Four Past Midnight

by Stephen King

  "Yes," she said. "It's all right. But . . . Sam . . . dear God, what's happened? Your hair . . ."

  "What about my hair?" he asked her sharply.

  She fumbled her purse open with hands that shook slightly and brought out a compact. "Look," she said.

  He did, but he already knew what he was going to see.

  Since eight-thirty this morning, his hair had gone almost completely white.

  4

  "I see you found your friend," Doreen McGill said to Naomi as they climbed back up the stairs. She put a nail to the corner of her mouth and smiled her cute-little-me smile.

  "Yes."

  "Did you remember to sign out?"

  "Yes," Naomi said again. Sam hadn't, but she had done it for both of them.

  "And did you return any microfilms you might have used?"

  This time Sam said yes. He couldn't remember if either he or Naomi had returned the one spool of microfilm he had mounted, and he didn't care. All he wanted was to get out of here.

  Doreen was still being coy. Finger tapping the edge of her lower lip, she cocked her head and said to Sam, "You did look different in the newspaper picture. I just can't put my finger on what it is."

  As they went out the door, Naomi said: "He finally got smart and quit dyeing his hair."

  On the steps outside, Sam exploded with laughter. The force of his bellows doubled him over. It was hysterical laughter, its sound only half a step removed from the sound of screams, but he didn't care. It felt good. It felt enormously cleansing.

  Naomi stood beside him, seeming to be bothered neither by Sam's laughing fit nor the curious glances they were drawing from passersby on the street. She even lifted one hand and waved to someone she knew. Sam propped his hands on his upper thighs, still caught in his helpless gale of laughter, and yet there was a part of him sober enough to think: She has seen this sort of reaction before. I wonder where? But he knew the answer even before his mind had finished articulating the question. Naomi was an alcoholic, and she had made working with other alcoholics, helping them, part of her own therapy. She had probably seen a good deal more than a hysterical laughing fit during her time at Angle Street.

  She'll slap me, he thought, still howling helplessly at the image of himself at his bathroom mirror, patiently combing Grecian Formula into his locks. She'll slap me, because that's what you do with hysterical people.

  Naomi apparently knew better. She only stood patiently beside him in the sunshine, waiting for him to regain control. At last his laughter began to taper off to wild snorts and runaway snickers. His stomach muscles ached and his vision was water-wavery and his cheeks were wet with tears.

  "Feel better?" she asked.

  "Oh, Naomi--" he began, and then another hee-haw bray of laughter escaped him and galloped off into the sunshiny morning. "You don't know how much better."

  "Sure I do," she said. "Come on--we'll take my car."

  "Where ..." He hiccupped. "Where are we going?"

  "Angel Street," she said, pronouncing it the way the sign-painter had intended it to be pronounced. "I'm very worried about Dave. I went there first this morning, but he wasn't there. I'm afraid he may be out drinking."

  "That's nothing new, is it?" he asked, walking beside her down the steps. Her Datsun was parked at the curb, behind Sam's own car.

  She glanced at him. It was a brief glance, but a complex one: irritation, resignation, compassion. Sam thought that if you boiled that glance down it would say You don't know what you're talking about, but it's not your fault.

  "Dave's been sober almost a year this time, but his general health isn't good. As you say, falling off the wagon isn't anything new for him, but another fall may kill him."

  "And that would be my fault." The last of his laughter dried up.

  She looked at him, a little surprised. "No," she said. "That would be nobody's fault . . . but that doesn't mean I want it to happen. Or that it has to. Come on. We'll take my car. We can talk on the way."

  5

  "Tell me what happened to you," she said as they headed toward the edge of town. "Tell me everything. It isn't just your hair, Sam; you look ten years older."

  "Bullshit," Sam said. He had seen more than his hair in Naomi's compact mirror; he had gotten a better look at himself than he wanted. "More like twenty. And it feels like a hundred."

  "What happened? What was it?"

  Sam opened his mouth to tell her, thought of how it would sound, then shook his head. "No," he said, "not yet. You're going to tell me something first. You're going to tell me about Ardelia Lortz. You thought I was joking the other day. I didn't realize that then, but I do now. So tell me all about her. Tell me who she was and what she did."

