Four Past Midnight

CHAPTER 11

Dave's Story

1

'I wasn't always Dirty Dave Duncan,' he began. 'In the early fifties I was just plain old Dave Duncan, and people liked me just fine. I was a member of that same Rotary Club you talked to the other night, Sam. Why not? I had my own business, and it made money. I was a sign-painter, and I was a damned good one. I had all the work I could handle in Junction City and Proverbia, but I sometimes did a little work up in Cedar Rapids, as well. Once I painted a Lucky Strike cigarette ad on the right-field wall of the minorleague ballpark all the way to hell and gone in Omaha. I was in great demand, and I deserved to be. I was good. I was what they call a "graphic artist" these days, but back then I was just the best sign-painter around these parts.

'I stayed here because serious painting was what I was really interested in, and I thought you could do that anywhere. I didn't have no formal art education - I tried but I flunked out - and I knew that put me down on the count, so to speak, but I knew that there were artists who made it without all that speed-shit bushwah - Gramma Moses, for one. She didn't need no driver's license; she went right to town without one.

'I might even have made it. I sold some canvases, but not many - I didn't need to, because I wasn't married and I was doing well with my sign-painting business. Also, I kept most of my pitchers so I could put on shows, the way artists are supposed to. I had some, too. Right here in town at first, then in Cedar Rapids, and then in Des Moines. That one was written up in the Democrat, and they made me sound like the second coming of James Whistler.'

Dave fell silent for a moment, thinking. Then he raised his head and looked out at the empty, fallow fields again.

'In AA, they talk about folks who have one foot in the future and the other in the past and spend their time pissin all over today because of it. But sometimes it's hard not to wonder what might have happened if you'd done things just a little different.'

He looked almost guiltily at Naomi, who smiled and pressed his hand.

'Because I was good, and I did come close. But I was drinkin heavy, even back then. I didn't think much of it - hell, I was young, I was strong, and besides, don't all great artists drink? I thought they did. And I still might have made it - made something, anyway, for awhile - but then Ardelia Lortz came to Junction City.

'And when she came, I was lost.'

He looked at Sam.

'I recognize her from your story, Sam, but that wasn't how she looked back then. You expected to see an old-lady librarian, and that suited her purpose, so that's just what you did see. But when she came to Junction City in the summer Of '57, her hair was ash-blonde, and the only places she was plump was where a woman is supposed to be plump.

'I was living out in Proverbia then, and I used to go to the Baptist Church. I wasn't much on religion, but there were some fine-looking women there. Your mom was one of em, Sarah.'

Naomi laughed in the way women do when they are told something they cannot quite believe.

'Ardelia caught on with the home folks right away. These days, when the folks from that church talk about her - if they ever do - I bet they say things like "I knew from the very start there was somethin funny about that Lortz woman" or "I never trusted the look in that woman's eye," but let me tell you, that wasn't how it was. They buzzed around her - the women as well as the men - like bees around the first flower of spring. She got a job as Mr Lavin's assistant before she was in town a month, but she was teachin the little ones at the Sunday School out there in Proverbia two weeks before that.

'Just what she was teachin em I don't like to think - you can bet your bottom dollar it wasn't the Gospel According to Matthew - but she was teachin em. And everyone swore on how much the little ones loved her. They swore on it, too, but there was a look in their eyes when they said so ... a far-off look, like they wasn't really sure where they were, or even who they were.

'Well, she caught my eye ... and I caught hers. You wouldn't know it from the way I am now, but I was a pretty good-lookin fella in those days. I always had a tan from workin outdoors, I had muscles, my hair was faded almost blond from the sun, and my belly was as flat as your ironin board, Sarah.

'Ardelia had rented herself a farmhouse about a mile and a half from the church, a tight enough little place, but it needed a coat of paint as bad as a man in the desert needs a drink of water. So after church the second week I noticed her there - I didn't go often and by then it was half-past August - I offered to paint it for her.

