Four Past Midnight

  But sometimes the truth crashed through, and if you had consciously tried to think or dream your way around that truth, the results could be devastating: it was like being there when a tidal wave roared not over but straight through a dike which had been set in its way, smashing it and you flat.

  Mort Rainey experienced one of these cataclysmic epiphanies after the representatives of the police and fire departments had gone and he and Amy and Ted Milner were left alone to walk slowly around the smoking ruin of the green Victorian house which had stood at 92 Kansas Street for one hundred and thirty-six years. It was while they were making that mournful inspection tour that he understood that his marriage to the former Amy Dowd of Portland, Maine, was over. It was no "period of marital stress." It was no "trial separation." It was not going to be one of those cases you heard of from time to time where both parties repented their decision and remarried. It was over. Their lives together were history. Even the house where they had shared so many good times was nothing but evilly smouldering beams tumbled into the cellar-hole like the teeth of a giant.

  Their meeting at Marchman's, the little coffee shop on Witcham Street, had gone well enough. Amy had hugged him and he had hugged her back, but when he tried to kiss her mouth, she turned her head deftly aside so that his lips landed on her cheek instead. Kiss-kiss, as they said at the office parties. So good to see you, darling.

  Ted Milner, blow-dried hair perfectly in place this morning and nary an Alfalfa corkscrew in sight, sat at the table in the comer, watching them. He was holding the pipe which Mort had seen clenched in his teeth at various parties over the last three years or so. Mort was convinced the pipe was an affectation, a little prop employed for the sole purpose of making its owner look older than he was. And how old was that? Mort wasn't sure, but Amy was thirty-six, and he thought Ted, in his impeccable stone-washed jeans and open-throated J. Press shirt, had to be at least four years younger than that, possibly more. He wondered if Amy knew she could be in for trouble ten years down the tine--maybe even five--and then reflected it would take a better man than he was to suggest it to her.

  He asked if there was anything new. Amy said there wasn't. Then Ted took over, speaking with a faintly Southern accent which was a good deal softer than John Shooter's nasal burr. He told Mort the fire chief and a lieutenant from the Derry Police Department would meet them at what Ted called "the site." They wanted to ask Mort a few questions. Mort said that was fine. Ted asked if he'd like a cup of coffee--they had time. Mort said that would also be fine. Ted asked how he had been. Mort used the word fine again. Each time it came out of his mouth it felt a little more threadbare. Amy watched the exchange between them with some apprehension, and Mort could understand that. On the day he had discovered the two of them in bed together, he had told Ted he would kill him. In fact, he might have said something about killing them both. His memory of the event was quite foggy. He suspected theirs might be rather foggy, too. He didn't know about the other two comers of the triangle, but he himself found that foggery not only understandable but merciful.

  They had coffee. Amy asked him about "John Shooter." Mort said he thought that situation was pretty much under control. He did not mention cats or notes or magazines. And after awhile, they left Marchman's and went to 92 Kansas Street, which had once been a house instead of a site.

  The fire chief and police detective were there as promised, and there were questions, also as promised. Most of the questions were about any people who might dislike him enough to have tossed a Texaco cocktail into his study. If Mort had been on his own, he would have left Shooter's name out of it entirely, but of course Amy would bring it up if he didn't, so he recounted the initial encounter just as it had happened.

  The fire chief, Wickersham, said: "The guy was pretty angry?"

  "Yes."

  "Angry enough to have driven to Derry and torched your house?" the police detective, Bradley, asked.

  He was almost positive Shooter hadn't done it, but he didn't want to delve into his brief dealings with Shooter any more deeply. It would mean telling them what Shooter had done to Bump, for one thing. That would upset Amy; it would upset her a great deal ... and it would open up a can of worms he would prefer to leave closed. It was time, Mort reckoned, to be disingenuous again.

  "He might have been at first. But after I discovered the two stories really were alike, I looked up the original date of publication on mine."

  "His had never been published?" Bradley asked.

  "No, I'm sure it hadn't been. Then, yesterday, he showed up again. I asked him when he'd written his story, hoping he'd mention a date that was later than the one I had. Do you understand?"

