paul that, at first, she only loved the part of him "that makes such wonderful stories" (221) but now she has come to "love the rest of him, too" (222). Paul thanks Annie, lulled into a sense of false peace by the drugs she's injected into him.

Annie wonders, though, whether Paul would want to stay with her and points to the black marks in the doorway as the answer. She tells Paul that she figured out he'd left the room multiple times. She'd even discovered the piece of bobby pin broken off inside the door key plate after dosing Paul with a stronger medication that knocked him out cold. Paul begins to laugh with abandon. He tells her that he tried to wipe the marks off the door. He hears the "muffled wooden thump" at the foot of his bed again (225).

Annie asks how many times in all Paul left the room. He says three times, which is the truth, but Annie doesn't believe him. With escalating anger, Annie tries to get Paul to admit he left more than three times, even accusing him of snooping through her drawers upstairs, based on her snapped-thread trick. She then pulls the butcher knife out of her skirt pocket. Annie tells Paul that she found it under his mattress after she gave him his "pre-op shot" this morning (227).

Annie asks if Paul knows about "the early days at the Kimberly diamond mines" (229). Paul jokes that he does. Annie explains that when the British overseers caught workers stealing diamonds from the mines, they hobbled them. Annie holds up an axe, which Paul saw in the shed outside, a propane torch, a box of matches, and a bottle of Betadine. Paul begins to scream for Annie to stop as she pours Betadine over Paul's left ankle. Paul tries to move his legs away from her but can't. Annie tells Paul not to worry; she's a "trained nurse" (231).

Annie brings the axe down on Paul's left ankle twice, severing his foot from his leg. Annie lights the blowtorch and uses it to cauterize the wound. Afterwards, amidst Paul's screaming, Annie gives him a look of "vague consternation." She leaves the room, telling him he'll "be all right" and taking his severed foot with her (233). Annie tells him now he's hobbled and it's his own fault. Paul passes out.

Paul dives into a cloud of pain, thinking, "Goddess! Kill you!" over and over until he loses consciousness (234).