'She had the biggest eyes you've ever seen. I guess most people would have called them gray, but when she looked right at you, hard, you would have sworn they were silver. And she looked at me hard that day after church. She was wearin some kind of perfume that I never smelled before and ain't never smelled since. Lavender, I think. I can't think how to describe it, but I know it always made me think of little white flowers that only bloom after the sun has gone down. And I was smitten. Right there and then.

'She was close to me - almost close enough for our bodies to touch. She was wearin this dowdy black dress, the kind of dress an old lady would wear, and a hat with a little net veil, and she was holdin her purse in front of her. All prim and proper. Her eyes weren't prim, though. Nossir. Nor proper. Not a bit.

' "I hope you don't want to put advertisements for bleach and chewing tobacco all over my new house," she says.

' "No ma'am," I says back. "I thought just two coats of plain old white. Houses aren't what I do for a livin, anyway, but with you bein new in town and all, I thought it would be neighborly - "

' "Yes indeed," she says, and touches my shoulder.'

Dave looked apologetically at Naomi.

'I think I ought to give you a chance to leave, if you want to. Pretty soon I'm gonna start tellin some dirty stuff, Sarah. I'm ashamed of it, but I want to clean the slate of my doins with her.'

She patted his old, chapped hand. 'Go ahead,' she told him quietly. 'Say it all.'

He fetched in a deep breath and went on again.

'When she touched me, I knew I had to have her or die tryin. just that one little touch made me feel better - and crazier - than any woman-touch ever made me feel in my whole life. She knew it, too. I could see it in her eyes. It was a sly look. It was a mean look, too, but somethin about that excited me more than anything else.

' "It would be neighborly, Dave," she says, "and I want to be a very good neighbor."

'So I walked her home. Left all the other young fellows standin at the church door, you might say, fumin and no doubt cursin my name. They didn't know how lucky they were. None of them.

'My Ford was in the shop and she didn't have no car, so we were stuck with shank's mare. I didn't mind a bit, and she didn't seem to, neither. We went out the Truman Road, which was still dirt in those days, although they sent a town truck along to oil it every two or three weeks and lay the dust.

'We got about halfway to her place, and she stopped. It was just the two of us, standin in the middle of Truman Road at high noon on a summer's day, with about a million acres of Sam Orday's corn on one side and about two million of Bill Humpe's corn on the other, all of it growin high over our heads and rustlin in that secret way corn has, even when there's no breeze.

My granddad used to say it was the sound of the corn growin. I dunno if that's the truth or not, but it's a spooky sound. I can tell you that.

' "Look!" she says, pointin to the right. "Do you see it?"

'I looked, but I didn't see nothing - only corn. I told her so.

' "I'll show you!" she says, and runs into the corn, Sunday dress and high heels and all. She didn't even take off that hat with the veil on it.

'I stood there for a few seconds, sorta stunned. Then I heard her laughin. I heard her laughin in the corn. So I ran in after her, partly to see whatever it was she'd seen, but mostly because of that laugh. I was so randy. I can't begin to tell you.

'I seen her standin way up the row I was in, and then she faded into the next one, still laughin. I started to laugh, too, and went on through myself, not carin that I was bustin down some of Sam Orday's plants. He'd never miss em, not in all those acres. But when I got through, trailin cornsilk off my shoulders and a green leaf stuck in my tie like some new kind of clip, I stopped laughin in a hurry, because she wasn't there. Then I heard her on the other side of me. I didn't have no idea how she could have got back there without me seein her, but she had. So I busted back through just in time to see her runnin into the next row.

'We played hide n seek for half an hour, I guess, and I couldn't catch her. All I did was get hotter and randier. I'd think she was a row over, in front of me, but I'd get there and hear her two rows over, behind me. Sometimes I'd see her foot, or her leg, and of course she left tracks in the soft dirt, but they weren't no good, because they seemed to go every which way at once.

