Sleeping Beauties: A Novel

by Stephen King

  “What are you? Where did you come from?” the fox asked.

  “The Mother Tree.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Follow your nose,” said the green bird, and flew off into the darkness.

  The fox went from one bare webbed footprint to the next, pausing twice more to roll in them. They cooled him and refreshed him and gave him strength. The woman-scent remained quite strong, that exotic not-quite-woman-scent fainter. Together they told the fox a story. The not-woman had come first and gone east, toward the metal house and the shed that was now burned. The real woman had come later, back-trailing the not-woman to some destination ahead, and then, later, returning to the stinking metal house with the yellow strips around it.

  The fox followed the entwined scents into a brushy brake, up the other side, and through a stand of stunted fir trees. Tattered webs hung from some of the branches, giving off that exotic not-woman smell. Beyond was a clearing. The fox trotted into it. He trotted easily now, and felt he could not just run if one of those pigs showed up, but glide away. In the clearing he sat, looking up at a tree that seemed made of many trunks wrapped around each other. It rose into the dark sky higher than he could see. Although there was no wind, the tree rustled, as if talking to itself. Here the not-woman smell was lost in a hundred other traces of scent. Many birds and many animals, none of which the fox knew.

  A cat came padding around from the far side of the great tree. Not a wildcat; it was much bigger. And it was white. In the dark, its green eyes were like lamps. Although the instinct to run from predators was bone-deep in the fox, he did not move. The great white tiger padded steadily toward him. The grass of the clearing rustled as it bent beneath the dense fur of its belly.

  When the tiger was only five feet away, the fox lay down and rolled over, showing his own belly in submission. A fox might harbor some pride, but dignity was useless.

  “Get up,” the tiger said.

  The fox got to his feet and timidly stretched his neck forward to touch the tiger’s nose.

  “Are you healed?” the tiger asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then listen to me, fox.”

  11

  In her prison cell, Evie Black lay with her eyes closed and a faint smile on her lips.

  “Then listen to me, fox,” she said. “I have work for you.”

  CHAPTER 16

  1

  Clint was about to ask Tig Murphy to buzz him out through the main door, but Assistant Warden Lawrence Hicks came buzzing in first.

  “Where are you going, Dr. Norcross?”

  The question sounded like an accusation, but at least it came out clearly. Although Lore Hicks looked disheveled—his hair a mussed halo around his bald spot, stubble on his jowly cheeks, dark circles under his eyes—the Novocain from his morning dental procedure seemed to have worn off.

  “To town. I need to see my wife and son.”

  “Did Janice okay that?”

  Clint took a beat to control his temper. It helped to remind himself that Hicks had either lost his wife to Aurora or would soon. That did not change the fact that the man standing before him was the last guy you wanted in charge of an institution like Dooling in a time of crisis. Janice had once told Clint that her second-in-command had less than thirty credit hours of Prison Management—from a degree-mill in Oklahoma—and no hours at all in Prison Administration.

  “But Hicksie’s sister is married to the lieutenant governor,” Janice had said. She’d had an extra glass of Pinot on that occasion. Or maybe it had been two. “So you do the math. He’s great at scheduling and checking inventory, but he’s been here sixteen months, and I’m not sure he could find his way to C Wing without a map. He doesn’t like to leave his office, and he’s never done a single duty tour, although that’s supposed to be a monthly requirement. He’s scared of the bad girls.”

  You’ll be leaving your office tonight, Hicksie, Clint thought, and you’ll be touring, too. Strapping on a walkie and making three-wing rounds, just like the other uniforms. The ones that are left.

  “Did you hear me?” Hicks asked now. “Did Janice okay you leaving?”

  “I have three things for you,” Clint said. “First thing, I was scheduled out at three PM, which was . . .” He checked his watch. “About six hours ago.”

  “But—”

  “Wait. Here’s the second thing. Warden Coates is asleep on her couch, inside a big white cocoon.”

  Hicks wore thick glasses that had a magnifying effect. When he widened his eyes, as he did now, they looked ready to fall out of their sockets. “What?”

