Four Past Midnight

  "I told you his nose was keen. I think he must have asked Tansy some questions--nothing direct, all on the slant, if you see what I mean--and the answers he got must have been just enough to point him in the right direction.. When he came to the Library that day he didn't know anything ... but he suspected something. Enough to put Ardelia on her mettle. I remember what made her the maddest--and scared her the most--was how he looked at her. 'I'll teach you how to look at me,' she said. Over and over again. I've wondered since how long it had been since anyone looked at her with real suspicion ... how long since anyone got into sniffin distance of what she was. I bet it scared her in more ways than one. I bet it made her wonder if she wasn't finally losin her touch."

  "He might have talked to some of the other children, too," Naomi said hesitantly. "Compared stories and got answers that didn't quite jibe. Maybe they even saw her in different ways. The way you and Sam saw her in different ways."

  "It could be--any of those things could be. Whatever it was, he scared her into speedin up her plans.

  " 'I'll be at the Library all day tomorrow,' she told me. 'I'll make sure plenty of people see me there, too. But you--you're going to pay a visit to Deputy Power's house, Davey. You're going to watch and wait until you see that child alone--I don't think you'll have to wait long--and then you're going to snatch her and take her into the woods. Do whatever you want to her, but you make sure that the last thing you do is cut her throat. Cut her throat and leave her where she'll be found. I want that bastard to know before I see him.'

  "I couldn't say nothing. It was probably just as well for me that I was tongue-tied, because anything I said she would have taken wrong, and she probably would have ripped my head off. But I only sat at her kitchen table with my drink in my hand, starin at her, and she must have taken my silence for agreement.

  "After that we went into the bedroom. It was the last time. I remember thinkin I wouldn't be able to have it off with her; that a scared man can't get it up. But it was fine, God help me. Ardelia had that kind of magic, too. We went and went and went, and at some point I either fell asleep or just went unconscious. The next thing I remember was her pushin me out of bed with her bare feet, dumpin me right into a patch of early-morning sun. It was quarter past six, my stomach felt like an acid bath, and my head was throbbin like a swollen gum with an abscess in it.

  " 'It's time for you to be about your business,' she said. 'Don't let anybody see you on your way back to town, Davey, and remember what I told you. Get her this morning. Take her into the woods and do for her. Hide until dark. If you're caught before then, there's nothing I can do for you. But if you get here, you'll be safe. I'll make sure today that there'll be a couple of kids at the Library tomorrow, even though it's closed. I've got them picked out already, the two worst little brats in town. We'll go to the Library together ... they'll come ... and when the rest of the fools find us, they'll think we're all dead. But you and I won't be dead, Davey; we'll be free. The joke will be on them, won't it?'

  "Then she started to laugh. She sat naked on her bed with me grovellin at her feet, sick as a rat full of poison bait, and she laughed and laughed and laughed. Pretty soon her face started to change into the insect face again, that probos-thing pushin out of her face, almost like one of those Viking horns, and her eyes drawin off to the side. I knew everything in my guts was going to come up in a rush so I beat it out of there and puked into her ivy. Behind me I could her laughin ... laughin ... and laughin.

  "I was puttin on my clothes by the side of the house when she spoke to me out the window. I didn't see her, but I heard her just fine. 'Don't let me down, Davey,' she said. 'Don't let me down, or I'll kill you. And you won't die fast.'

  " 'I won't let you down, Ardelia,' I said, but I didn't turn around to see her hangin out of her bedroom window. I knew I couldn't stand to see her even one more time. I'd come to the end of my string. And still ... part of me wanted to go with her even if it meant goin mad first, and most of me thought I would go with her. Unless it was her plan to set me up somehow, to leave me holdin the bag for all of it. I wouldn't have put it past her. I wouldn't have put nothin past her.

  "I set off through the corn back toward Junction City. Usually those walks would sober me up a little, and I'd sweat out the worst of the hangover. Not that day, though. Twice I had to stop to vomit, and the second time I didn't think I was goin to be able to quit. I finally did, but I could see blood all over the corn I'd stopped to kneel in, and by the time I got back to town, my head was achin worse than ever and my vision was doubled. I thought I was dyin, but I still couldn't stop thinkin about what she'd said: Do whatever you want to her, but you make sure that the last thing you do is cut her throat.

