Sleeping Beauties: A Novel

by Stephen King

  “The shake,” Lila said. “What about that?”

  Clint told her.

  “All right,” Lila said. “Case closed. I’m going to make some fresh coffee, then go back to the station. Jesus, I’m so fucking tired.”

  7

  When she had her coffee, Lila hugged Jared and told him to take care of Molly and the baby, and to hide them well. He promised he would, and she moved from him as quickly as she could. If she hesitated she’d never be able to leave him.

  Clint followed her into the vestibule. “I love you, Lila.”

  “I love you, too, Clint.” She supposed she meant it.

  “I’m not angry,” he said.

  “I’m glad,” Lila said, restraining herself from adding, Whoopee-ding.

  “You know,” he said, “the last time I saw Shannon—years ago, but after we were married—she asked me to sleep with her. I told her no.”

  The vestibule was dark. Clint’s glasses reflected the light through the window at the top of the door. Coats and hats hung on the hooks behind him, a row of abashed spectators.

  “I told her no,” Clint said again.

  She had no idea what he wanted her to say—good boy, maybe? She had no idea about anything.

  Lila kissed him. He kissed her back. It was just lips, skin on skin.

  She promised to call him when she got to the station. She went down the steps, then stopped and looked back at him. “Never told me about the pool,” she said. “Just went ahead and called a contractor. I came back one day to a hole in the yard. Happy fucking birthday.”

  “I—” He stopped. What was there to say, really? That he thought she’d want it, when the truth was he wanted it?

  “And when you decided to ditch your private practice? We never discussed that, either. You asked some questions, I thought maybe you were researching a paper, or something, and then, boom. Done deal.”

  “I thought it was my decision to make.”

  “I know you did.”

  She waved a vague farewell and walked to her cruiser.

  8

  “Officer Lampley said you wanted to see me.”

  Evie bounded to the bars of her cell so rapidly that Assistant Warden Hicks did a quick reverse two-step. Evie smiled radiantly, her black hair tumbling around her face. “Lampley is the only female officer left awake, isn’t she?”

  “Not at all,” Hicks said. “There’s also Millie. Officer Olson, I mean.”

  “No, she’s asleep in the prison library.” Evie continued to smile her beauty queen smile. And she was a beauty, there could be no arguing that. “Facedown on a copy of Seventeen. She was looking at the party dresses.”

  The assistant warden didn’t even consider Evie’s claim. She couldn’t know such a thing. Beautiful as she was, she was in the Romper Room, as the soft cell was sometimes called, and for a reason. “You’re messed up in the head, inmate. I’m not saying that to try and hurt your feelings, I’m saying it because it’s true. Maybe you should go to sleep, see if that doesn’t clear out some of the cobwebs.”

  “Here’s an interesting tidbit for you, Assistant Warden Hicks. Although the earth has made a little less than a single turn since what you call Aurora began, well over half of the women in the world have gone to sleep. Almost seventy percent already. Why so many? Lots of the women never woke up in the first place, of course. They were asleep when it started. And then a great number tired and drowsed off despite their best efforts to stay awake. But that’s not all of them. No, there’s also a significant portion of the female population that just decided to hit the hay. Because, as your Dr. Norcross undoubtedly knows, dreading the inevitable is worse than the inevitable itself. Easier to let go.”

  “He’s a shrink, not a medical doctor,” Hicks said. “I wouldn’t trust him to treat a hangnail. And, if there’s nothing else, I have a prison to run and you need a nap.”

  “I understand completely. You go ahead, just leave me your cell phone.” All of Evie’s teeth were on view. Her smile seemed to get bigger and bigger. Those teeth were very white, and looked very strong. The teeth of an animal, Hicks thought, and of course she was an animal. Had to be, considering what she had done to those meth cookers.

  “Why do you need my cell phone, inmate? Why can’t you use your own personal invisible cell phone?” He pointed to the empty corner of her cell. It was almost funny, the mix of stupid and crazy and arrogant that this woman was serving up. “It’s right over there and it has unlimited minutes.”