'Then, just when I was startin to get mad - I'd sweat through my good shirt, my tie was undone, and my shoes was full of dirt - I come through to a row and seen her hat hangin off a corn-plant with the veil flippin in the little breeze that got down there into the corn.

' "Come and get me, Dave! " she calls. I grabbed her hat and busted through to the next row on a slant. She was gone - I could just see the corn waverin where she'd went through - but both her shoes were there. In the next row I found one of her silk stockins hung over an ear of corn. And still I could hear her laughin. Over on my blind side, she was, and how the bitch got there, God only knows. Not that it mattered to me by then.

'I ripped off my tie and tore after her, around and around and dosey-doe, pantin like a stupid dog that don't know enough to lie still on a hot day. And I'll tell you somethin - I broke the corn down everywhere I went. Left a trail of trampled stalks and leaners behind me. But she never busted a one. They'd just waver a bit when she passed, as if there was no more to her than there was to that little summer breeze.

'I found her dress, her slip, and her garter-belt. Then I found her bra and step-ins. I couldn't hear her laughin no more. There wasn't no sound but the corn. I stood there in one of the rows, puffin like a leaky boiler, with all her clothes bundled up against my chest. I could smell her perfume in em, and it was drivin me crazy.

' "Where are you?" I yelled, but there wasn't no answer. Well, I finally lost what little sanity I had left ... and of course, that was just what she wanted. "Where the fuck are you?" I screamed, and her long white arm reached through the corn-plants right beside me and she stroked my neck with one finger. It jumped the shit out of me.

' "I've been waiting for you," she said. "What took you so long? Don't you want to see it?" She grabbed me and drawed me through the corn, and there she was with her feet planted in the dirt, not a stitch on her, and her eyes as silver as rain on a foggy day.'

2

Dave took a long drink of water, closed his eyes, and went on.

'We didn't make love there in the corn - in all the time I knew her, we never made love. But we made somethin. I had Ardelia in just about every way a man can have a woman, and I think I had her in some ways you'd think would be impossible. I can't remember all the ways, but I can remember her body, how white it was; how her legs looked; how her toes curled and seemed to feel along the shoots of the plants comin out of the dirt; I can remember how she pulled her fingernails back and forth across the skin of my neck and my throat.

'We went on and on and on. I don't know how many times, but I know I didn't never get tired. When we started I felt horny enough to rape the Statue of Liberty, and when we finished I felt the same way. I couldn't get enough of her. It was like the booze, I guess. Wasn't any way I could ever get enough of her. And she knew it, too.

'But we finally did stop. She put her hands behind her head and wriggled her white shoulders in the black dirt we was layin in and looked up at me with those silvery eyes of hers and she says, "Well, Dave? Are we neighbors yet?"

'I told her I wanted to go again and she told me not to push my luck. I tried to climb on just the same, and she pushed me off as easy as a mother pushes a baby off n her tit when she don't want to feed it no more. I tried again and she swiped at my face with her nails and split the skin open in two places. That finally damped my boiler down. She was quick as a cat and twice as strong. When she saw I knew playtime was over, she got dressed and led me out of the corn. I went just as meek as Mary's little lamb.

'We walked the rest of the way to her house. Nobody passed us, and that was probably just as well. My clothes were all covered with dirt and cornsilk, my shirttail was out, my tie was stuffed into my back pocket and flappin along behind me like a tail, and every place that the cloth rubbed I felt raw. Her, though - she looked as smooth and cool as an ice-cream soda in a drugstore glass. Not a hair out of place, not a speck of dirt on her shoes, not a strand of cornsilk on her skirt.

'We got to the house and while I was lookin it over, tryin to decide how much paint it would take, she brought me a drink in a tall glass. There was a straw in it, and a sprig of mint julep. I thought it was iced tea until I took a sip. It was straight Scotch.

' "Jesus!"I says, almost chokin.

"Don't you want it?" she asks me, smilin in that mockin way she had. "Maybe you'd prefer some iced coffee."

