Four Past Midnight (87 page)

“I crawled out from under and almost fainted again from hunger. I saw Brian Kelly, who used to be freightmaster back in those days. He was countin sacks of somethin on the other loadin platform and makin marks on a clipboard. I managed to walk over to him. He saw me, and an expression of disgust came over his face. There had been a time when we'd bought each other drinks in The Domino—a roadhouse that burned down long before your time, Sam—but those days were long gone. All he saw was a dirty, filthy drunk with leaves and dirt in his hair, a drunk that stank of piss and Old Duke.

“ ‘Get outta here, daddy-0, or I'll call the cops,' he says.

“That day was another first for me. One thing about bein a drunk—you're always breakin new ground. That was the first time I ever begged for money. I asked him if he could spare a quarter so I could get a cuppa joe and some toast at the Route 32 Diner. He dug into his pocket and brought out some change. He didn't hand it to me; he just tossed it in my general direction. I had to get down in the cinders and grub for it. I don't think he threw the money to shame me. He just didn't want to touch me. I don't blame him, either.

“When he saw I had the money he said, ‘Get in the wind, daddy-0. And if I see you down here again, I
will
call the cops.'

“ ‘You bet,' I said, and went on my way. He never even knew who I was, and I'm glad.

“About halfway to the diner, I passed one of those newspaper boxes, and I seen that day's
Gazette
inside. That was when I realized I'd been out of it two days instead of just one. The date didn't mean much to me—by then I wasn't much interested in catendars—but I knew it was Monday morning when Ardelia booted me out of her bed for the last time and I made that call. Then I saw the headlines. I'd slept through just about the biggest day for news in Junction City's history, it seemed like. SEARCH FOR MISSING CHILDREN CONTINUES, it said on one side. There was pictures of Tom Gibson and Patsy Harrigan. The headline on the other side read COUNTY CORONER SAYS DEPUTY DIED OF HEART ATTACK. Below that one there was a picture of John Power.

“I took one of the papers and left a nickel on top of the pile, which was how it was done back in the days when people still mostly trusted each other. Then I sat down, right there on the curb, and read both stories. The one about the kids was shorter. The thing was, nobody was very worried about em just yet—Sheriff Beeman was treatin it as a runaway case.

“She'd picked the right kids, all right; those two really
were
brats, and birds of a feather flock together. They was always chummin around. They lived on the same block, and the story said they'd gotten in trouble the week before when Patsy Harrigan's mother caught em smokin cigarettes in the back shed. The Gibson boy had a no-account uncle with a farm in Nebraska, and Norm Beeman was pretty sure that's where they were headed—I told you he wasn't much in the brains department. But how could he know? And he was right about one thing—they weren't the kind of kids who fall down wells or get drownded swimmin in the Proverbia River. But
I
knew where they were, and I knew Ardelia had beaten the clock again. I knew they'd find all three of them together, and later on that day, they did. I'd saved Tansy Power, and I'd saved myself, but I couldn't find much consolation in that.

“The story about Deputy Power was longer. It was the second one, because Power had been found late Monday afternoon. His death'd been reported in Tuesday's paper, but not the cause. He'd been found slumped behind the wheel of his cruiser about a mile west of the Orday farm. That was a place I knew pretty well, because it was where I usually left the road and went into the corn on my way to Ardelia's.

“I could fill in the blanks pretty well. John Power wasn't a man to let the grass grow under his feet, and he must have headed out to Ardelia's house almost as soon as I hung up that pay telephone beside the Texaco station. He might have called his wife first, and told her to keep Tansy in the house until she heard from him. That wasn't in the paper, of course, but I bet he did.

“When he got there, she must have known that I'd told on her and the game was up. So she killed him. She ... she hugged him to death, the way she did Mr. Lavin. He had a lot of hard bark on him, just like I told her, but a maple tree has hard bark on it, too, and you can still get the sap to run out of it, if you drive your plug in deep enough. I imagine she drove hers plenty deep.

