"Open up, dear," Beehive said. "Here comes the aeroplane."

Ruby's lips remained firmly closed. White Gloves pushed the spoon between them and virtually pried them open to shove the horrid mess into her mouth.

"Hey, hey, do you have to force feed her that crap? Can't I just give it to her when she wakes up?"

White Gloves said something only Beehive could hear. The other woman nodded. "If you want her to get better, this is how it's done."

He turned away as Beehive began working Ruby's jaw and massaging her throat to make her swallow. What could he do? Call the cops? They were Ruby's friends and they were just trying to take care of her.

The worst that could happen was Ruby could choke on their old-wives' remedy. He didn't want to have to give his mother CPR, especially knowing he'd be tasting that putrid mush and so close on the heels of having seen her naked coming out of the bath, but he supposed he'd do what was necessary. Their relationship was complex but he wouldn't let her choke to death to spare himself a few moments of awkwardness and disgust.

"There you go," Beehive said. "Num-num. Eat it all up."

White Gloves plunged in with another spoonful. Ruby's chapped lips were moist with brown lumps.

"Okay, I'm tapping out," Martin said. He went back downstairs. Norma was still busying herself in the kitchen, wiping the inside of the oven.

"Need help?"

"I'm fine," Norma said, scouring away a nasty stain.

"Hey, what's your deal with those two?"

"I'd rather not talk about it."

He'd never known Norma to be so closed down. There must have been a fair amount of bad blood between them. He decided not to push her—she'd tell him on her time, if she wanted to—and do a bit of thinking about his next book instead.

An hour passed while he sat in the living room with a legal pad, scrawling notes in handwriting only legible to himself. He'd been thinking a lot about the direction he might go with this one. Whether he'd delve deeply into the real-life history of Barrows Bay or use it as a springboard for a fictional town, the way Stephen King had written IT's Derry as a stand-in for Martin's second childhood home of Stratford, Connecticut. Though they'd lived there decades apart, Martin had still felt the town in every page. All eleven hundred of them.

He'd already decided to use aspects of his own life within the story, though he wasn't sure how much of his past would make it into the final draft, and he wasn't so vain as to make himself the main character. Due to its subject, he thought the protagonist should be a young pregnant woman. An urban professional with a very liberal mindset, returned to her small-town home due to financial difficulties. A sort of folk-horror Rosemary's Baby for modern readers.

He thought that would make for an interesting twist, though he'd have to press Sheila for details about what happened last night and she didn't seem ready to talk about it yet. He wondered if she ever would.