  "I didn't want to hurt Tansy Power, but I thought I was goin to, just the same. I wouldn't be able to stand against what Ardelia wanted ... and then I would be damned forever. And the worst thing, I thought, might be if Ardelia was tellin the truth, and I just went on livin ... livin almost forever with that thing on my mind.

  "In those days, there was two freight depots at the station, and a loading dock that wasn't much used on the north side of the second one. I crawled under there and fell asleep for a couple of hours. When I woke up, I felt a little better. I knew there wasn't any way I could stop her or myself, so I set out for John Power's house, to find that little girl and snatch her away. I walked right through downtown, not lookin at anyone, and all I kept thinkin over and over was, 'I can make it quick for her--I can do that, at least. I'll snap her neck in a wink and she'll never know a thing.' "

  Dave produced his bandanna again and wiped his forehead with a hand which was shaking badly.

  "I got as far as the five-and-dime. It's gone now, but in those days it was the last business on O'Kane Street before you got into the residential district again. I had less than four blocks to go, and I thought that when I got to the Power house, I'd see Tansy in the yard. She'd be alone ... and the woods weren't far.

  "Only I looked into the five-and-dime show window and what I saw stopped me cold. It was a pile of dead children, all staring eyes, tangled arms, and busted legs. I let out a little scream and clapped my hands against my mouth. I closed my eyes tight. When I looked again, I saw it was a bunch of dolls old Mrs. Seger was gettin ready to make into a display. She saw me and flapped one of em at me--get away, you old drunk. But I didn't. I kept lookin in at those dolls. I tried to tell myself dolls were all they were; anyone could see that. But when I closed my eyes tight and then opened em again, they were dead bodies again. Mrs. Seger was settin up a bunch of little corpses in the window of the five-and-dime and didn't even know it. It came to me that someone was tryin to send me a message, and that maybe the message was that it wasn't too late, even then. Maybe I couldn't stop Ardelia, but maybe I could. And even if I couldn't, maybe I could keep from bein dragged into the pit after her.

  "That was the first time I really prayed, Sarah. I prayed for strength. I didn't want to kill Tansy Power, but it was more than that--I wanted to save them all if I could.

  "I started back toward the Texaco station a block down--it was where the Piggly Wiggly is now. On the way I stopped and picked a few pebbles out of the gutter. There was a phone booth by the side of the station--and it's still there today, now that I think of it. I got there and then realized I didn't have a cent. As a last resort, I felt in the coin return. There was a dime in there. Ever since that morning, when somebody tells me they don't believe there's a God, I think of how I felt when I poked my fingers into that coin-return slot and found that ten-cent piece.

  "I thought about calling Mrs. Power, then decided it'd be better to call the Sheriff's Office. Someone would pass the message on to John Power, and if he was as suspicious as Ardelia seemed to think, he might take the proper steps. I closed the door of the booth and looked up the number--this was back in the days when you could sometimes still find a telephone book in a telephone booth, if you were lucky--and then, before I dialled it, I stuck the pebbles
I'd picked up in my mouth.

  "John Power himself answered the phone, and I think now that's why Patsy Harrigan and Tom Gibson died ... why John Power himself died ... and why Ardelia wasn't stopped then and there. I expected the dispatcher, you see--it was Hannah Verrill in those days--and I'd tell her what I had to say, and she'd pass it on to the deputy.

  "Instead, I heard this hard don't-fuck-with-me voice say, 'Sheriff's Office, Deputy Power speaking, how can I help you?' I almost swallowed the mouthful of pebbles I had, and for a minute I couldn't say anything.

  "He goes 'Damn kids,' and I knew he was gettin ready to hang up.

  " 'Wait!' I says. The pebbles made it sound like I was talkin through a mouthful of cotton. 'Don't hang up, Deputy!'

  " 'Who is this?' he asked.

  " 'Never mind,' I says back. 'Get your daughter out of town, if you value her, and whatever you do, don't let her near the Library. It's serious. She's in danger.'