' "Oh, I want it," I says. But it was more than that. I needed it. I was tryin not to drink in the middle of the day back then, because that's what alcoholics do. But that was the end of that. For the rest of the time I knew her, I drank pretty near all day, every day. For me, the last two and a half years Ike was President was one long souse.

'While I was paintin her house - and doin everything she'd let me do to her whenever I could - she was settlin in at the Library. Mr Lavin hired her first crack outta the box, and put her in charge of the Children's Library. I used to go there every chance I got, which was a lot, since I was self-employed. When Mr Lavin spoke to me about how much time I was spendin there, I promised to paint the whole inside of the Library for free. Then he let me come and go as much as I wanted. Ardelia told me it would work out just that way, and she was right - as usual.

'I don't have any connected memories of the time I spent under her spell - and that's what I was, an enchanted man livin under the spell of a woman who wasn't really a woman at all. It wasn't the blackouts that drunks sometimes get; it was wantin to forget things after they were over. So what I have is memories that stand apart from each other but seem to lie in a chain, like those islands in the Pacific Ocean. Archie Pelligos, or whatever they call em.

'I remember she put the poster of Little Red Ridin Hood up on the door to the Children's Room about a month before Mr Lavin died, and I remember her takin one little boy by the hand and leadin him over to it. "Do you see that little girl?" Ardelia asked him. "Yes," he says. "Do you know why that Bad Thing is getting ready to eat her?" Ardelia asks. "No," the kid says back, his eyes all big and solemn and full of tears. "Because he forgot to bring back his library book on time," she says. "You won't ever do that, Willy, will you?" "No, never," the little boy says, and Ardelia says, "You better not." And then she led him into the Children's Room for Story Hour, still holdin him by the hand. That kid - it was Willy Klemmart, who got killed in Vietnam - looked back over his shoulder at where I was, standin on my scaffold with a paintbrush in my hand, and I could read his eyes like they were a newspaper headline. Save me from her, his eyes said. Please, Mr Duncan. But how could I? I couldn't even save myself.'

Dave produced a clean but badly wrinkled bandanna from the depths of one back pocket and blew a mighty honk into it.

'Mr Lavin began by thinkin Ardelia just about walked on water, but he changed his mind after awhile. They got into a hell of a scrap over that Red Ridin Hood poster about a week before he died. He never liked it. Maybe he didn't have a very good idea of what went on durin Story Hour - I'll get to that pretty soon -but he wasn't entirely blind. He saw the way the kids looked at that poster. At last he told her to take it down. That was when the argument started. I didn't hear it all because I was on the scaffold, high above them, and the acoustics were bad, but I heard enough. He said somethin about scaring the children, or maybe it was scarring the children, and she said somethin back about how it helped her keep "the rowdy element" under control. She called it a teachin tool, just like the hickory stick.

'But he stuck to his guns and she finally had to take it down. That night, at her house, she was like a tiger in the zoo after some kid has spent all day pokin it with a stick. She went back and forth in great big long strides, not a stitch on, her hair flyin out behind her. I was in bed, drunk as a lord. But I remember she turned around and her eyes had gone from silver to bright red, as if her brains had caught afire, and her mouth looked funny, like it was tryin to pull itself right out of her face, or somethin. It almost scared me sober. I hadn't ever seen nothin like that, and never wanted to see it again.

' "I'm going to fix him," she said. "I'm going to fix that fat old whoremaster, Davey. You wait and see."

'I told her not to do anything stupid, not to let her temper get the best of her, and a lot of other stuff that didn't stand knee-high to jack shit. She listened to me for awhile and then she ran across the room so fast that ... well, I don't know how to say it. One second she was standin all the way across the room by the door, and the next second she was jumpin on top of me, her eyes red and glaring, her mouth all pooched out of her face like she wanted to kiss me so bad she was stretchin her skin somehow to do it, and I had an idea that instead of just scratchin me this time, she was gonna put her nails into my throat and peel me to the backbone.

