Four Past Midnight

  Then it began to change again, and Sam's feeling of relief faded. It did not have a face, exactly, but below the bulging blue eyes, a horn shape began to extrude itself, pushing out of the horror-show face like a stubby elephant's trunk. The eyes stretched away to either side, becoming first Chinese and then insectile. Sam could hear it sniffing as it stretched toward him.

  It was covered with wavering, dusty threads.

  Part of him wanted to pull back--was screaming at him to pull back--but most of him wanted to stand his ground. And as the thing's fleshy proboscis touched him, Sam felt its deep power. A sense of lethargy filled him, a feeling that it would be better if he just stood still and let it happen. The wind had become a distant, dreamy howl. It was soothing, in a way, as the sound of the vacuum cleaner had been soothing when he was very small.

  "Sam?" Naomi called, but her voice was distant, unimportant. "Sam, are you all right?"

  Had he thought he loved her? That was silly. Quite ridiculous, when you thought about it ... when you got right down to it, this was much better.

  This creature had ... stories to tell.

  Very interesting stories.

  The white thing's entire plastic body now yearned toward the proboscis; it fed itself into itself, and the proboscis elongated. The creature became a single tube-shaped thing, the rest of its body hanging as useless and forgotten as that sac below its neck had hung. All its vitality was invested in the horn of flesh, the conduit through which it would suck Sam's vitality and essence into itself.

  And it was nice.

  The proboscis slipped gently up Sam's legs, pressed briefly against his groin, then rose higher, caressing his belly.

  Sam fell on his knees to give it access to his face. He felt his eyes sting briefly and pleasantly as some fluid--not tears, this was thicker than tears--began to ooze from them.

  The proboscis closed in on his eyes; he could see a pink petal of flesh opening and closing hungrily inside there. Each time it opened, it revealed a deeper darkness beyond. Then it clenched, forming a hole in the petal, a tube within a tube, and it slipped with sensual slowness across his lips and cheek toward that sticky outflow. Misshapen dark-blue eyes gazed at him hungrily.

  But the fine was paid.

  Summoning every last bit of his strength, Sam clamped his right hand over the proboscis. It was hot and noxious. The tiny threads of flesh which covered it stung his palm.

  It jerked and tried to draw back. For a moment Sam almost lost it and then he closed his hand in a fist, digging his fingernails into the meat of the thing.

  "Here!" he shouted. "Here, I've got something for you, bitch! I brought it all the way from East St. Louis!"

  He brought his left hand around and slammed the sticky ball of red licorice into the end of the proboscis, plugging it the way the kids in that long-ago parking lot had plugged the tailpipe of Tommy Reed's Pontiac. It tried to shriek and could produce only a blocked humming sound. Then it tried again to pull itself away from Sam. The ball of red licorice bulged from the end of its convulsing snout like a blood-blister.

  Sam struggled to his knees, still holding the twitching, noisome flesh in his hand, and threw himself on top of the Ardelia-thing. It twisted and pulsed beneath him, trying to throw him off. They rolled over and over in the heaped pile of books. It was dreadfully strong. Once Sam was eye to eye with it, and he was nearly frozen by the hate and panic in that gaze.

  Then he felt it begin to swell.

  He let go and scrambled backward, gasping. The thing in the book-littered aisle now looked like a grotesque beachball with a trunk, a beachball covered with fine hair which wavered like tendrils of seaweed in a running tide. It rolled over in the aisle, its proboscis swelling like a firehose which has been tied in a knot. Sam watched, frozen with horror and fascination, as the thing which had called itself Ardelia Lortz strangled on its own fuming guts.

  Bright red roadmap lines of blood popped out on its straining hide. Its eyes bulged, now staring at Sam in an expression of dazed surprise. It made one final effort to expel the soft blob of licorice, but its proboscis had been wide open in its anticipation of food, and the licorice stayed put.

  Sam saw what was going to happen and threw an arm over his face an instant before it exploded.

  Chunks of alien flesh flew in every direction. Ropes of thick blood splattered Sam's arms, chest, and legs. He cried out in mingled revulsion and relief.