  "And then I hung up. Just like that. If Hannah had answered, I think I would have told more. I would have spoken names--Tansy's, Tom's, Patsy's ... and Ardelia's, too. But he scared me--I felt like if I stayed on that line, he'd be able to look right through it and see me on the other end, standin in that booth and stinkin like a bag of used-up peaches.

  "I spat the pebbles out into my palm and got out of the booth in a hurry. Her power over me was broken--makin the call had done that much, anyway--but I was in a panic. Did you ever see a bird that's flown into a garage and goes swoopin around, bashin itself against the walls, it's so crazy to get out? That's what I was like. All of a sudden I wasn't worryin about Patsy Harrigan, or Tom Gibson, or even Tansy Power. I felt like Ardelia was the one who was lookin at me, that Ardelia knew what I'd done, and she'd be after me.

  "I wanted to hide--hell, I needed to hide. I started walkin down Main Street, and by the time I got to the end, I was almost runnin. By then Ardelia had gotten all mixed up in my mind with the Library Policeman and the dark man--the one who was drivin the steamroller, and the car with Simple Simon in it. I expected to see all three of them turn onto Main Street in the dark man's old Buick, lookin for me. I got out to the railway depot and crawled under the loadin platform again. I huddled up in there, shiverin and shakin, even cryin a little, waitin for her to show up and do for me. I kept thinkin I'd look up and I'd see her face pokin under the platform's concrete skirt, her eyes all red and glaring, her mouth turnin into that horn thing.

  "I crawled all the way to the back, and I found half a jug of wine under a pile of dead leaves and old spiderwebs. I'd stashed it back there God knows when and forgot all about it. I drank the wine in about three long swallows. Then I started to crawl back to the front of that space under the platform, but halfway there I passed out. When I woke up again, I thought at first that no time at all had gone by, because the light and the shadows were just about the same. Only my headache was gone, and my belly was roarin for food."

  "You'd slept the clock around, hadn't you?" Naomi guessed.

  "No--almost twice around. I'd made my call to the Sheriff's Office around ten o'clock on Monday mornin. When I came to under the loadin platform with that empty jug of wine still in my hand, it was just past seven on Wednesday morning. Only it wasn't sleep, not really. You have to remember that I hadn't been on an all-day drunk or even a week-long toot. I'd been roaring drunk for the best part of two years, and that wasn't all--there was Ardelia, and the Library, and the kids, and Story Hour. It was two years on a merry-go-round in hell. I think the part of my mind that still wanted to live and be sane decided the only thing to do was to pull the plug for awhile and shut down. And when I woke up, it was all over. They hadn't found the bodies of Patsy Harrigan and Tom Gibson yet, but it was over, just the same. And I knew it even before I poked my head out from under the loadin platform. There was an empty place in me, like an empty socket in your gum after a tooth falls out. Only that empty place was in my mind. And I understood. She was gone. Ardelia was gone.

  "I crawled out from under and almost fainted again from hunger. I saw Brian Kelly, who used to be freightmaster back in those days. He was countin sacks of somethin on the other loadin platform and makin marks on a clipboard. I managed to walk over to him. He saw me, and an expression of disgust came over his face. There had been a time when we'd bought each other drinks in The Domino--a roadhouse that burned down long before your time, Sam--but those days were long gone. All he saw was a dirty, filthy drunk with leaves and dirt in his hair, a drunk that stank of piss and Old Duke.

  " 'Get outta here, daddy-0, or I'll call the cops,' he says.

  "That day was another first for me. One thing about bein a drunk--you're always breakin new ground. That was the first time I ever begged for money. I asked him if he could spare a quarter so I could get a cuppa joe and some toast at the Route 32 Diner. He dug into his pocket and brought out some change. He didn't hand it to me; he just tossed it in my general direction. I had to get down in the cinders and grub for it. I don't think he threw the money to shame me. He just didn't want to touch me. I don't blame him, either.

  "When he saw I had the money he said, 'Get in the wind, daddy-0. And if I see you down here again, I will call the cops.'

  " 'You bet,' I said, and went on my way. He never even knew who I was, and I'm glad.

