Sleeping Beauties: A Novel

by Stephen King

  Jared really hoped his father or his mother would come home soon.

  3

  After listening to Ree Dempster’s story twice—the second time to sniff out the inconsistencies most inmates could not avoid when they were lying—Janice Coates determined the young woman was telling the stone truth, and sent her back to the cellblock. Tired as Janice was from last night’s argument with her Mexican dinner, she was also oddly elated. Here at last was something she could deal with. She had been waiting a long, long time for a reason to give Don Peters his walking papers, and if a crucial detail of Ree’s story proved out, she would finally be able to nail him.

  She called in Tig Murphy and told him exactly what she wanted. And when the officer didn’t immediately jump to: “What’s the problem? Grab some rubber gloves. You know where they are.”

  He nodded and slouched off to do her little bit of nasty forensic work.

  She phoned Clint. “Would you be available in twenty minutes or so, Doc?”

  “Sure,” Clint said. “I was about to go home and check on my son, but I was able to raise him.”

  “Was he taking a nap? Lucky him, if he was.”

  “Very funny. What’s up?”

  “What’s up is one good thing in this screwed-up, fucked-over day. If all goes well, I’m going to fire Don Peters’s ass. I don’t expect him to do anything physical, bullies usually only get physical when they smell weakness, but I wouldn’t mind having a man in the room. Better safe than sorry.”

  “That’s a party I’d love to attend,” Clint said.

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  When she told him what Ree had seen Peters do to Jeanette, Clint groaned. “That bastard. Has anyone talked to Jeanette yet? Tell me that no one has.”

  “No,” said Coates. “In a way, that’s the beauty of it.” She cleared her throat. “Given the godawful circumstances, we don’t need her.”

  She had no more than ended the call when her phone rang again. This time it was Michaela, and Mickey didn’t waste time. For the women of the world on Aurora Day One, there was no time to waste.

  4

  During her twenty-two months at NewsAmerica, Michaela “Mickey” Morgan had seen plenty of guests grow flustered under the hot studio lights, struggling to answer questions they hadn’t prepared for or trying to justify rash statements they’d made years ago that were preserved on video. There was, for instance, the representative from Oklahoma who had been forced to watch a clip of himself saying, “Most of these unwed mothers have limp leg muscles. That’s why they spread so easy.” When the moderator of NewsAmerica’s Sunday interview show asked him to comment on the clip, the representative blurted, “That was fore I got Jeepers in my harp.” For the remainder of his term he had been referred to by his colleagues (once during a roll-call vote) as Representative Harp.

  Such prized “gotcha moments” were common enough, but Michaela never saw an actual freak-out until the late afternoon of Aurora Day One. And it wasn’t the guest who freaked.

  She was at the console in the location van, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed thanks to her tech guy’s blow. Relaxing in an air-conditioned roomette at the rear of the van was her next guest, one of the women who’d been tear-gassed in front of the White House. The woman was young and pretty. Michaela thought she’d make a strong impression, partly because she was articulate, mostly because she was still showing the effects of the gas. Michaela had decided to interview her in front of the Peruvian embassy up the street. The building stood in strong sunlight, which would make the young woman’s red, raw-looking eyes stand out.

  In fact, if I position her just right, Michaela thought, she’ll look like she’s crying bloody tears. The idea was disgusting; it was also how NewsAmerica did business. Keeping up with FOX News was no job for sissies.

  They were scheduled to go live at 4:19, after the current in-studio conversation concluded. George Alderson, his pate shining greasily through the strands of his combover, was interviewing a clinical psychiatrist named Erasmus DiPoto.

  “Has there ever been an outbreak like this in the history of the world, Dr. DiPoto?” George asked.

  “An interesting question,” DiPoto said. He wore round rimless glasses and a tweed suit that must have been hotter than hell under the lamps. Pro that he was, though, he didn’t appear to be sweating.

  “Look at that prissy little mouth,” her tech said. “If he had to shit out of a hole that small, he’d explode.”