“When he was dead, she must have driven him in his own cruiser out to the place where he was found. Even though that road—Carson Road—wasn't much travelled back then, it still took a heap of guts to do that. But what else
could
she do? Call the Sheriff's Office and tell em John Power'd had a heart attack while he was talkin to her? That would have started up a lot more questions at the very time when she didn't want nobody thinkin of her at all. And, you know, even Norm Beeman would have been curious about why John Power had been in such a tearin hurry to talk to the city librarian.

“So she drove him out Garson Road almost to the Orday farm, parked his cruiser in the ditch, and then she went back to her own house the same way I always went—through the corn.”

Dave looked from Sam to Naomi and then back to Sam again.

“I'll bet I know what she did next, too. I'll bet she started lookin for me.

“I don't mean she jumped in her car and started drivin around Junction City, pokin her head into all my usual holes; she didn't have to. Time and time again over those years she would show up where I was when she wanted me, or she would send one of the kids with a folded-over note. Didn't matter if I was sittin in a pile of boxes behind the barber shop or fishin out at Grayling's Stream or if I was just drunk behind the freight depot, she knew where I was to be found. That was one of her talents.

“Not that last time, though—the time she wanted to find me most of all—and I think I know why. I told you that I didn't fall asleep or even black out after makin that call; it was more like goin into a coma, or being dead. And when she turned whatever eye she had in her mind outward, lookin for me, it couldn't see me. I don't know how many times that day and that night her eye might have passed right over where I lay, and I don't want to know. I only know if she'd found me, it wouldn't have been any kid with a folded-over note that showed up. It would have been
her,
and I can't even imagine what she would have done to me for interfering with her plans the way I did.

“She probably would have found me anyway if she'd had more time, but she didn't. Her plans were laid, that was one thing. And then there was the way her change was speedin up. Her time of sleep was comin on, and she couldn't waste time lookin for me. Besides, she must have known she'd have another chance, further up the line. And now her chance has come.”

“I don't understand what you mean,” Sam said.

“Of course you do,” Dave replied. “Who took the books that have put you in this jam? Who sent em to the pulper, along with your newspapers?
I
did. Don't you think she knows that?”

“Do you think that she still wants you?” Naomi asked.

“Yes, but not the way she did. Now she only wants to kill me.” His head turned and his bright, sorrowful eyes gazed into Sam's.
“You're
the one she wants now.”

Sam laughed uneasily. “I'm sure she was a firecracker thirty years ago,” he said, “but the lady has aged. She's really not my type.”

“I guess you don't understand after all,” Dave said. “She doesn't want to
fuck
you, Sam; she wants to
be
you.”

After a few moments Sam said, “Wait. Just hold on a second.”

“You've heard me, but you haven't taken it to heart the way you need to,” Dave told him. His voice was patient but weary; terribly weary. “So let me tell you a little more.

“After Ardelia killed John Power, she put him far enough away so she wouldn't be the first one to fall under suspicion. Then she went ahead and opened the Library that afternoon, just like always. Part of it was because a guilty person looks more suspicious if they swerve away from their usual routines, but that wasn't all of it. Her change was right upon her,
and she had to have those children's lives.
Don't even think about asking me why, because I don't know. Maybe she's like a bear that has to stuff itself before it goes into hibernation. All I can be sure of is that she had to make sure there was a Story Hour that Monday afternoon ... and she did.

“Sometime during that Story Hour, when all the kids were sittin around her in the trance she could put em into, she told Tom and Patsy that she wanted em to come to the Library on Tuesday morning, even though the Library was closed Tuesdays and Thursdays in the summer. They did, and she did for em, and then she went to sleep ... that sleep that looks so much like death. And now you come along, Sam, thirty years later. You know me, and Ardelia still owes me a settling up, so that is a start ... but there's something a lot better than that. You also know about the Library Police.”