  Naomi pulled over to the curb beyond Junction City's old granite firehouse and looked at Sam. Her skin was very pale beneath her light make-up, and her eyes were wide. "You weren't? Sam, are you trying to tell me you weren't joking?"

  "That's right."

  "But Sam ..." She stopped, and for a moment she seemed not to know how she should go on. At last she spoke very softly, as though to a child who has done something he doesn't know is wrong. "But Sam, Ardelia Lortz is dead. She has been dead for thirty years."

  "I know she's dead. I mean, I know it now. What I want to know is the rest."

  "Sam, whoever you think you saw--"

  "I know who I saw."

  "Tell me what makes you think--"

  "First, you tell me."

  She put her car back in gear, checked her rear-view mirror, and began to drive toward Angle Street again. "I don't know very much," she said. "I was only five when she died, you see. Most of what I do know comes from overheard gossip. She belonged to The First Baptist Church of Proverbia--she went there, at least--but my mother doesn't talk about her. Neither do any of the older parishioners. To them it's like she never existed."

  Sam nodded. "That's just how Mr. Price treated her in the article he wrote about the Library. The one I was reading when you put your hand on my shoulder and took about twelve more years off my life. It also explains why your mother was so mad at me when I mentioned her name Saturday night."

  Naomi glanced at him, startled. "That's what you called about?"

  Sam nodded.

  "Oh, Sam--if you weren't on Mom's s-list before, you are now."

  "Oh, I was on before, but I've got an idea she's moved me up." Sam laughed, then winced. His stomach still hurt from his fit on the steps of the newspaper office, but he was very glad he had had that fit--an hour ago he never would have believed he could have gotten so much of his equilibrium back. In fact, an hour ago he had been quite sure that Sam Peebles and equilibrium were going to remain mutually exclusive concepts for the rest of his life. "Go ahead, Naomi."

  "Most of what I've heard I picked up at what AA people call 'the real meeting,' " she said. "That's when people stand around drinking coffee before and then after, talking about everything under the sun."

  He looked at her curiously. "How long have you been in AA, Naomi?"

  "Nine years," Naomi said evenly. "And it's been six since I had to take a drink. But I've been an alcoholic forever. Drunks aren't made, Sam. They're born."

  "Oh," he said lamely. And then: "Was she in the program? Ardelia Lortz?"

  "God, no--but that doesn't mean there aren't people in AA who remember her. She showed up in Junction City in 1956 o'57, I think. She went to work for Mr. Lavin in the Public Library. A year or two later, he died very suddenly--it was a heart attack or a stroke, I think--and the town gave the job to the Lortz woman. I've heard she was very good at it, but judging by what happened, I'd say the thing she was best at was fooling people."

  "What did she do, Naomi?"

  "She killed two children and then herself," Naomi said simply. "In the summer of 1960. There was a search for the kids. No one thought of looking for them in the Library, because it was supposed to be closed that day. They were found the next day, when the Library was supposed to be open but was
n't. There are skylights in the Library roof--"

  "I know."

  "--but these days you can only see them from the outside, because they changed the Library inside. Lowered the ceiling to conserve heat, or something. Anyway, those skylights had big brass catches on them. You grabbed the catches with a long pole to open the skylights and let in fresh air, I guess. She tied a rope to one of the catches--she must have used one of the track-ladders that ran along the bookcases to do it--and hanged herself from it. She did that after she killed the children."

  "I see." Sam's voice was calm, but his heart was beating slowly and very hard. "And how did she . . . how did she kill the children?"

  "I don't know. No one's ever said, and I've never asked. I suppose it was horrible."

  "Yes. I suppose it was."

  "Now tell me what happened to you."

  "First I want to see if Dave's at the shelter."

  Naomi tightened up at once. "I'll see if Dave's at the shelter," she said. "You're going to sit tight in the car. I'm sorry for you, Sam, and I'm sorry I jumped to the wrong conclusion last night. But you won't upset Dave anymore. I'll see to that."

  "Naomi, he's a part of this!"

  "That's impossible," she said in a brisk this-closes-the-discussion tone of voice.

  "Dammit, the whole thing is impossible!"

  They were nearing Angle Street now. Ahead of them was a pick-up truck rattling toward the Recycling Center, its bed full of cardboard cartons filled with bottles and cans.