  Michaela laughed heartily. Some of it was the coke, some of it was tiredness, some of it was plain old terror, suppressed by professionalism for the time being, but just waiting to come out.

  “Let’s hope you have an interesting answer,” George Alderson said.

  “I was thinking of the Dancing Plague of 1518,” DiPoto said. “That was also an event that affected only the ladies.”

  “The ladies,” said a voice from behind Michaela. It was the White House protestor, who had come over to watch. “The ladies. Jesus please us.”

  “That outbreak began with a woman named Mrs. Troffea, who danced madly in the streets of Strasbourg for six days and nights,” DiPoto said, warming to his subject. “Before collapsing, she was joined by many others. This dance mania spread across all of Europe. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women danced in cities and towns. Many died of heart attacks, strokes, or exhaustion.” He essayed a small, smug smile. “It was simple hysteria, and eventually died out.”

  “Are you saying that Aurora is similar? I suspect many of our viewers will find that hard to accept.” Michaela was pleased to see that George couldn’t keep the disbelief out of his face or his voice. George was mostly blather, but he did have a small, beating newsie’s heart somewhere under his Oxford shirt. “Sir, we’ve got news footage of thousands of women and girls with this fibrous material—these cocoons—covering their faces and bodies. This is affecting millions of females.”

  “I am not making light of the situation, by any means,” DiPoto said. “Absolutely not. But physical symptoms or actual physical changes as a result of mass hysteria are not uncommon. In Flanders, for instance, dozens of women exhibited stigmata—bleeding hands and feet—during the late eighteenth century. Sexual politics and political correctness aside, I feel we must—”

  That was when Stephanie Koch, the producer of Afternoon Events, charged onto the set. She was a leathery chain-smoker in her fifties who had seen it all, and put most of it on television. Michaela would have said Steph was armored against any and all crazy guest opinions. But it seemed her armor had a chink, and Dr. DiPoto with his round spectacles and prissy little mouth had found it.

  “What the fuck are you talking about, you penis-equipped gerbil?” she shouted. “I have two granddaughters with that shit growing all over them, they’re in comas, and you think that’s female hysteria?”

  George Alderson groped out a restraining hand. Stephanie batted it away. She was crying angry tears as she loomed over Dr. Erasmus DiPoto, who was cringing back in his chair and staring up at this lunatic Amazon who had appeared from nowhere.

  “Women all over the world are struggling not to go to sleep because they’re afraid they’ll never wake up, and you think that’s female hysteria?”

  Michaela, the tech guy, and the woman from the protest were staring at the monitor, fascinated.

  “Go to commercial!” George called, looking over Stephanie Koch’s shoulder. “We just need to take a break, folks! Sometimes things get a little tense. That’s live television, though, and—”

  Stephanie whirled, looking at the off-camera control booth. “Don’t you dare go to commercial! Not until I’m done with this chauvinist piece of shit!” She was still wearing her headset. Now she tore it off and began to clobber DiPoto with it. When he raised his hands to protect the top of his skull, she slashed at his face. His nose began to bleed.

  “This is female hysteria!” Stephanie shouted, whapping him with her headset. Now the little doctor’s mouth was bleeding, as well. “This
is what female hysteria really looks like, you . . . you . . . you RUTABAGA!”

  “Rutabaga?” the protestor woman said. She began to laugh. “Did she just call him a rutabaga?”

  A couple of stagehands rushed out to restrain Stephanie Koch. While they struggled and DiPoto bled and George Alderson gaped, the studio disappeared and was replaced by an ad for Symbicort.

  “Baby-now,” the protestor woman said. “That was great.” Her gaze shifted. “Say, can I have some of that?” She was eyeballing the small pile of blow sitting on top of the tech guy’s laminated day-part schedule.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s open bar today.”

  Michaela watched the protestor take some on her fingernail and ingest it.

  “Whee!” She smiled at Michaela. “I am officially ready to rock.”