  An instant later the emergency light winked out, plunging them into darkness again.

  11

  Once more the interval of darkness was very brief, but it was long enough for Sam to sense the change. He felt it in his head--a clear sensation of things which had been out of joint snapping back into place. When the emergency lights came back on, there were four of them. Their batteries made a low, self-satisfied humming sound instead of a loud buzz, and they were very bright, banishing the shadows to the furthest comers of the room. He did not know if the world of 1960 they had entered when the arc-sodium light became a mercury-vapor lamp had been real or an illusion, but he knew it was gone.

  The overturned bookcases were upright again. There was a litter of books in this aisle--a dozen or so--but he might have knocked those off himself in his struggle to get on his feet. And outside, the sound of the storm had fallen from a shout to a mutter. Sam could hear what sounded like a very sedate rain falling on the roof.

  The Ardelia-thing was gone. There were no splatters of blood or chunks of flesh on the floor, on the books, or on him.

  There was only one sign of her: a single golden earring, glinting up at him.

  Sam got shakily to his feet and kicked it away. Then a grayness came over his sight and he swayed on his feet, eyes closed, waiting to see if he would faint or not.

  "Sam!" It was Naomi, and she sounded as if she were crying. "Sam, where are you?"

  "Here!" He reached up, grabbed a handful of his hair, and pulled it hard. Stupid, probably, but it worked. The wavery grayness didn't go away entirely, but it retreated. He began moving back toward the cataloguing area, walking in large, careful strides.

  The same desk, a graceless block of wood on stubby legs, stood in the cataloguing area, but the lamp with its old-fashioned, tasselled shade had been replaced with a fluorescent bar. The battered typewriter and Rolodex had been replaced by an Apple computer. And, if he had not already been sure of what time he was now in, a glance at the cardboard cartons on the floor would have convinced him: they were full of poppers and plastic bubble-strips.

  Naomi was still kneeling beside Dave at the end of the aisle, and when Sam reached her side he saw that the fire-extinguisher (although thirty years had passed, it appeared to be the same one) was firmly mounted on its post again ... but the shape of its handle was still imprinted on Dave's cheek and forehead.

  His eyes were open, and when he saw Sam, he smiled. "Not ... bad," he whispered. "I bet you ... didn't know you had it ... in you."

  Sam felt a tremendous, buoyant sense of relief. "No," he said. "I didn't." He bent down and held three fingers in front of Dave's eyes. "How many fingers do you see?"

  "About ... seventy-four," Dave whispered.

  "I'll call the ambulance," Naomi said, and started to get up. Dave's left hand grasped her wrist before she could.

  "No. Not yet." His eyes shifted to Sam. "Bend down. I need to whisper."

  Sam bent over the old man. Dave put a trembling hand on the back of his neck. His lips tickled the cup of Sam's ear and Sam had to force himself to hold steady--it tickled. "Sam," he whispered. "She waits. Remember ... she waits."

  "What?" Sam asked. He felt almost totally unstrung. "Dave, what do you mean?"

  But Dave's hand had fallen away. He stared up at Sam, through Sam, his chest rising shallowly and rapidly.

  "I'm going," Naomi said, clearly upset. "There's a telephone down there on the cataloguing desk."

  "No," Sam said.

  She turned toward him, eyes glaring, mouth pulled back from neat w
hite teeth in a fury. "What do you mean, no? Are you crazy? His skull is fractured, at the very least! He's--"

  "He's going, Sarah," Sam said gently. "Very soon. Stay with him. Be his friend."

  She looked down, and this time she saw what Sam had seen. The pupil of Dave's left eye had drawn down to a pinpoint; the pupil of his right was huge and fixed.

  "Dave?" she whispered, frightened. "Dave?"

  But Dave was looking at Sam again. "Remember," he whispered. "She w ..."

  His eyes grew still and fixed. His chest rose once more ... dropped ... and did not rise again.

  Naomi began to sob. She put his hand against her cheek and closed his eyes. Sam knelt down painfully and put his arm around her waist.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ANGLE STREET (III)

  1

  That night and the next were sleepless ones for Sam Peebles. He lay awake in his bed, all the second-floor lights turned on, and thought about Dave Duncan's last words: She waits.