'But she didn't. She put her face right down to mine and looked at me. I don't know what she saw - how scared I was, I guess - but it must have made her happy, because she tipped her head back so her hair fell all the way down to my thighs, and she laughed. "Stop talking, you damned souse," she said, and stick it in me. What else are you good for?"

'So I did. Because stickin it in her - and drinkin - was all I was good for by then. I surely wasn't paintin pitchers anymore, I lost my license after I got clipped for my third OUI - in '58 or early '59, that was - and I was gettin bad reports on some of my jobs. I didn't care much how I did them anymore, you see; all I wanted was her. Talk started to circulate about how Dave Duncan wasn't trustworthy no more ... but the reason they said I wasn't was always the booze. The word of what we were to each other never got around much. She was careful as the devil about that. My reputation went to hell in a handbasket, but she never got so much as a splash of mud on the hem of her skirts.

'I think Mr Lavin suspected. At first he thought I just had a crush on her and she never so much as knew I was makin calfs eyes at her from up on my scaffold, but I think that in the end he suspected. But then Mr Lavin died. They said it was a heart attack, but I know better. We were in the hammock on her back porch that night after it happened, and that night it was her that couldn't get enough of it. She screwed me until I hollered uncle. Then she lay down next to me and looked at me as content as a cat that's had its fill of cream, and her eyes had that deep-red glow again. I am not talking about something in my imagination; I could see the reflection of that red glow on the skin of my bare arm. And I could feel it. It was like sitting next to a woodstove that's been stoked and then damped down. "I told you I'd fix him, Davey," she says all at once in this mean, teasin voice.

'Me, I was drunk and half killed with fuckin - what she said hardly registered on me. I felt like I was fallin asleep in a pit of quicksand. "What'd you do to him?" I asked, half in a doze.

' "I hugged him," she said. "I give special hugs, Davey - you don't know about my special hugs, and if you're lucky, you never will. I got him in the stacks and put my arms around him and showed him what I really looked like. Then he began to cry. That's how scared he was. He began to cry his special tears, and I kissed them away, and when I was done, he was dead in my arms."

' "His special tears." That's what she called them. And then her face . it changed. It rippled, like it was underwater. And I seen something . . .'

Dave trailed off, looking out into the flatlands, looking at the grain elevator, looking at nothing. His hands had gripped the porch rail. They flexed, loosened, flexed again.

'I don't remember,' he said at last. 'Or maybe I don't want to remember. Except for two things: it had red eyes with no lids, and there was a lot of loose flesh around its mouth, lyin in folds and flaps, but it wasn't skin. It looked ... dangerous. Then that flesh around its mouth started to move somehow and I think I started to scream. Then it was gone. All of it was gone. It was only Ardelia again, peepin up at me and smilin like a pretty, curious cat.

' "Don't worry," she says. "You don't have to see, Davey. As long as you do what I tell you, that is. As long as you're one of the Good Babies. As long as you behave. Tonight I'm very happy, because that old fool is gone at last. The Town Council is going to appoint me in his place, and I'll run things the way I want."

'God help us all, then, I thought, but I didn't say it. You wouldn't've, either, if you'd looked down and seen that thing with those starin red eyeballs curled up next to you in a hammock way out in the country, so far out nobody would hear you screamin even if you did it at the top of your lungs.

'A little while later she went into the house and come back out with two of those tall glasses full of Scotch, and pretty soon I was twenty thousand leagues under the sea again, where nothing mattered.

'She kept the Library closed for a week . . . "out of respect for Mr Lavin" was how she put it, and when she opened up again, Little Red Ridin Hood was back on the door of the Children's Room. A week or two after that, she told me she wanted me to make some new posters for the Children's Room.'

He paused, then went on in a lower, slower voice.