  “Go on back and sit down,” Michaela said. “I’ll call you.” But she wouldn’t. Combat-hardened Stephanie Koch utterly losing her shit had brought a realization to Mickey Coates. She wasn’t just looking through a lens at this story; it was her story. And when she finally went to sleep, she didn’t want it to be among strangers.

  “Hold the fort, Al,” she said.

  “You bet,” the tech guy said. “Hey, that was priceless, wasn’t it? Live TV at its best.”

  “Priceless,” she agreed, and went out to the sidewalk. She powered up her cell. If the traffic wasn’t too bad, she could be in Dooling before midnight.

  “Mom? It’s me. I can’t do this anymore. I’m coming home.”

  5

  At 3:10 PM, ten minutes past the end of Don Peters’s 6:30 AM to 3:00 PM shift, he sat in the Booth, watching the Unit 10 monitor, watching the madwoman nod off. She slumped on the bunk with her eyes closed. Lampley had been called off for some reason, and then Murphy, and so now Don had the Booth, and that was fine with him—he’d rather sit. Actually, what he’d rather do was go home, like usual, but in the interests of not riling Coatsie up, he’d decided to stick it out for the time being.

  The crazy cunt was a hot little number, Don wouldn’t hesitate to grant her that. Even in scrubs her legs went for miles.

  He pressed the button on the mic that piped directly to the cell and was about to tell her to wake up. Only what was the point? They were all going to fall asleep and grow that shit on their faces and bods, apparently. Christ, what a world it would be if that happened. On the plus side, it would be safer on the roads. That was a good one. He’d have to remember that for later, try it on the boys at the Squeaky Wheel.

  Peters let go of the button. Ms. Unit 10 swung her legs up onto the bunk and stretched out. Don, curious, waited to see how it would happen, the webbing weirdness he’d read about on his phone.

  6

  Once there had been hundreds of rats in the prison and dozens of colonies; now just forty remained. As Evie lay with her eyes closed, she spoke with the alpha—an old female, a long-clawed fighter with thoughts like rusty grinding wheels. Evie imagined the alpha’s face as a lattice of scar tissues, very lean and beautiful.

  “Why so few of you, my friend?”

  “Poison,” this warrior queen told her. “They lay poison. It smells like milk, but it kills us.” The rat was in a crease between the cinderblocks that divided Unit 10 from Unit 9. “The poison is supposed to make us seek water, but often we become confused and die without reaching any. It’s a miserable death. These walls are filled with our bodies.”

  “No more of you need to suffer that way,” said Evie. “I can promise that. But I may need you to do certain things for me, and some of them may be dangerous. Is that acceptable to you?”

  As Evie expected, danger meant nothing to the queen rat. To gain her position the queen had fought her king. She had torn off his forelegs, and instead of finishing him she had sat on her haunches and watched him bleed out. The queen expected, eventually, to die in a similar manner.

  “It is acceptable,” said the mother rat. “Fear is death.”

  Evie didn’t agree—in her view, death was death, and it was well worth fearing—but she gave it a pass. Though rats were limited, they were sincere. You could work with a rat. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” said the queen rat. “There is only one question I need to ask you, Mother. Do you keep your word?”

  “Always,” said Evie.

  “Then what do you want us to do?”

  “Nothing now,” said Evie, “but soon. I will call you. For now, you only need to know this: your family will no longer want to eat the poison.”

  “True?”

  Evie stretched, and smiled, and gently, with her eyes still closed, kissed the wall.

  “True,” she said.

  7

  Evie’s head snapped up and her eyes snapped open. She was staring directly at the camera—and, seemingly, at Don.

  In the Booth, he jerked in the chair. The pointedness of the look, the way she’d fastened on the camera lens the instant she awoke, unnerved him. What the hell? How had she woken up? Weren’t they supposed to get covered in webs if they fell asleep? Had the bitch been dekeing him? If so, she’d been doing a heck of a job: face slack, body totally still.

  Don pushed down the mic. “Inmate. You’re staring at my camera. It’s rude. You got a rude look on your face. Do we have some kind of problem?”