  Toward dawn of the second night, he began to believe he understood what the old man had been trying to say.

  2

  Sam thought that Dave would be buried out of the Baptist Church in Proverbia, and was a little surprised to find that he had converted to Catholicism at some point between 1960 and 1990. The services were held at St. Martin's on April 11th, a blustery day that alternated between clouds and cold early-spring sunshine.

  Following the graveside service, there was a reception at Angle Street. There were almost seventy people there, wandering through the downstairs rooms or clustered in little groups, by the time Sam arrived. They had all known Dave, and spoke of him with humor, respect, and unfailing love. They drank ginger ale from Styrofoam cups and ate small finger sandwiches. Sam moved from group to group, passing a word with someone he knew from time to time but not stopping to chat. He rarely took his hand from the pocket of his dark coat. He had made a stop at the Piggly Wiggly store on his way from the church, and now there were half a dozen cellophane packages in there, four of them long and thin, two of them rectangular.

  Sarah was not here.

  He was about to leave when he spotted Lukey and Rudolph sitting together in a comer. There was a cribbage board between them, but they didn't seem to be playing.

  "Hello, you guys," Sam said, walking over. "I guess you probably don't remember me--"

  "Sure we do," Rudolph said. "Whatcha think we are? Coupla feebs? You're Dave's friend. You came over the day we was making the posters."

  "Right!" Lukey said.

  "Did you find those books you were lookin for?" Rudolph asked.

  "Yes," Sam said, smiling. "I did, eventually."

  "Right!" Lukey exclaimed.

  Sam brought out the four slender cellophane packages. "I brought you guys something," he said.

  Lukey glanced down, and his eyes lit up. "Slim Jims, Dolph!" he said, grinning delightedly. "Look! Sarah's boyfriend brought us all fuckin Slim Jims! Beautiful!"

  "Here, gimme those, you old rummy," Rudolph said, and snatched them. "Fuckhead'd eat em all at once and then shit the bed tonight, you know," he told Sam. He stripped one of the Slim Jims and gave it to Lukey. "Here you go, dinkweed. I'll hang onto the rest of em for you."

  "You can have one, Dolph. Go ahead."

  "You know better, Lukey. Those things burn me at both ends."

  Sam ignored this byplay. He was looking hard at Lukey. "Sarah's boyfriend? Where did you hear that?"

  Lukey snatched down half a Slim Jim in one bite, then looked up. His expression was both good-humored and sly. He laid a finger against the side of his nose and said, "Word gets around when you're in the Program, Sunny Jim. Oh yes indeed, it do."

  "He don't know nothing, mister," Rudolph said, draining his cup of ginger ale. "He's just beating his gums cause he likes the sound."

  "That ain't nothin but bullshit!" Lukey cried, taking another giant bite of Slim Jim. "I know because Dave told me! Last night! I had a dream, and Dave was in it, and he told me this fella was Sarah's sweetie!"

  "Where is Sarah?" Sam asked. "I thought she'd be here."

  "She spoke to me after the benediction," Rudolph said. "Told me you'd know where to find her later on, if you wanted to see her. She said you'd seen her there once already."

  "She liked Dave awful much," Lukey said. A sudden tear grew on the rim of one eye and spilled down his cheek. He wiped it away with the back of his hand. "We all did. Dave always tried so goddam hard. It's too bad, you know. It's really too bad." And Lukey suddenly burst into tears.

  "Well, let me tell you something," Sam said. He hunkered beside Lukey and handed him his handkerchief. He was near tears himself, and terrified by what he now had to do ... or try to do. "He made it in the end. He died sober. Whatever talk you hear, you hold onto that, because I know it's true. He died sober."

  "Amen," Rudolph said reverently.

  "Amen," Lukey agreed. He handed Sam his handkerchief. "Thanks."

  "Don't mention it, Lukey."

  "Say--you don't have any more of those fuckin Slim Jims, do you?"

  "Nope," Sam said, and smiled. "You know what they say, Lukey--one's too many and a thousand are never enough."