  "I don't think you understand what I told you," she said. "It doesn't surprise me; Earth People rarely do. So open your ears, Sam. I'm going to say it in words of one syllable. If Dave drinks, Dave dies. Do you follow that? Does it get through?"

  She tossed another glance Sam's way. This one was so furious it was still smoking around the edges, and even in the depths of his own distress, Sam realized something. Before, even on the two occasions when he had taken Naomi out, he had thought she was pretty. Now he saw she was beautiful.

  "What does that mean, Earth People?" he asked her.

  "People who don't have a problem with booze or pills or pot or cough medicine or any of the other things that mess up the human head," she nearly spat. "People who can afford to moralize and make judgments."

  Ahead of them, the pick-up truck turned off onto the long, rutted driveway leading to the redemption center. Angle Street lay ahead. Sam could see something parked in front of the porch, but it wasn't a car. It was Dirty Dave's shopping-cart.

  "Stop a minute," he said.

  Naomi did, but she wouldn't look at him. She stared straight ahead through the windshield. Her jaw was working. There was high color in her cheeks.

  "You care about him," he said, "and I'm glad. Do you also care about me, Sarah? Even though I'm an Earth Person?"

  "You have no right to call me Sarah. I can, because it's part of my name--I was christened Naomi Sarah Higgins. And they can, because they are, in a way, closer to me than blood relatives could ever be. We are blood relatives, in fact--because there's something in us that makes us the way we are. Something in our blood. You, Sam--you have no right."

  "Maybe I do," Sam said. "Maybe I'm one of you now. You've got booze. This Earth Person has got the Library Police."

  Now she looked at him, and her eyes were wide and wary. "Sam, I don't underst--"

  "Neither do I. All I know is that I need help. I need it desperately. I borrowed two books from a library that doesn't exist anymore, and now the books don't exist, either. I lost them. Do you know where they ended up?"

  She shook her head.

  Sam pointed over to the left, where two men had gotten out of the pick-up's cab and were starting to unload the cartons of returnables. "There. That's where they ended up. They've been pulped. I've got until midnight, Sarah, and then the Library Police are going to pulp me. And I don't think they'll even leave my jacket behind."

  6

  Sam sat in the passenger seat of Naomi Sarah Higgins's Datsun for what seemed like a long, long time. Twice his hand went to the door-handle and then fell back. She had relented ... a little. If Dave wanted to talk to him, and if Dave was still in any condition to talk, she would allow it. Otherwise, no soap.

  At last the door of Angle Street opened. Naomi and Dave Duncan came out. She had an arm around his waist, his feet were shuffling, and Sam's heart sank. Then, as they stepped out into the sun, he saw that Dave wasn't drunk . . . or at least not necessarily. Looking at him was, in a weird way, like looking into Naomi's compact mirror all over again. Dave Duncan looked like a man trying to weather the worst shock of his life . . . and not doing a very good job of it.

  Sam got out of the car and stood by the door, indecisive.

  "Come up on the porch," Naomi said. Her voice was both resigned and fearful. "I don't trust him to make it down the steps."

  Sam came up to where they stood. Dave Duncan was probably sixty years old. On Saturday he had looked seventy or seventy-five. That was the booze, Sam supposed. And now, as Iowa turned slowly on the axis of noon, he looked older than all the ages. And that, Sam knew, was his fault. It was the shock of things Dave had assumed were long buried.

  I didn't know, Sam thought, but this, however true it might be, had lost its power to comfort. Except for the burst veins in his nose and cheeks, Dave's face was the color of very old paper. His eyes were watery and stunned. His lips had a bluish tinge, and little beads of spittle pulsed in the deep pockets at the corners of his mouth.

  "I didn't want him to talk to you," Naomi said. "I wanted to take him to Dr. Melden, but he refuses to go until he talks to you."

  "Mr. Peebles," Dave said feebly. "I'm sorry, Mr. Peebles, it's all my fault, isn't it? I--"

  "You have nothing to apologize for," Sam said. "Come on over here and sit down."

  He and Naomi led Dave to a rocking chair at the corner of the porch and Dave eased himself into it. Sam and Naomi drew up chairs with sagging wicker bottoms and sat on either side of him. They sat without speaking for some little time, looking out across the railroad tracks and into the flat farm country beyond.