'There's a part of me, even now, that wants to sugarcoat it, make my part in it better than it was. I'd like to tell you that I fought with her, argued, told her I didn't want nothin to do with scarin a bunch of kids ... but it wouldn't be true. I went right along with what she wanted me to do. God help me, I did. Partly it was because I was scared of her by then. But mostly it was because I was still besotted with her. And there was something else, too. There was a mean, nasty part of me - I don't think it's in everyone, but I think it's in a lot of us - that liked what she was up to. Liked it.

'Now, you're wonderin what I did do, and I can't really tell you all of it. I really don't remember. Those times is all jumbled up, like the broken toys you send to the Salvation Army just to get the damned things out of the attic.

'I didn't kill anyone. That's the only thing I'm sure of. She wanted me to ... and I almost did ... but in the end I drew back. That's the only reason I've been able to go on livin with myself, because in the end I was able to crawl away. She kept part of my soul with her - the best part, maybe - but she never kept all of it.'

He looked at Naomi and Sam thoughtfully. He seemed calmer now, more in control; perhaps even at peace with himself, Sam thought.

'I remember going in one day in the fall of 1959 - I think it was '59 - and her telling me that she wanted me to make a poster for the Children's Room. She told me exactly what she wanted, and I agreed willingly enough. I didn't see nothing wrong with it. I thought it was kind of funny, in fact. What she wanted, you see, was a poster that showed a little kid flattened by a steamroller in the middle of the street. Underneath it was supposed to say HASTE MAKES WASTE! GET YOUR LIBRARY BOOKS BACK IN PLENTY OF TIME!

'I thought it was just a joke, like when the coyote is chasing the Road Runner and gets flattened by a freight train or something. So I said sure. She was pleased as punch. I went into her office and drew the poster. It didn't take long, because it was just a cartoon.

'I thought she'd like it, but she didn't. Her brows drew down and her mouth almost disappeared. I'd made a cartoon boy with crosses for eyes, and as a joke I had a word-balloon comin out of the mouth of the guy drivin the steamroller. "If you had a stamp, you could mail him like a postcard," he was saying.

'She didn't even crack a smile. "No, Davey," she says, "you don't understand. This won't make the children bring their books back on time. This will only make them laugh, and they spend too much time doing that as it is."

' "Well," I says, "I guess I didn't understand what you wanted."

'We were standin behind the circulation desk, so nobody could see us except from the waist up. And she reached down and took my balls in her hand and looked at me with those big silver eyes of hers and said, "I want you to make it realistic."

'It took me a second or two to understand what she really meant. When I did, I couldn't believe it. "Ardelia," I says, "you don't understand what you're sayin. If a kid really did get run over by a steamroller - "

'She gave my balls a squeeze, one that hurt - as if to remind me just how she had me - and said: "I understand, all right. Now you understand me. I don't want them to laugh, Davey; I want them to cry. So why don't you go on back in there and do it right this time?"

'I went back into her office. I don't know what I meant to do, but my mind got made up in a hurry. There was a fresh piece of posterboard on the desk, and a tall glass of Scotch with a straw and a sprig of mint in it, and a note from Ardelia that said, "D. - Use a lot of red this time."

He looked soberly at Sam and Naomi.

'But she'd never been in there, you see. Never for a minute.'

3

Naomi brought Dave a fresh glass of water, and when she came back, Sam noticed that her face was very pale and that the corners of her eyes looked red. But she sat down very quietly and motioned for Dave to go on.

'I did what alcoholics do best,' he said. 'I drank the drink and did what I was told. A kind of ... of frenzy, I suppose you'd say ... fell over me. I spent two hours at her desk, workin with a box of five-and-dime watercolors, sloppin water and paint all over her desk, not givin a shit what flew where. What I came out with was somethin I don't like to remember ... but I do remember. It was a little boy splattered all over Rampole Street with his shoes knocked off and his head all spread out like a pat of butter that's melted in the sun. The man drivin the steamroller was just a silhouette, but he was lookin back, and you could see the grin on his face. That guy showed up again and again in the posters I did for her. He was drivin the car in the poster you mentioned, Sam, the one about never takin rides from strangers.