  “A good one,” said Evie. “Very amusing. Now your phone, please. I need to call Dr. Norcross.”

  “No can do. It’s been a pleasure.” He turned to go.

  “I wouldn’t leave so soon. Your company wouldn’t approve. Look down.”

  Hicks did, and saw he was surrounded by rats. There were at least a dozen of them, looking up at him with marble-hard eyes. He felt a scream rising in his chest, but stifled it. A scream might set them off, make them attack.

  Evie was holding a slim hand out through the bars, palm up, and even in his near panic Hicks noted a terrible thing: there were no lines on that palm. It was entirely smooth.

  “You’re thinking about running,” she said. “You can do that, of course, but given your adipose condition, I doubt if you can run very fast.”

  The rats were squirming over his shoes now. A pink tail caressed one ankle through his checkered dress sock, and he felt that scream rising again.

  “You’ll be bitten several times, and who knows what infections my small friends may be carrying? Give me your cell phone.”

  “How are you doing it?” Hicks could barely hear his own words over the blood rushing from his heart.

  “Trade secret.”

  With a shaking hand, Hicks removed his phone from his belt and placed it in that horrible lineless palm.

  “You can leave,” Evie said.

  He saw that her eyes had turned a bright amber color. The pupils were black diamonds, cat pupils.

  Hicks walked gingerly, high-stepping among the circling rats, and when he was beyond them, he ran for Broadway and the safety of the Booth.

  “Very well done, Mother,” Evie said.

  The largest rat stood on her hind paws and looked up, whiskers twitching. “He was weak. I could smell his failing heart.” The rat dropped to the floor and scurried toward the steel door of the shower closet further down A wing. The others followed in a line, like children on a school outing. There was a gap between the wall and the floor, a flaw in the cement that the rats had widened to an entry point. They disappeared into the dark.

  Hicks’s cell was password protected. Evie entered the four-digit code with no hesitation, nor did she bother consulting his contacts before tapping in Clint’s cell number. He answered promptly, and without saying hello.

  “Cool your jets, Lore. I’m on my way back soon.”

  “This isn’t Lore Hicks, Dr. Norcross, it’s Evie Black.”

  Silence at the other end.

  “Situation normal at home, I hope? Or as normal as can be, under the circumstances?”

  “How did you get Hicks’s cell phone?”

  “I borrowed it.”

  “What do you want?”

  “First, to give you some information. The torching has begun. Men are burning women in their cocoons by the thousands. Soon it will be by the tens of thousands. It’s what many men have always wanted.”

  “I don’t know what your experiences with men have been. Rotten, I suppose. But whatever you may think, most men don’t want to kill women.”

  “We’ll see, won’t we?”

  “Yes, I suppose we will. What else do you want?”

  “To tell you that you are the one.” She laughed cheerily. “That you are the Man.”

  “I’m not getting you.”

  “The one who stands for all mankind. As I stand for all womenkind, both those sleeping and those awake. I hate to wax apocalyptic, but in this case I must. This is where the fate of the world will
be decided.” She mimicked the momentous drums of television melodrama. “Bum-bum-BUM!”

  “Ms. Black, you are in the grip of a fantasy.”

  “I told you, you can call me Evie.”

  “Fine: Evie, you are in the grip of a—.”

  “The men of your town will come for me. They will ask me if I can revive their wives and mothers and daughters. I will say it’s certainly possible, because, like young George Washington, I cannot tell a lie. They will demand that I do it, and I will refuse—as I must. They will torture me, they will rend my body, and still I’ll refuse. Eventually they will kill me, Clint. May I call you Clint? I know we’ve only just started working together, so I don’t want to overstep.”

  “You might as well.” He sounded numb.