  “Long story short, Don Peters finally tripped over his own dick. Got caught molesting an inmate. Janice canned his ass, but Don managed to load up her coffee with her prescription Xanax. It put her down fast. And before you ask, Don is in the wind. When I see Lila, I’ll tell her to put out a BOLO for him, but I doubt if it will be a priority. Not tonight.”

  “Oh my God.” Hicks ran his hands through his hair, further disarraying what was left of it. “Oh . . . my . . . God.”

  “Here’s the third thing. We do still have the other four officers from the morning shift: Rand Quigley, Millie Olson, Tig Murphy, and Vanessa Lampley. You are number five. You’ll need to make midnight rounds with the others. Oh, and Van will bring you up to speed on what the inmates are calling Super Coffee. Jeanette Sorley and Angel Fitzroy are pushing it.”

  “Super Coffee? What’s that? And what’s Fitzroy doing out? She’s not trustworthy, not at all! She has anger issues! I read your report!”

  “She’s not angry tonight, at least not yet. She’s pitching in. Like you need to. And if nothing changes, all these women are going to fall asleep, Lore. Every single one. Super Coffee or no Super Coffee. They deserve some hope. Talk to Van, and follow her lead if a situation comes up.”

  Hicks grabbed Clint’s jacket. His magnified eyes were panicky. “You can’t go! You can’t desert your post!”

  “Why not? You did.” Clint saw Hicks wince and wished he could have called those words back. He took Hicks’s hand and removed it from his jacket gently. “You checked on your wife, I need to check on Jared and Lila. And I will be back.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as I can.”

  “I wish they’d all go to sleep!” Hicks burst out. He sounded like a petulant child. “Every last thieving, whoring, drug-taking one of them! We ought to give them sleeping pills instead of coffee! That would solve the problem, wouldn’t it?”

  Clint merely looked at him.

  “All right.” Hicks did his best to square his shoulders. “I understand. You have loved ones. It’s just . . . all this . . . all these women . . . we have a jail full of them!”

  Are you just figuring that out? Clint thought, then asked Hicks how his wife was doing. He supposed he should have asked earlier. Except, hell, it wasn’t as if Hicksie had asked after Lila.

  “Awake, at least so far. She had . . .” Hicks cleared his throat, and his eyes shifted away from Clint’s. “She had some pep pills.”

  “Good. That’s good. I’ll be ba—”

  “Doc.” It was Vanessa Lampley, and not on the intercom. She was at his elbow in the hall by the main door. She had left the Booth unmanned, a thing almost unheard of. “You need to come and see this.”

  “Van, I can’t. I need to check on Jared, and I need to see Lila—”

  So I can say goodbye, Clint thought. It occurred to him suddenly. The potential finality. How much longer could she stay awake? Not much. On the phone she had sounded—far off, like she was part of the way to another world already. Once she nodded off, there was no reason to believe she could be brought back.

  “I understand,” Vanessa said, “but it won’t take more than a minute. You too, Mr. Hicks, sir. This . . . I don’t know, but this might change everything.”

  2

  “Watch monitor two,” Van said when they reached the Booth.

  Two was currently showing the A Wing co
rridor. Two women—Jeanette Sorley and Angel Fitzroy—were pushing a coffee trolley toward the soft cell, A-10, at the end. They stopped before they got there to talk to an extremely large inmate who for some reason had taken up residence in the delousing station.

  “So far we’ve got at least ten women asleep inside that webbing crap,” Van said. “Might be fifteen by now. Most in their cells, but three in the common room and one in the furniture shop. That shit spins out of them as soon as they fall asleep. Except . . .”

  She punched a button on her console, and monitor two showed the interior of A-10. Their new intake lay on her bunk with her eyes shut. Her chest rose and fell in slow respirations.

  “Except for her,” Van said. There was something like awe in her voice. “New fish is sleeping like a baby, and the only thing on her face is her Camay-fresh skin.”

  Camay-fresh skin. Something struck Clint about that, but it slipped away in his surprise at what he was seeing and his concern about Lila. “She’s not necessarily asleep just because her eyes are shut.”

  “Listen, Doc, I’ve been doing this job longer than you’ve been doing yours. I know when they’re awake and I know when they’re asleep. That one is asleep, and has been for at least forty-five minutes. Somebody drops something, makes a clatter, she kind of twitches and then turns over.”