'My father left my mom about a year after I was born, just left her flat, and I got an idea now that was who I was tryin to draw in all those posters. I used to call him the dark man, and I think it was my dad. I think maybe Ardelia prodded him out of me somehow. And when I took the second one out, she liked it fine. She laughed over it. "It's perfect, Davey!" she said. "It'll scare a whole mountain of do-right into the little snotnoses! I'll put it up right away!" She did, to, on the front of the checkout desk in the Children's Room. And when she did, I saw somethin that really chilled my blood. I knew the little boy I'd drawn, you see. It was Willy Klemmart. I'd drawn him without even knowin it, and the expression on what was left of his face was the one I'd seen that day when she took his hand and led him into the Children's Room.

'I was there when the kids came in for Story Hour and saw that poster for the first time. They were scared. Their eyes got big, and one little girl started to cry. And I liked it that they were scared. I thought, "That'll pound the do-right into em, all right. That'll teach em what'll happen if they cross her, if they don't do what she says." And part of me thought, You're gettin to think like her, Dave. Pretty soon you'll get to be like her, and then you'll be lost. You'll be lost forever.

'But I went on, just the same. I felt like I had a one-way ticket and I wasn't goin to get off until I rode all the way to the end of the line. Ardelia hired some college kids, but she always put em in the circulation room and the reference room and on the main desk. She kept complete charge of the kids ... they were the easiest to scare, you see. And I think they were the best scares, the ones that fed her the best. Because that's what she lived on, you know - she fed on their fright. And I made more posters. I can't remember them all, but I remember the Library Policeman. He was in a lot of them. In one - it was called LIBRARY POLICEMEN GO ON VACATION, TOO - he was standin on the edge of a stream and fishin. Only what he'd baited his hook with was that little boy the kids called Simple Simon. In another one, he had Simple Simon strapped to the nose of a rocket and was pullin the switch that would send him into outer space. That one said LEARN MORE ABOUT SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY AT THE LIBRARY - BUT BE SURE TO DO RIGHT AND GET YOUR BOOKS BACK ON TIME.

'We turned the Children's Room into a house of horrors for the kids who came there,' Dave said. He spoke slowly, and his voice was full of tears. 'She and I. We did that to the children. But do you know what? They always came back. They always came back for more. And they never, never told. She saw to that.'

'But the parents!' Naomi exclaimed suddenly, and so sharply that Sam jumped. 'Surely when the parents saw - '

'No!' Dave told her. 'Their parents never saw nothing. The only scary poster they ever saw was the one of Little Red Ridin Hood and the wolf. Ardelia left that one up all the time, but the others only went up during Story Hour - after school, on Thursday nights, and Saturday mornings. She wasn't a human bein, Sarah. You've got to get that straight in your mind. She was not human. She knew when grownups was comin, and she always got the posters I'd drawn off the walls and the other ones - regular posters that said things like READ BOOKS JUST FOR THE FUN OF IT - up before they came.

'I can remember times when I'd be there for Story Hour - in those days I never left her if I could stay close, and I had lots of time to stay close, because I'd quit paintin pictures, all my regular jobs had fell through, and I was livin on the little I'd managed to save up. Before long the money was gone, too, and I had to start sellin things - my TV, my guitar, my truck, finally my house. But that don't matter. What matters is that I was there a lot, and I saw what went on. The little ones would have their chairs drawn up 'm a circle with Ardelia sittin in the middle. I'd be in the back of the room, sittin in one of those kid-sized chairs myself, wearin my old paint-spotted duster more often than not, drunk as a skunk, needin a shave, reekin of Scotch. And she'd be readin - readin one of her special Ardelia-stories - and then she'd break off and cock her head to one side, like she was listenin. The kids would stir around and look uneasy. They looked another way, too - like they was wakin out of a deep sleep she'd put em into.