  “Once I’m dead, the portal between this world and the land of sleep will close. Every woman will eventually go nighty-night, every man will eventually die, and this tortured world will breathe an enormous sigh of lasting relief. Birds will make nests in the Eiffel Tower and lions will walk through the broken streets of Cape Town and the waters will drink up New York City. The big fishies will tell the little fishies to dream big-fishie dreams, because Times Square is wide open, and if you can swim strong enough against the prevailing current there you can swim against it anywhere.”

  “You’re hallucinating.”

  “Is what’s happening all over the world a hallucination?”

  She left him a gap, but he didn’t take it.

  “Think of it as a fairy tale. I am the fair maiden pent in the castle keep, held in durance vile. You are my prince, my knight in shining armor. You must defend me. I’m sure there are weapons in the sheriff’s station, but finding men willing to use them—to perhaps die defending the creature they believe has caused all this—will be more difficult. I have faith in your powers of persuasion, though. It is why . . .” She laughed. “. . . you are the Man! Why not admit it, Clint? You’ve always wanted to be the Man.”

  He flashed on that morning, his irritation at the sight of Anton, the melancholy he’d felt as he inspected his sagging stomach. As depleted as he was, her insinuating tone made Clint want to punch something.

  “Your feelings are normal, Clint. Don’t get down on yourself.” She turned sympathetic, gentle. “Every man wants to be the Man. The one who rides in, says nothing but yup, nope, and draw, cleans up the town, and rides away again. After sleeping with the prettiest wench in the saloon, of course. Which ignores the central problem. You men butt your horns and the banging gives the whole planet a headache.”

  “Can you really end it?”

  “Did you kiss your wife goodbye?”

  “Yes,” Clint said. “Just a moment ago. We’ve had better ones, but I tried. She did, too.” He inhaled. “I don’t know why I’m telling you any of this.”

  “Because you believe me. And I actually know you kissed her. I was watching. I’m a terrible peeper. I should stop, but I’m a sucker for romance. I’m glad you worked everything out tonight, too, got it all on the table. It’s what’s left unspoken that can really damage a marriage.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Phil. Answer my question. Can you end it?”

  “Yes. Here’s the deal. Keep me alive until, oh, sunrise next Tuesday. Or maybe a day or two later, I can’t tell for sure. Should be at sunrise, though.”

  “What happens if I—if we—do that?”

  “I might be able to fix things. So long as they agree.”

  “So long as who agrees?”

  “The women, silly. The women from Dooling. But if I die, no agreement they come to will matter. It can’t be one or the other. It has to be both.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re talking about!”

  “You will. Eventually. Perhaps I’ll see you tomorrow. And by the way, she was right. You never discussed the pool with her. Although you did show her a few pictures. Guess you thought that would be enough.”

  “Evie—”

  “I’m glad you kissed her. I’m very glad. I like her.”

  Evie broke the connection and placed Hicks’s cell phone carefully on the little shelf meant for her personal belongings—of which she had none. Then, she lay down on her bunk, rolled onto her side, and soon fell asleep.

  9

  Lila fully intended to go directly to the sheriff’s station, but when she backed down the driveway and swerved onto the street, her headlights spotted a white thing sitting in a lawn chair on the opposite side. Old Mrs. Ransom. Lila could hardly blame Jared for leaving her there. He’d had the little girl to think about, the one now lying upstairs in the spare bedroom. Holly? Polly? No, Molly. A fine drizzle was falling.

  She pulled into the Ransom driveway, then went around back and rummaged through the crap in the rear seat for her Dooling Hound Dogs baseball cap, because the drizzle was thickening to a steady light rain. It might put the fires out, and that was good. She checked Mrs. Ransom’s front door. It was unlocked. She crossed to the lawn chair and lifted the cocooned woman into her arms. She was prepared for a burden, but Mrs. Ransom weighed no more than ninety pounds. Lila could press more than that in the gym. And what did it matter? Why was she even doing this?

  “Because it’s the decent thing,” she said. “Because a woman is not a lawn ornament.”