  “Keep an eye on her. You can give me a full report when I get back,” Clint said. “I need to go.” Despite Van’s insistence that she could tell the difference between sleep and closed eyes, he wasn’t sold. And he had to see Lila while he still had the chance. He didn’t want to lose her with this—this, whatever it was, why she was lying—between them.

  He was out the door and heading for his car before the thing that had been bothering him finally coalesced in his mind. Evie Black had struck her face repeatedly against the wire mesh of Lila’s cruiser, and yet only a few hours later, the swelling and bruises were entirely gone. Nothing where they’d been but Camay-fresh skin.

  3

  Jeanette drove the coffee wagon while Angel walked beside it, banging on one of the urns with the lid and yelling, “Coffee! Special coffee! I got a peppy brew for all of you! Keep you leapin instead of sleepin!”

  They had few takers in A Wing, where most of the cells were open and empty.

  Earlier, in B Wing, Ree’s reaction had been a preview of what was to come. The special coffee might be a good idea, but hard to swallow. Ree had winced and handed her cup back after giving it a taste. “Jeez, Jeanette, I’ll take a juice, but this is too strong for me.”

  “Strong to last long!” Angel proclaimed. Tonight she had traded her normal southern accent for a maniacally perky ghetto patois. Jeanette wondered just how many cups of their special coffee Angel had ingested herself. She seemed to have no problem drinking it down. “It’s a power batch, so down the hatch, unless you’re a dummy, want to end up a mummy!”

  One of the A Wing women stared at her. “If that’s rapping, honey, I say bring back disco.”

  “Don’t be dissing my rhymes. We’re doin you a favor. If you ain’t drinkin, you ain’t thinkin.”

  But was postponing the inevitable really a good idea? Jeanette had thought so at first, roused by the thought of her son, but she was getting tired again, and she could sense hopelessness waiting right around the corner. And they weren’t postponing the inevitable by much; when they’d brought their Super Coffee proposal to Officer Lampley there had been three sleepers in the prison, but several more had gone since then. Jeanette didn’t raise the issue, though. Not because she was afraid of Angel’s famous temper, but because the idea of discussing anything was wearisome. She’d had three cups of the special coffee herself—well, two and a half, her stomach refused to take all of the third cup—and she was still exhausted. It seemed like years since Ree had awakened her, asking if Jeanette had ever watched the square of light from the window as it traveled across the floor.

  I just can’t be bothered with a square of light, Jeanette had said.

  I say you can’t not be bothered with a square of light, Ree had replied, and now this played over and over in Jeanette’s mind, like some crazy Zen koan. Can’t not be bothered didn’t make sense, did it? Or maybe it did. Wasn’t there some rule about a double negative making a positive? If so, maybe it did make sense. Maybe—

  “Whoa! Hold up, girlfriend!” Angel bellowed, and gave the coffee wagon a hard butt-shove. It rammed into Jeanette’s crotch, temporarily bringing her wide awake. The special coffee sloshed in the urns and the juice sloshed in the pitchers.

  “What?” she asked. “What the hell is it, Angel?”

  “It’s my homegirl Claudia!” Angel shouted. “Hey, baby!”

  They were twenty feet or so up the A Wing corridor. Sitting slumped on a bench next to the Kwell dispenser was Claudia Stephenson, known to all the inmates (and the officers, although they did not use the nickname while in gen-pop) as Claudia the Dynamite Body-a. The bod in question wasn’t quite as dynamite as it had been ten months ago, however. Since her intake, starches and gallons of prison gravy had packed on thirty or forty pounds. Her hands were resting on her brown uniform pants. The top that went with them lay crumpled at her feet, revealing an XL sports bra. Claudia’s boobs, Jeanette thought, were still pretty amazing.

  Angel ladled coffee into a Styrofoam cup, splashing some on the floor in her amped-up enthusiasm. She held the cup out to Claudia. “Drink it up, Ms. Dynamite! Made strong to last long! Power by the hour, my sister!”

  Claudia shook her head and kept staring at the tile floor.

  “Claudia?” Jeanette asked. “What’s wrong?”