  Ms. Unit 10 shook her head. “I’m sorry, Officer Peters. Sorry about my face. There’s no problem.”

  “Your apology is accepted,” said Don. “Don’t do it again.” And then: “How did you know it was me?”

  But Evie didn’t answer the question. “I think the warden wants to see you,” she said, and right on cue, the intercom buzzed. He was needed in Administration.

  CHAPTER 11

  1

  Blanche McIntyre let Don into the warden’s office and told him Coates would be along in about five minutes. It was a thing Blanche shouldn’t have done, and wouldn’t have, had she not been distracted by the strange events that seemed to be happening in the prison, and in the world at large.

  His hands were shaking a bit as he helped himself to coffee from the pot in the corner of the office, situated right under the stupid fucking poster of the kitten: HANG IN THERE. Once he had his coffee, he spat into the black liquid that remained in the urn. Coates, the vicious old bitch, smoked and drank coffee all day. He hoped he had a cold coming on and his spit gave it to her. Christ, why couldn’t she die of lung cancer and leave him alone?

  The timing, added to the unnerving prediction by the freaky female in Unit 10, left Don with no doubt that either Sorley or Dempster had snitched on him. This was not good. He should not have done what he had done. They had been waiting for him to slip and he had gone right from seeing Coates that morning and done exactly that.

  No reasonable man, of course, could have blamed him. When you considered the kind of pressure that he was subjected to by Coates, and the amount of whining that he dealt with every single day from the criminals he was supposed to babysit, it was a wonder that he hadn’t murdered anyone, just from the frustration.

  Was it so wrong to grab a handful now and then? For Christ’s sake, it used to be if you didn’t pat a waitress on the ass, she’d be disappointed. If you didn’t whistle at a woman on the street, she’d wonder what the hell she’d bothered getting dressed up for. They got dressed up to be messed up, that was just a fact. When did the whole female species get so turned around? You couldn’t even compliment a woman in these PC days. And that’s what a pat on the ass or a squeeze on the tit was, wasn’t it, a kind of compliment? You needed to be pretty stupid not to see that. If Don squeezed a woman’s rear, he didn’t do it because it was an ugly rear. He did it because it was a quality rear. It was a playful thing, that was all.

  Did stuff sometimes go a little farther? Okay. Now and again. And here Don would take some of the blame. Prison was hard on a woman with healthy sexual feelings. There were more bushes than a jungle and no spearmen. Attractions were inevitable. Needs couldn’t be denied. The Sorley g
irl, for instance. It might be entirely subconscious on her part, but on some level, she had wanted him. She had sent plenty of signals: a swing of the hip in his direction on the way to mess hall; the tip of her tongue sweeping over her lips as she carried an armful of chair legs; a dirty little come-on glance over her shoulder.

  Sure, the burden rested on Don not to give in to these sorts of invitations, made as they were by felons and degenerates, who would seize any opportunity to set you up and get you in trouble. But he was human; you couldn’t blame him for succumbing to his normal masculine urges. Not that a flea-bitten nag like Coates would ever understand.

  There was no danger of a criminal action, he was certain—the word of a crack whore, or even of two crack whores, would never count for more than his in any court of law—but his job was definitely in jeopardy. The warden had promised to take action after another complaint.

  Don paced. He wondered, darkly, if the whole campaign against him might even be Coates’s way of expressing a kind of fucked-up jealous love for him. He’d seen that movie with Michael Douglas and Glenn Close. It had scared the living shit out of him. A scorned woman would go to any length to fuck you over and that was a fact.

  His consideration briefly flickered to his mother, and how she had confessed to telling Don’s ex, Gloria, not to marry him, because “Donnie, I know how you are with girls.” The hurt of that went all the way to the bone, for Don Peters loved his mother, had loved her cool hand on his feverish forehead when he was a little boy, and remembered how she used to sing that he was her sunshine, her only sunshine, and how could your own mother turn on you? What did that say about her? Talk about controlling females, there it was in a nutshell.