  Rudolph laughed. Lukey smiled ... then laid the tip of his finger against the side of his nose again.

  "How about a quarter ... wouldn't have an extra quarter, wouldja?"

  3

  Sam's first thought was that she might have gone back to the Library, but that didn't fit with what Dolph had said ... he had been at the Library with Sarah once, on the terrible night that already seemed a decade ago, but they had been there together; he hadn't "seen" her there, the way you saw someone through a window, or--

  Then he remembered when he had seen Sarah through a window, right here at Angle Street. She had been part of the group out on the back lawn, doing whatever it was they did to keep themselves sober. He now walked through the kitchen as he had done on that day, saying hello to a few more people. Burt Iverson and Elmer Baskin stood in one of the little groups, drinking ice-cream punch as they listened gravely to an elderly woman Sam didn't know.

  He stepped through the kitchen door and out onto the rear porch. The day had turned gray and blustery again. The backyard was deserted, but Sam thought he saw a flash of pastel color beyond the bushes that marked the yard's rear boundary.

  He walked down the steps and crossed the back lawn, aware that his heart had begun to thud very hard again. His hand stole back into his pocket, and this time came out with the remaining two cellophane packages. They contained Bull's Eye Red Licorice. He tore them open and began to knead them into a ball, much smaller than the one he'd made in the Datsun on Monday night. The sweet, sugary smell was just as sickening as ever. In the distance he could hear a train coming, and it made him think of his dream--the one where Naomi had turned into Ardelia.

  Too late, Sam. It's already too late. The deed is done.

  She waits. Remember, Sam--she waits.

  There was a lot of truth in dreams, sometimes.

  How had she survived the years between? All the years between? They had never asked themselves that question, had they? How did she make the transition from one person to another? They had never asked that one, either. Perhaps the thing which looked like a woman named Ardelia Lortz was, beneath its glamours and illusions, like one of those larvae that spin their cocoons in the fork of a tree, cover them with protective webbing, and then fly away to their place of dying. The larvae in the cocoons lie silent, waiting ... changing ...

  She waits.

  Sam walked on, still kneading his smelly little ball made of that stuff the Library Policeman--his Library Policeman--had stolen and turned into the stuff of nightmares. The stuff he had somehow changed again, with the help of Naomi and Dave, into the stuff of salvation.

  The Library Policeman, curling Naomi against him. Placing his mouth on the nape of her neck, as if to kiss her. And coughing instead.

  The bag hanging under the Ardelia-thing'
s neck. Limp. Spent. Empty.

  Please don't let it be too late.

  He walked into the thin stand of bushes. Naomi Sarah Higgins was standing on the other side of them, her arms clasped over her bosom. She glanced briefly at him and he was shocked by the pallor of her cheeks and the haggard look in her eyes. Then she looked back at the railroad tracks. The train was closer now. Soon they would see it.

  "Hello, Sam."

  "Hello, Sarah."

  Sam put an arm around her waist. She let him, but the shape of her body against his was stiff, inflexible, ungiving. Please don't let it be too late, he thought again, and found himself thinking of Dave.

  They had left him there, at the Library, after propping the door to the loading platform open with a rubber wedge. Sam had used a pay phone two blocks away to report the open door. He hung up when the dispatcher asked for his name. So Dave had been found, and of course the verdict had been accidental death, and those people in town who cared enough to assume anything at all would make the expected assumption: one more old sot had gone to that great ginmill in the sky. They would assume he had gone up the lane with a jug, had seen the open door, wandered in, and had fallen against the fire-extinguisher in the dark. End of story. The postmortem results, showing zero alcohol in Dave's blood, would not change the assumptions one bit--probabty not even for the police. People just expect a drunk to die like a drunk, Sam thought, even when he's not.

  "How have you been, Sarah?" he asked.

  She looked at him tiredly. "Not so well, Sam. Not so well at all. I can't sleep ... can't eat ... my mind seems full of the most horrible thoughts ... they don't feel like my thoughts at all ... and I want to drink. That's the worst of it. I want to drink ... and drink ... and drink. The meetings don't help. For the first time in my life, the meetings don't help."