  Some of the inmates were jealous of Claudia, but Jeanette liked her, and felt sorry for her. Claudia had embezzled a great deal of money from the Presbyterian church where she had been director of services in order to underwrite the ferocious drug habits of her husband and oldest son. And those two were both currently on the street, free as birds. I got a rhyme for you, Angel, Jeanette thought. Men play, women pay.

  “Nothing’s wrong, I’m just getting up my nerve.” Claudia didn’t take her eyes from the floor.

  “To do what?” Jeanette asked.

  “To ask her to let me sleep normal, like her.”

  Angel winked at Jeanette, let her tongue loll from the corner of her mouth, and made a couple of circles around one ear with her finger. “Who you talking about, Ms. Dynamite?”

  “The new one,” Claudia said. “I think she’s the devil, Angel.”

  This delighted Angel. “Devil-Angel! Angel-Devil!” She made scales in the air, lifted them up and down. “That’s the story of my life, Ms. Dynamite.”

  Claudia droned on: “She must be some kind of wicked, if she’s the only one who can sleep like before.”

  “I’m not getting you,” Jeanette said.

  Claudia raised her head at last. There were purple scoops under her eyes. “She’s sleeping, but not in one of those cocoons. Go see for yourself. Ask how she’s doing it. Tell her if she wants my soul, she can have it. I just want to see Myron again. He’s my baby, and needs his mama.”

  Angel dumped the cup of coffee she’d offered Claudia back into the urn, then turned to Jeanette. “We are goin to see about this.” She didn’t wait for Jeanette to agree.

  When Jeanette arrived with the coffee wagon, Angel was gripping the bars and staring in. The woman Jeanette had glimpsed while Peters assaulted her now lay loose-limbed on her bunk, eyes closed, breathing evenly. Her dark hair spread out in a glorious fan. Her face was even more beautiful close up, and it was unblemished. Not only was she clear of the webbing, the bruises Jeanette had seen were gone. How was that possible?

  Maybe she really is the devil, Jeanette thought. Or an angel, come to save us. Only that didn’t seem likely. Angels didn’t fly in this place. Other than Angel Fitzroy, that was, and she was more of a bat.

  “Wake up!” Angel shouted.

  “Angel?” She put a tentative hand on Angel’s shoulder. “Maybe you
shouldn’t—”

  Angel shrugged Jeanette’s hand off and tried to roll the cell door, but this one was locked. Angel grabbed the lid of the coffee urn and began to whang it against the bars, creating an ungodly racket that made Jeanette slap her hands over her ears.

  “Wake up, bee-yatch! Wake up and smell the motherfucking coffee!”

  The woman on the bunk opened her eyes, which were almond-shaped and as dark as her hair. She swung her legs down to the floor—long and lovely they were, even in her baggy intake coverall—and yawned. She stretched her arms, thrusting forward a pair of breasts that put Claudia’s to shame.

  “Company!” she cried.

  Her bare feet hardly seemed to touch the floor as she ran across to the bars and reached through them, grasping one of Angel’s hands and one of Jeanette’s. Angel instinctively pulled away. Jeanette was too stunned. It felt like some mild electricity was passing from the new woman’s hand and into her own.

  “Angel! I’m so glad you’re here! I can talk to the rats, but they’re limited conversationalists. Not a criticism, just a reality. Each individual creature on its merits. My understanding is that Henry Kissinger is a fascinating discussion partner, yet consider all the blood that man has on his hands! Force me to choose, I’ll take a rat, thank you, and you can print that in the newspaper, just be sure you spell my name right.”

  “What in the hail are you talking about?” Angel asked.

  “Oh, nothing really. Sorry to blabber. I was just visiting the world on the other side of the world. Scrambles my brains a little to go back and forth. And here’s Jeanette Sorley! How’s Bobby, Jeanette?”

  “How do you know our names?” Angel asked. “And how come you can sleep without growin that shit all over you?”

  “I’m Evie. I came from the Tree. This is an interesting place, isn’t it? So lively! So much to do and see!”

  “Bobby’s doing fine,” Jeanette said. Feeling as if she were in a dream . . . and perhaps she was. “I’d like to see him again before I fall aslee—”