He stood with his head down, swaying from side to side with his hands pressed against the rock walls so he wouldn't fall over again. Then he looked up and saw me and grinned. That grin struck a chill all the way through me, Andy, because it was the grin of a dead man - a dead man with blood all over his face 'n' shirt, a dead man with what looked like stones pushed into his eyes. Then he started to climb the wall.
This passage is taken from Dolores Claiborne, a novel written in the long-winded style of a woman's confession about how she killed her wife-beating child-raping husband by pushing him down the well in their backyard. While it sounds morbid, the story is also quite emotional; Dolores takes a while to warm to but she'll be your heroine by the final page. This section of the novel, including the above passage where Dolores finally musters up the courage to kill Joe, is terrifying - because he doesn't die straight away. He tries to climb back up the well, he spends a long few hours calling her name, actually does make it back to the top of the well, and finally dies when she brains him with a rock. It's a longwinded process, getting that bad man to die, but it'll have you cheering when Dolores finally kicks him back down the well for the final time.
I love Stephen King and music festivals; I eat my toast upside down; I daydream about getting married probably a bit too much; and I wish every day for a pet sausage dog puppy (who never materialises – sob).