“I don't know how—”

“No, you don't know
how
you know, and that makes you even better. Because secrets that are so bad that we even have to hide them from ourselves ... for someone like Ardelia Lortz, those are the best secrets of all. Plus, look at the bonuses—you're young, you're single, and you have no close friends. That's true, isn't it?”

“I would have said so until today,” Sam said after a moment's thought. “I would have said the only good friends I made since I came to Junction City have moved away. But I consider you and Naomi my friends, Dave. I consider you very good friends indeed. The best.”

Naomi took Sam's hand and squeezed it briefly.

“I appreciate that,” Dave said, “but it doesn't matter, because she intends to do for me and Sarah as well. The more the merrier, as she told me once. She has to take lives to get through her time of change ... and waking up must be a time of change for her, too.”

“You're saying that she means to possess Sam somehow, aren't you?” Naomi asked.

“I think I mean a little more than that, Sarah. I think she means to destroy whatever there is inside Sam that
makes
him Sam—I think she means to clean him out the way a kid cleans out a pumpkin to make a Halloween jack-o-lantern, and then she's going to put him on like you'd put on a suit of new clothes. And after that happens—if it does—he'll go on lookin like a man named Sam Peebles, but he won't
be
a man anymore, no more than Ardelia Lortz was ever a woman. There's somethin not human, some
it
hidin inside her skin, and I think I always knew that. It's inside ... but it's forever an outsider. Where did Ardelia Lortz come from? Where did she live before she came to Junction City? I think, if you checked, you'd find that everything she put on the references she showed Mr. Lavin was a lie, and that nobody in town really knew. I think it was John Power's curiosity about that very thing that sealed his fate. But I think there was a
real
Ardelia Lortz at one time ... in Pass Christian, Mississippi ... or Harrisburg, Pennsylvania ... or Portland, Maine ... and the
it
took her over and put her on. Now she wants to do it again. If we let that happen, I think that later this year, in some other town, in San Francisco, California ... or Butte, Montana ... or Kingston, Rhode Island ... a man named Sam Peebles will show up. Most people will like him. Children in particular will like him ... although they may be afraid of him, too, in some way they don't understand and can't talk about.

“And, of course, he will be a librarian.”

Sam looked at his wristwatch and was astounded to see it was almost 3:00
_P
.
_M
. Midnight was only nine hours away, and then the tall man with the silver eyes would be back. Or Ardelia Lortz would be back. Or maybe both of them together.

“What do you think I should do, Dave? Go out to the local graveyard and find Ardelia's body and pound a stake through her heart?”

“A good trick if you could do it,” he replied, “since the lady was cremated.”

“Oh,” Sam said. He settled back into his chair with a little helpless sigh.

Naomi took his hand again. “In any case, you won't be doing anything alone,” she said firmly. “Dave says she means to do us as well as you, but that's almost beside the point. Friends stand by when there's trouble.
That's
the point. What else are they for?”

Sam lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Thank you—but I don't know what you can do. Or me, either. There doesn't seem to be anything to do. Unless ...” He looked at Dave hopefully. “Unless I ran?”

Dave shook his head. “She—or it—
sees.
I told you that. I guess you could drive most of the way to Denver before midnight if you really put your foot down and the cops didn't catch you, but Ardelia Lortz would be right there to greet you when you got out of your car. Or you'd look over in some dark mile and see the Library Policeman sittin next to you on the seat.”

The thought of that—the white face and silver eyes, illuminated only by the green glow of the dashboard lights—made Sam shiver.

“What, then?”

“I think you both know what has to be done first,” Dave said. He drank the last of his iced tea and then set the glass on the porch. “Just think a minute, and you'll see.”

Then they all looked out toward the grain elevator for awhile. Sam's mind was a roaring confusion; all he could catch hold of were isolated snatches of Dave Duncan's story and the voice of the Library Policeman, with his strange little lisp, saying
I don't want to hear your sick ecthcuses
...
You have until midnight ... then I come again.