  Detective Bradley nodded. "You were hoping to prove you scooped him."

  "Right. 'Sowing Season' was in a book of short stories I published in 1983, but it was originally published in 1980. I was hoping the guy would feel safe picking a date only a year or two before 1983. I got lucky. He said he'd written it in 1982. So you see, I had him."

  He hoped it would end there, but Wickersham, the fire chief, pursued it. "You see and we see, Mr. Rainey, but did he see?"

  Mort sighed inwardly. He supposed he had known that you could only be disingenuous for so long--if things went on long enough, they almost always progressed to a point where you had to either tell the truth or carve an outright lie. And here he was, at that point. But whose business was it? Theirs or his? His. Right. And he meant to see it stayed that way.

  "Yes," he told them, "he saw."

  "What did he do?" Ted asked. Mort looked at him with mild annoyance. Ted glanced away, looking as if he wished he had his pipe to play with. The pipe was in the car. The J. Press shirt had no pocket to carry it in.

  "He went away," Mort said. His irritation with Ted, who had absolutely no business sticking his oar in, made it easier to lie. The fact that he was lying to Ted seemed to make it more all right, too. "He muttered some bullshit about what an incredible coincidence it all was, then jumped into his car like his hair was on fire and his ass was catching, and took off."

  "Happen to notice the make of the car and the license plate, Mr. Rainey?" Bradley asked. He had taken out a pad and a ballpoint pen.

  "It was a Ford," Mort said. "I'm sorry, but I can't help you with the plate. It wasn't a Maine plate, but other than that . . ." He shrugged and tried to look apologetic. Inside, he felt increasingly uncomfortable with the way this was going. It had seemed okay when he was just being cute, skirting around any outright lies--it had seemed a way of sparing Amy the pain of knowing that the man had broken Bump's neck and then skewered him with a screwdriver. But now he had put himself in a position where he had told different stories to different people. If they got together and did a comparison, he wouldn't look so hot. Explaining his reasons for the lies might be sticky. He supposed that such comparisons were pretty unlikely, as long as Amy didn't talk to either Greg Carstairs or Herb Creekmore, but suppose there was a hassle with Shooter when he and Greg caught up to him and shoved the June, 1980, issue of EQMM in Shooter's face?

  Never mind, he told himself, we'll burn that bridge when we come to it, big guy. At this thought, he experienced a brief return of the high spirits he'd felt while talking to Herb at the toll plaza, and almost cackled aloud. He held it in. They would wonder why he was laughing if he did something like that, and he supposed they would be right to wonder.

  "I think Shooter must be bound for--"

  (Mississippi)

  "--for wherever he came from by now," he finished, with hardly a break.

  "I imagine you're right," Lieutenant Bradley said, "but I'm inclined to pursue this, Mr. Rainey. You might have convinced the guy he was wrong, but that doesn't mean he left your place feeling mellow. It's possible that he drove up here in a rage and torched your house just because he was pissed off--pardon me, Mrs. Rainey."

  Amy offered a crooked little smile and waved the apology away.

  "Don't you think that's possible?"

  No
, Mort thought, I don't. If he'd decided to torch the house, I think he would have killed Bump before he left for Derry, just in case I woke up before he got back. In that case, the blood would have been dry and Bump would have been stiff when I found him. That isn't the way it happened ... but I can't say so. Not even if I wanted to. They'd wonder why I held back the stuff about Bump as long as I did, for one thing. They'd probably think I've got a few loose screws.

  "I guess so," he said, "but I met the guy. He didn't strike me as the house-burning type."

  "You mean he wasn't a Snopes," Amy said suddenly.

  Mort looked at her, startled--then smiled. "That's right," he said. "A Southerner, but not a Snopes."

  "Meaning what?" Bradley asked, a little warily.

  "An old joke, Lieutenant," Amy said. "The Snopeses were characters in some novels by William Faulkner. They got their start in business burning barns."

  "Oh," Bradley said blankly.

  Wickersham said: "There is no house-burning type, Mr. Rainey. They come in all shapes and sizes. Believe me."

  "Well--"

  "Give me a little more on the car, if you can," Bradley said. He poised a pencil over his notebook. "I want to make the State Police aware of this guy."