  "She's after you, isn't she?" Dave asked. "That bitch from the far side of hell."

  "She's sicced someone on me," Sam said. "Someone who was in one of those posters you drew. He's a ... I know this sounds crazy, but he's a Library Policeman. He came to see me this morning. He did . . ." Sam touched his hair. "He did this. And this." He pointed to the small red dot in the center of his throat. "And he says he isn't alone."

  Dave was silent for a long time, looking out into the emptiness, looking at the flat horizon which was broken only by tall silos and, to the north, the apocalyptic shape of the Proverbia Feed Company's grain elevator. "The man you saw isn't real," he said at last. "None of them are real. Only her. Only the devil-bitch."

  "Can you tell us, Dave?" Naomi asked gently. "If you can't, say so. But if it will make it better for you . . . easier . . . tell us."

  "Dear Sarah," Dave said. He took her hand and smiled. "I love you--have I ever told you so?"

  She shook her head, smiling back. Tears glinted in her eyes like tiny specks of mica. "No. But I'm glad, Dave."

  "I have to tell," he said. "It isn't a question of better or easier. It can't be allowed to go on. Do you know what I remember about my first AA meeting, Sarah?"

  She shook her head.

  "How they said it was a program of honesty. How they said you had to tell everything, not just to God, but to God and another person. I thought, 'If that's what it takes to live a sober life, I've had it. They'll throw me in a plot up on Wayvem Hill in that part of the boneyard they set aside for the drunks and all-time losers who never had a pot to piss in nor a window to throw it out of. Because I could never tell all the things I've seen, all the things I've done.' "

  "We all think that at first," she said gently.

  "I know. But there can't be many that've seen the things I have, or done what I have. I did the best I could, though. Little by l
ittle I did the best I could. I set my house in order. But those things I saw and did back then . . . those I never told. Not to any person, not to no man's God. I found a room in the basement of my heart, and I put those things in that room and then I locked the door."

  He looked at Sam, and Sam saw tears rolling slowly and tiredly down the deep wrinkles in Dave's blasted cheeks.

  "Yes. I did. And when the door was locked, I nailed boards across it. And when the boards was nailed, I put sheet steel across the boards and riveted it tight. And when the riveting was done, I drawed a bureau up against the whole works, and before I called it good and walked away, I piled bricks on top of the bureau. And all these years since, I've spent telling myself I forgot all about Ardelia and her strange ways, about the things she wanted me to do and the things she told me and the promises she made and what she really was. I took a lot of forgetting medicine, but it never did the job. And when I got into AA, that was the one thing that always drove me back. The thing in that room, you know. That thing has a name, Mr. Peebles--its name is Ardelia Lortz. After I was sobered up awhile, I would start having bad dreams. Mostly I dreamed of the posters I did for her--the ones that scared the children so bad--but they weren't the worst dreams."

  His voice had fallen to a trembling whisper.

  "They weren't the worst ones by a long chalk."

  "Maybe you better rest a little," Sam said. He had discovered that no matter how much might depend on what Dave had to say, a part of him didn't want to hear it. A part of him was afraid to hear it.

  "Never mind resting," he said. "Doctor says I'm diabetic, my pancreas is a mess, and my liver is falling apart. Pretty soon I'm going on a permanent vacation. I don't know if it'll be heaven or hell for me, but I'm pretty sure the bars and package stores are closed in both places, and thank God for that. But the time for restin isn't now. If I'm ever goin to talk, it has to be now." He looked carefully at Sam. "You know you're in trouble, don't you?"

  Sam nodded.

  "Yes. But you don't know just how bad your trouble is. That's why I have to talk. I think she has to ... has to lie still sometimes. But her time of bein still is over, and she has picked you, Mr. Peebles. That's why I have to talk. Not that I want to. I went out last night after Sarah was gone and bought myself a jug. I took it down to the switchin yard and sat where I've sat many times before, in the weeds and cinders and busted glass. I spun the cap off and held that jug up to my nose and smelled it. You know how that jug wine smells? To me it always smells like the wallpaper in cheap hotel rooms, or like a stream that has flowed its way through a town dump somewhere. But I have always liked that smell just the same, because it smells like sleep, too.