  As she climbed the steps, she saw fine threads detach themselves from the white ball surrounding Mrs. Ransom’s head. They wavered as if in a breeze, but there was no breeze. They were reaching for her, for the sea of sleep just waiting behind her forehead. She blew them away, and struggled backward down the hall to the old lady’s living room. Open on the rug was a coloring book with a scattering of markers around it. What was that little girl’s name again?

  “Molly,” Lila said as she pulled the encased woman up onto a couch. “Her name was Molly.” She paused. “Is Molly.”

  Lila put a throw pillow beneath Mrs. Ransom’s head and left her.

  After locking the old lady’s front door, she went to her cruiser and started the engine, reached for the gearshift, then dropped her hand. Suddenly the sheriff’s station seemed like a pointless destination. Furthermore, it seemed at least fifty miles away. She could probably get there without hitting a tree (or some woman trying to jog away sleep), but what was the sense?

  “If not the office, what?” she asked her car. “What?”

  She took the contact lens case from her pocket. There was another wake-up shot in the other container, the one marked L, but the question recurred: What was the sense in fighting it? Sleep would catch her eventually. It was inevitable, so why postpone it? According to Shakespeare, it knitted up the raveled sleeve of care. And at least she and Clint had gotten some of that fabled closure he was always going on about.

  “I was a fool,” she confessed to the police car’s interior. “But Your Honor, I plead sleep deprivation.”

  If that was all it was, why hadn’t she confronted him sooner? With everything that happened, it seemed unforgivably small. It was embarrassing.

  “All right,” she said, “I plead fear, Your Honor.”

  But she wasn’t afraid now. She was too spent to be afraid. She was too spent to be anything.

  Lila yanked the mic from its prongs. It actually felt heavier than Mrs. Ransom—how weird was that?

  “Unit One to Base. Are you still there, Linny?”

  “Still here, boss.” Linny had probably been into the powdered goodies again; she sounded as chipper as a squirrel sitting on a pile of fresh acorns. Also, she had gotten a full eight hours the night before, instead of going all the way to Coughlin in McDowell County and driving aimlessly until dawn, thinking bad thoughts about a husband who had turned out to be faithful after all. Ah, but so many of them weren’t, and was that a reason or only an excuse? Was it even true? Could you find statistics about fidelity on the Internet? Would they be accurate?

  Shannon Parks had asked Clint to sleep with her, and he had said no. That’s how faithful he was.

  But . . . that was what
he was supposed to be, wasn’t it? Did you get medals for keeping your promises and living up to your responsibilities?

  “Boss? Read me?”

  “I won’t be in for awhile, Linny. Got something I need to do.”

  “Roger that. What’s up?”

  This was a question Lila chose not to answer. “Clint needs to go back to the prison after he has a little rest. Give him a call around eight, will you? Make sure he’s up and ask him to check in on Mrs. Ransom on his way out. He needs to take care of her. He’ll understand what that means.”

  “Okay. Wake-up calls aren’t my specialty, but I don’t mind branching out. Lila, are you all r—”

  “Unit One out.”

  Lila racked the mic. In the east, a faint line of Friday morning light had appeared on the horizon. Another day was about to dawn. It would be a rainy one, the kind made for sweet afternoon naps. The litter of her trade lay on the seat beside her: camera and clipboard and Simmons radar gun, banded stacks of fliers, her citation book. She took this last, tore off the top sheet, and turned it over to the blank side. She printed her husband’s name in big capital letters at the top, and then: Put me and Platinum and Mrs. Ransom and Dolly in one of the empty houses. Keep us safe. There might not be any coming back from this, but maybe there is. She paused, thinking (it was hard to think), then added: Love you both. She added a heart—corny, but so what?—and signed her name. She took a paperclip from the little plastic caddy in the glove compartment, and attached the note to her breast pocket. As a small girl, her mother had attached her milk-money, sealed in a small envelope, to her shirt every Monday, in just the same way. Lila couldn’t remember it, but her mother had told her.