  Mort suddenly decided he was going to lie some more. Quite a lot more, actually.

  "Well, it was a sedan. I can tell you that much for sure."

  "Uh-huh. Ford sedan. Year?"

  "Somewhere in the seventies, I guess," Mort said. He was fairly sure Shooter's station wagon had actually been built around the time a fellow named Oswald had elected Lyndon Johnson President of the United States. He paused, then added: "The plate was a light color. It could have been Florida. I won't swear to it, but it could have been."

  "Uh-huh. And the man himself?"

  "Average height. Blonde hair. Eyeglasses. The round wire-framed ones John Lennon used to wear. That's really all I re--"

  "Didn't you say he was wearing a hat?" Amy asked suddenly.

  Mort felt his teeth come together with a click. "Yes," he said pleasantly. "That's right, I forgot. Dark gray or black. Except it was more of a cap. With a bill, you know."

  "Okay." Bradley snapped his book closed. "It's a start."

  "Couldn't this have been a simple case of vandalism, arson for kicks?" Mort asked. "In novels, everything has a connection, but my experience has been that in real life, things sometimes just happen."

  "It could have been," Wickersham agreed, "but it doesn't hurt to check out the obvious connections." He dropped Mort a solemn little wink and said, "Sometimes life imitates art, you know."

  "Do you need anything else?" Ted asked them, and put an arm around Amy's shoulders.

  Wickersham and Bradley exchanged a glance and then Bradley shook his head. "I don't think so, at least not at the present."

  "I only ask because Amy and Mort will have to put in some time with the insurance agent," Ted said. "Probably an investigator from the parent company, as well."

  Mort found the man's Southern accent more and more irritating. He suspected that Ted came from a part of the South several states north of Faulkner country, but it was still a coincidence he could have done without.

  The officials shook hands with Amy and Mort, expressed their sympathy, told them to get in touch if anything else occurred to either of them, and then took themselves off, leaving the three of them to take another turn around the house.

  "I'm sorry about all of this, Amy," Mort said suddenly. She was walking between them, and looked over at him, apparently startled by something she had heard in his voice. Simple sincerity, maybe. "All of it. Really sorry."

  "So am I," she said softly, and touched his hand.

  "Well, Teddy makes three," Ted said with solemn heartiness. She turned back to him, and in that moment Mort could have cheerfully strangled the man until his eyes popped out jittering at the ends of their optic strings.

  They were walking up the west side of the house toward the street now. Over here had been the deep corner where his study had met the house, and not far away was Amy's flower-garden. All the flowers were dead now, and Mort reflected that was probably just as well. The fire had been hot enough to crisp what grass had remained green in a twelve-foot border all around the ruin. If the flowers had been in bloom, it would have crisped them, as well, and that would have been just too sad. It would have been--

  Mort stopped suddenly. He was remembering the stories. The story. You could call it "Sowing Season" or you could call it "Secret Window, Secret Garden," but they were the same thing once you took the geegaws off and looked underneath. He looked up. There was nothing to see but blue sky, at least now, but before last night's fire, there would have been a window right where he was looking. It was the window in the little room next to the laundry. The little room that was Amy's office. It was where she went to write checks, to write in her daily journal, to make the telephone calls that needed to be made ... the room where, he suspected, Amy had several years ago started a novel. And, when it died, it was the room where she had buried it decently and quietly in a desk drawer. The desk had been by the window. Amy had liked to go there in the mornings. She could start the wash in the next room and then do paperwork while she waited for the buzzer which proclaimed it was time to strip the washer and feed the drier. The room was well away from the main house and she liked the quiet, she said. The quiet and the clear, sane morning light. She liked to look out the window every now and then, at her flowers growing in the deep corner formed by the house and the study ell. And he heard her saying, It's the best room in the house, at least for me, because hardly anybody ever goes there but me. It's got a secret window, and it looks down on a secret garden.

  "Mort?" Amy was saying now, and for a moment Mort took no notice, confusing her real voice with her voice in his mind, which was the voice of memory. But was it a true memory or a false one? That was the real question, wasn't it? It seemed like a true memory, but he had been under a great deal of stress even before Shooter, and Bump, and the fire. Wasn't it at least possible that he was having a ... well, a recollective hallucination? That he was trying to make his own past with Amy in some way conform to that goddam story where a man had gone crazy and killed his wife?

