Four Past Midnight Read online

  "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."

  10

  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."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  BY AIR TO DES MOINES

  1

  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.

  It was on Naomi's face that light suddenly dawned.

  "Of course!" she said. "How stupid! But ..."

  She asked Dave a question, and Sam's own eyes widened in understanding.

  "There's a place in Des Moines, as I recall," Dave said. "Pell's. If any place can help, it'll be them. Why don't you make a call, Sarah?"

  2

  When she was gone, Sam said: "Even if they can help, I don't think we could get there before the close of business hours. I can try, I suppose ..."

  "I never expected you'd drive," Dave said. "No--you and Sarah have to go out to the Proverbia Airport."

  Sam blinked. "I didn't know there was an airport in Proverbia."

  Dave smiled. "Well ... I guess that is stretchin it a little. There's a half-mile of packed dirt Stan Soames calls a runway. Stan's front parlor is the office of Western Iowa Air Charter. You and Sarah talk to Stan. He's got a little Navajo. He'll take you to Des Moines and have you back by eight o'clock, nine at the latest."

  "What if he's not there?"

  "Then we'll try to figure out something el
se. I think he will be, though. The only thing Stan loves more than flyin is farm-in, and come the spring of the year, farmers don't stray far. He'll probably tell you he can't take you because of his garden, come to that--he'll say you shoulda made an appointment a few days in advance so he could get the Carter boy to come over and babysit his back ninety. If he says that, you tell him Dave Duncan sent you, and Dave says it's time to pay for the baseballs. Can you remember that?"

  "Yes, but what does it mean?"

  "Nothing that concerns this business," Dave said. "He'll take you, that's the important thing. And when he lands you again, never mind comin here. You and Sarah drive straight into town."

  Sam felt dread begin to seep into his body. "To the Library."

  "That's right."

  "Dave, what Naomi said about friends is all very sweet--and maybe even true--but I think I have to take it from here. Neither one of you has to be a part of this. I was the one responsible for stirring her up again--"

  Dave reached out and seized Sam's wrist in a grip of surprising strength. "If you really think that, you haven't heard a word I've said. You're not responsible for anything. I carry the deaths of John Power and two little children on my conscience--not to mention the terrors I don't know how many other children may have suffered--but I'm not responsible, either. Not really. I didn't set out to be Ardelia Lortz's companion any more than I set out to be a thirty-year drunk. Both things just happened. But she bears me a grudge, and she will be back for me, Sam. If I'm not with you when she comes, she'll visit me first. And I won't be the only one she visits. Sarah was right, Sam. She and I don't have to stay close to protect you; the three of us have to stay close to protect each other. Sarah knows about Ardelia, don't you see? If Ardelia don't know that already, she will as soon as she shows up tonight. She plans to go on from Junction City as you, Sam. Do you think she'll leave anybody behind who knows her new identity?"

  "But--"

  "But nothin," Dave said. "In the end it comes down to a real simple choice, one even an old souse like me can understand: we share this together or we're gonna die at her hands."

  He leaned forward.

  "If you want to save Sarah from Ardelia, Sam, forget about bein a hero and start rememberin who your Library Policeman was. You have to. Because I don't believe Ardelia can take just anyone. There's only one coincidence in this business, but it's a killer: once you had a Library Policeman, too. And you have to get that memory back."

  "I've tried," Sam said, and knew that was a lie. Because every time he turned his mind toward

  (come with me, son ... I'm a poleethman)

  that voice, it shied away. He tasted red licorice, which he had never eaten and always hated--and that was all.

  "You have to try harder," Dave said, "or there's no hope."

  Sam drew in a deep breath and let it out. Dave's hand touched the back of his neck, then squeezed it gently.

  "It's the key to this," Dave said. "You may even find it's the key to everything that has troubled you in your life. To your loneliness and your sadness."

  Sam looked at him, startled. Dave smiled.

  "Oh yes," he said. "You're lonely, you're sad, and you're closed off from other people. You talk a good game, but you don't walk what you talk. Up until today I wasn't nothing to you but Dirty Dave who comes to get your papers once a month, but a man like me sees a lot, Sam. And it takes one to know one."

  "The key to everything," Sam mused. He wondered if there really were such conveniences, outside of popular novels and movies-of-the-week populated with Brave Psychiatrists and Troubled Patients.

  "It's true," Dave persisted. "Such things are dreadful in their power, Sam. I don't blame you for not wantin to search for it. But you can, you know, if you want to. You have that choice."

  "Is that something else you learn in AA, Dave?"

  He smiled. "Well, they teach it there," he said, "but that's one I guess I always knew."

  Naomi came out onto the porch again. She was smiling and her eyes were sparkling.

  "Ain't she some gorgeous?" Dave asked quietly.

  "Yes," Sam said. "She sure is." He was clearly aware of two things: that he was falling in love, and that Dave Duncan knew it.

  3

  "The man took so long checking that I got worried," she said, "but we're in luck."

  "Good," Dave said. "You two are goin out to see Stan Soames, then. Does the Library still close at eight during the school year, Sarah?"

  "Yes--I'm pretty sure it does."

