Gerald's Game Page #6

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of the papers.

That was kind.

The coroners confirmed it was

a heart attack and a long time coming.

The insurance paid,

the headlines faded, and life went on.

The new normal.

Well, not normal.

Never normal.

Every night,

just before I closed my eyes...

[moaning]

[panting]

[gasps]

If it wasn't him, if it wasn't his face

keeping me from sleep...

it was the question.

That in all the reports,

all the cops that combed

through that house,

they never found my wedding ring.

What got me through those nights was you.

Thinking of you.

And why you came to me that day.

You, in your sunless world,

always on that swing.

What you needed me to understand...

that his shackles were silence,

and his were comfort.

My days were better.

I took the insurance money,

and I started a foundation

for girls and boys like us.

I spent so long never telling that story,

so... I made sure that I did.

I tell that story every day

to every kid it could possibly help.

When I was 12,

I went to the lake house with my family.

And while that helped my days,

I still sat up at night...

waiting for that pale face

in the moonlight...

to claim his runaway bride.

Six months after the handcuffs,

six months of being a widow...

six months of living death.

And then Raymond Andrew Joubert's picture

first appeared in the paper.

Two years ago,

reports of graveyard vandalism

in the backwoods of Alabama

hit the papers,

but I never read about them,

not in New Orleans.

And they were tiny stories, buried.

Someone was breaking

into crypts and mausoleums

of small town cemeteries

with drills, bolt cutters and hacksaws...

and stripping corpses of jewelry.

As the months went by, it escalated.

Incidents started being reported

in Louisiana.

He gouged out eyes, cut corpses' throats.

Last February,

two were found without noses.

Later hands. Then... ears.

Something I'd always assumed was the dog.

And when it came to removing genitalia

after having sex with the dead...

he stuck strictly to the gentlemen.

This was, clearly, extremely lucky for me.

I only noticed

when he finally made the front page.

He'd graduated, it seemed, from the dead.

And, one night, a man woke up

to find Raymond Joubert in his room,

naked, trying to cut off his ear.

Joubert suffers from acromegaly,

a progressive enlargement

of the hands, feet and face

that happens when the pituitary gland

goes into warp drive.

It causes the forehead to bulge

and abnormally long arms

that dangle almost to his knees.

They went to his only known address,

a farmhouse on Kingston Road.

They didn't find him there,

but they did find his sister

and her husband,

who he called his "mommy and daddy."

He'd scalped them both

and eaten most of "Daddy."

They found 50 bell jars

containing ears, lips, fingers.

They think he may have killed as many

as a dozen people in the last five years.

But, for some reason, he spared me.

This monster was real, real as they come.

As real as the cuffs, as the dog.

As real as the eclipse.

And so I had to write this

to you, Mouse...

because you're the only person

who'd understand...

and you're the only one who truly matters.

[Young Jessie] "He's being arraigned

tomorrow, and I'm going to see him.

Because the people who were supposed

to protect you from the monsters...

[both] turned out to be

monsters themselves...

[both] and it almost killed you."

We need the sun to come back out.

After so long...

I think we deserve the sun.

[reporter] This morning, it was announced

that cameras would not be allowed

inside the courtroom for the arraignment,

an unusual decision in a case

that's already full of surprises.

But nothing more unusual than the way...

Sources within the Alabama State

Police Department tell us

Raymond Andrew Joubert hasn't spoken

a single word since his arrest,

not even to his public defender.

[man] Sixteen counts

trespassing and vandalism.

Eighteen counts desecration.

Eight counts first-degree murder.

Twenty-one counts mutilation.

Twenty-eight counts

desecrating human remains.

Sixteen counts breaking and entering.

Hey.

- Four counts, assault and battery.

- [clears throat] Hey!

Ma'am?

You're not real!

[crowd gasps]

You're not real!

[woman] Officer!

You're only made of moonlight!

[chuckles]

You're so much smaller than I remember.

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