  Jesus, I hope not. I hope not, because if I am, that's too close to nervous-breakdown territory for comfort.

  "Mort, are you okay?" Amy asked. She plucked fretfully at his sleeve, at least temporarily breaking his trance.

  "Yes," he said, and then, abruptly: "No. To tell you the truth, I'm feeling a little sick."

  "Breakfast, maybe," Ted said.

  Amy gave him a look that made Mort feel a bit better. It was not a very friendly look. "It isn't breakfast," she said a little indignantly. She swept her arm at the blackened ruins. "It's this. Let's get out of here."

  "The insurance people are due at noon," Ted said.

  "Well, that's more than an hour from now. Let's go to your place, Ted. I don't feel so hot myself. I'd like to sit down."

  "All right." Ted spoke in a slightly nettled no-need-to-shout tone which also did Mort's heart good. And although he would have said at breakfast that morning that Ted Milner's place was the last one on earth he wanted to go, he accompanied them without protest.

  19

  They were all quiet on the ride across town to the split-level on the east side where Ted hung his hat. Mort didn't know what Amy and Ted were thinking about, although the house for Amy and whether or not they'd be on time to meet the wallahs from the insurance company for Ted would probably be a couple of good guesses, but he knew what he was thinking about. He was trying to decide if he was going crazy or not. Is it real, or is it Memorex?

  He decided finally that Amy really had said that about her office next to the laundry room--it was not a false memory. Had she said it before 1982, when "John Shooter" claimed to have written a story called "Secret Window, Secret Garden"? He didn't know. No matter how earnestly he conned his confused and aching brain, what kept com
ing back was a single curt message: answer inconclusive. But if she had said it, no matter when, couldn't the title of Shooter's story still be simple coincidence? Maybe, but the coincidences were piling up, weren't they? He had decided the fire was, must be, a coincidence. But the memory which Amy's garden with its crop of dead flowers had prodded forth ... well, it was getting harder and harder to believe all of this wasn't tied together in some strange, possibly even supernatural fashion.

  And in his own way, hadn't "Shooter" himself been just as confused? How did you get it? he had asked; his voice had been fierce with rage and puzzlement. That's what I really want to know. How in hell did a big-money scribbling asshole like you get down to a little shitsplat town in Mississippi and

  steal my goddam story? At the time, Mort had thought either that it was another sign of the man's madness or that the guy was one hell of a good actor. Now, in Ted's car, it occurred to him for the first time that it was exactly the way he himself would have reacted, had the circumstances been reversed.

  As, in a way, they had been. The one place where the two stories differed completely was in the matter of the title. They both fit, but now Mort found that he had a question to ask Shooter which was very similar to the one Shooter had already asked him: How did you happen by that title, Mr. Shooter? That's what I really want to know. How did you happen to know that, twelve hundred miles away from your shitsplat town in Mississippi, the wife of a writer you claim you never heard of before this year had her own secret window, looking down on her own secret garden?

  Well, there was only one way to find out, of course. When Greg ran Shooter down, Mort would have to ask him.

  20

  Mort passed on the cup of coffee Ted offered and asked if he had a Coke or a Pepsi. Ted did, and after Mort had drunk it, his stomach settled. He had expected that just being here, here where Ted and Amy played house now that they no longer had to bother with the cheap little town-line motels, would make him angry and restless. It didn't. It was just a house, one where every room seemed to proclaim that the owner was a Swinging Young Bachelor Who Was Making It. Mort found that he could deal with that quite easily, although it made him feel a little nervous for Amy all over again. He thought of her little office with its clear, sane light and the soporific drone of the drier coming through the wall, her little office with its secret window, the only one in the whole place which looked down into the tight little angle of space formed by the house and the ell, and thought how much she had belonged there and how little she seemed to belong here. But that was something she would have to deal with herself, and he thought, after a few minutes in this other house which was not a dreaded den of iniquity at all but only a house, that he could live with that ... that he could even be content with it.