  "I'll be payin a visit there around five o'clock, then. I'll meet you in back, where the loadin platform is, between eight and nine. Nearer eight would be better--n safer. For Christ's sake, try not to be late."

  "How will we get in?" Sam asked.

  "I'll take care of that, don't worry. You just get goin."

  "Maybe we ought to call this guy Soames from here," Sam said. "Make sure he's available."

  Dave shook his head. "Won't do no good. Stan's wife left him for another man four years ago--claimed he was married to his work, which always makes a good excuse for a woman who's got a yen to make a change. There aren't any kids. He'll be out in his field. Go on, now. Daylight's wastin."

  Naomi bent over and kissed Dave's cheek. "Thank you for telling us," she said.

  "I'm glad I did it. It's made me feel ever so much better."

  Sam started to offer Dave his hand, then thought better of it. He bent over the old man and hugged him.

  4

  Stan Soames was a tall, rawboned man with angry eyes burning out of a gentle face, a man who already had his summer sunburn although calendar spring had not yet run its first month. Sam and Naomi found him in the field behind his house, just as Dave had told them they would. Seventy yards north of Soames's idling, mud-splashed Rototiller, Sam could see what looked like a dirt road ... but since there was a small airplane with a tarpaulin thrown over it at one end and a windsock fluttering from a rusty pole at the other, he assumed it was the Proverbia Airport's single runway.

  "Can't do it," Soames said. "I got fifty acres to turn this week and nobody but me to do it. You should have called a couple-three days ahead."

  "It's an emergency," Naomi said. "Really, Mr. Soames."

  He sighed and spread his arms, as if to encompass his entire farm. "You want to know what an emergency is?" he asked. "What the government's doing to farms like this and people like me. That's a dad-ratted emergency. Look, there's a fellow over in Cedar Rapids who might--"

  "We don't have time to go to Cedar Rapids," Sam said. "Dave told us you'd probably say--"

  "Dave?" Stan Soames turned to him with more interest than he had heretofore shown. "Dave who?"

  "Duncan. He told me to say it's time to pay for the baseballs."

  Soames's brows drew down. His hands rolled themselves up into fists, and for just a moment Sam thought the man was going to slug him. Then, abruptly, he laughed and shook his head.

  "After all these years, Dave Duncan pops outta the woodwork with his IOU rolled up in his hand! Goddam!"

  He began walking toward the Rototiller. He turned his head to them as he did, yelling to make himself heard over the machine's enthusiastic blatting. "Walk on over to the airplane while I put this goddam thing away! Mind the boggy patch just on the edge of the runway, or it'll suck your damned shoes off!"

  Soames threw the Rototiller into gear. It was hard to tell with all the noise, but Sam thought he was still laughing. "I thought that drunk old bastard was gonna die before I could quit evens with him!"

  He roared past them toward his barn, leaving Sam and Naomi looking at each other.

  "What was.that all about?" Naomi asked.

  "I don't know--Dave wouldn't tell me." He offered her his arm. "Madam, will you walk with me?"

  She took it. "Thank you, sir."

  They did their best to skirt the mucky place Stan Soames had told them about, but didn't entirely make it. Naomi's foot went in to the ankle, and the mud pulled her loafe
r off when she jerked her foot back. Sam bent down, got it, and then swept Naomi into his arms.

  "Sam, no!" she cried, startled into laughter. "You'll break your back!"

  "Nope," he said. "You're light."

  She was ... and his head suddenly felt light, too. He carried her up the graded slope of the runway to the airplane and set her on her feet. Naomi's eyes looked up into his with calmness and a sort of luminous clarity. Without thinking, he bent and kissed her. After a moment, she put her arms around his neck and kissed him back.

  When he looked at her again, he was slightly out of breath. Naomi was smiling.

  "You can call me Sarah anytime you want to," she said. Sam laughed and kissed her again.

  5

  Riding in the Navajo behind Stan Soames was like riding piggyback on a pogo stick. They bounced and jounced on uneasy tides of spring air, and Sam thought once or twice that they might cheat Ardelia in a way not even that strange creature could have foreseen: by spreading themselves all over an Iowa cornfield.

  Stan Soames didn't seem to be worried, however; he bawled out such hoary old ballads as "Sweet Sue" and "The Sidewalks of New York" at the top of his voice as the Navajo lurched toward Des Moines. Naomi was transfixed, peering out of her window at the roads and fields and houses below with her hands cupped to the sides of her face to cut the glare.

  At last Sam tapped her on the shoulder. "You act like you've never flown before!" he yelled over the mosquito-drone of the engine.

  She turned briefly toward him and grinned like an enraptured schoolgirl. "I haven't!" she said, and returned at once to the view.

  "I'll be damned," Sam said, and then tightened his seatbelt as the plane took another of its gigantic, bucking leaps.

  6

  It was twenty past four when the Navajo skittered down from the sky and landed at County Airport in Des Moines. Soames taxied to the Civil Air Terminal, killed the engine, then opened the door. Sam was a little amused at the twinge of jealousy he felt as Soames put his hands on Naomi's waist to help her down.