  "About halfway to the diner, I passed one of those newspaper boxes, and I seen that day's Gazette inside. That was when I realized I'd been out of it two days instead of just one. The date didn't mean much to me--by then I wasn't much interested in catendars--but I knew it was Monday morning when Ardelia booted me out of her bed for the last time and I made that call. Then I saw the headlines. I'd slept through just about the biggest day for news in Junction City's history, it seemed like. SEARCH FOR MISSING CHILDREN CONTINUES, it said on one side. There was pictures of Tom Gibson and Patsy Harrigan. The headline on the other side read COUNTY CORONER SAYS DEPUTY DIED OF HEART ATTACK. Below that one there was a picture of John Power.

  "I took one of the papers and left a nickel on top of the pile, which was how it was done back in the days when people still mostly trusted each other. Then I sat down, right there on the curb, and read both stories. The one about the kids was shorter. The thing was, nobody was very worried about em just yet--Sheriff Beeman was treatin it as a runaway case.

  "She'd picked the right kids, all right; those two really were brats, and birds of a feather flock together. They was always chummin around. They lived on the same block, and the story said they'd gotten in trouble the week before when Patsy Harrigan's mother caught em smokin cigarettes in the back shed. The Gibson boy had a no-account uncle with a farm in Nebraska, and Norm Beeman was pretty sure that's where they were headed--I told you he wasn't much in the brains department. But how could he know? And he was right about one thing--they weren't the kind of kids who fall down wells or get drownded swimmin in the Proverbia River. But I knew where they were, and I knew Ardelia had beaten the clock again. I knew they'd find all three of them together, and later on that day, they did. I'd saved Tansy Power, and I'd saved myself, but I couldn't find much consolation in that.

  "The story about Deputy Power was longer. It was the second one, because Power had been found late Monday afternoon. His death'd been reported in Tuesday's paper, but not the cause. He'd been found slumped behind the wheel of his cruiser about a mile west of the Orday farm. That was a place I knew pretty well, because it was where I usually left the road and went into the corn on my way to Ardelia's.

  "I could fill in the blanks pretty well. John Power wasn't a man to let the grass grow under his feet, and he must have headed out to Ardelia's house almost as soon as I hung up that pay telephone beside the Texaco station. He might have called his wife first, and told her to keep Tansy in the house until she heard from him. That wasn't in the paper, of course, but I bet he did.

  "When he got there, she must have known that I'd told on her and the game was up. So she killed him. She ... she hugged him to death, the way she did Mr.
Lavin. He had a lot of hard bark on him, just like I told her, but a maple tree has hard bark on it, too, and you can still get the sap to run out of it, if you drive your plug in deep enough. I imagine she drove hers plenty deep.

  "When he was dead, she must have driven him in his own cruiser out to the place where he was found. Even though that road--Carson Road--wasn't much travelled back then, it still took a heap of guts to do that. But what else could she do? Call the Sheriff's Office and tell em John Power'd had a heart attack while he was talkin to her? That would have started up a lot more questions at the very time when she didn't want nobody thinkin of her at all. And, you know, even Norm Beeman would have been curious about why John Power had been in such a tearin hurry to talk to the city librarian.

  "So she drove him out Garson Road almost to the Orday farm, parked his cruiser in the ditch, and then she went back to her own house the same way I always went--through the corn."

  Dave looked from Sam to Naomi and then back to Sam again.

  "I'll bet I know what she did next, too. I'll bet she started lookin for me.

  "I don't mean she jumped in her car and started drivin around Junction City, pokin her head into all my usual holes; she didn't have to. Time and time again over those years she would show up where I was when she wanted me, or she would send one of the kids with a folded-over note. Didn't matter if I was sittin in a pile of boxes behind the barber shop or fishin out at Grayling's Stream or if I was just drunk behind the freight depot, she knew where I was to be found. That was one of her talents.

  "Not that last time, though--the time she wanted to find me most of all--and I think I know why. I told you that I didn't fall asleep or even black out after makin that call; it was more like goin into a coma, or being dead. And when she turned whatever eye she had in her mind outward, lookin for me, it couldn't see me. I don't know how many times that day and that night her eye might have passed right over where I lay, and I don't want to know. I only know if she'd found me, it wouldn't have been any kid with a folded-over note that showed up. It would have been her, and I can't even imagine what she would have done to me for interfering with her plans the way I did.