' "We're going to have company," she'd say, smiling. "Isn't that special, children? Do I have some GoodBaby volunteers to help me get ready for our Big People company?" They'd all raise their hands when she said that, because they all wanted to be Good Babies. The posters I'd made showed em what happened to Bad Babies who didn't do right. Even I'd raise my hand, sittin drunk in the back of the room in my filthy old duster, lookin like the world's oldest, tiredest kid. And then they'd get up and some would take down my posters and others would take the regular posters out of the bottom drawer of her desk. They'd swap em. Then they'd sit down and she'd switch from whatever horrible thing she'd been tellin em to a story like "The Princess and the Pea," and sure enough, a few minutes later some mother'd poke her head in and see all the do-right Good Babies listenin to that nice Miss Lortz readin em a story, and they'd smile at whatever kid was theirs, and the kid would smile back, and things would go on.'

'What do you mean, "whatever horrible thing she'd been telling them?"

Sam asked. His voice was husky and his mouth felt dry. He had been listening to Dave with a mounting sense of horror and revulsion.

'Fairy tales,' Dave said. 'But she'd change em into horror stories. You'd be surprised how little work she had to do on most of em to make the change.'

'I wouldn't,' Naomi said grimly. 'I remember those stories.'

'I'll bet you do,' he said, 'but you never heard em like Ardelia told em. And the kids liked them - part of them liked the stories, and they liked her, because she drew on them and fascinated them the same way she drew on me. Well, not exactly, because there was never the sex thing - at least, I don't think so - but the darkness in her called to the darkness in them. Do you understand me?'

And Sam, who remembered his dreadful fascination with the story of Bluebeard and the dancing brooms in Fantasia, thought he did understand. Children hated and feared the darkness ... but it drew them, didn't it? It beckoned to them,

(come with me, son)

didn't it? It sang to them,

(I'm a poleethman)

didn't it?

Didn't it?

'I know what you mean, Dave,' he said.

He nodded. 'Have you figured it out yet, Sam? Who your Library Policeman was?'

'I still don't understand that part,' Sam said, but he thought part of him did. It was as if his mind was some deep, dark body of water and there was a boat sunk at the bottom of it - but not just any boat. No - this was a pirate schooner, full of loot and dead bodies, and now it had begun to shift in the muck which had held it so long. Soon, he feared, this ghostly, glaring wreck would surface again, its blasted masts draped with black seaweed and a skeleton with a million-dollar grin still lashed to the rotting remains of the wheel.

'I think maybe you do,' Dave said, 'or that you're beginning to. And it will have to come out, Sam. Believe me.'

'I still don't really understand about the stories' 'Naomi said.

'One of her favorites, Sarah - and it was a favorite of the children, too; you have to understand that, and believe it - was "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." You know the story, but you don't know it the way some people in this town -people who are grownups now, bankers and lawyers and big-time farmers with whole fleets of John Deere tractors - know it. Deep in their hearts, it's the Ardelia Lortz version they keep, you see. It may be that some of them have told those same stories to their own children, never knowing there are other ways to tell them. I don't like to think that's so, but in my heart I know it is.

'In Ardelia's version, Goldilocks is a Bad Baby who won't do right. She comes into the house of the Three Bears and wrecks it on purpose - pulls down Mamma Bear's curtains and drags the washin through the mud and tears up all of Papa Bear's magazines and business papers and uses one of the steak-knives to cut holes in his favorite chair. Then she tears up all their books. That was Ardelia's favorite part, I think, when Goldilocks spoiled the books. And she don't eat the porridge, oh no! Not when Ardelia told the story! The way Ardelia told it, Goldilocks got some rat poison off a high shelf and shook it all over the porridge like powdered sugar. She didn't know anything about who lived in the house, but she wanted to kill them anyway, because that's the kind of Bad Baby she was.'

'That's horrible!' Naomi exclaimed. She had lost her composure - really lost it -for the first time. Her hands were pressed over her mouth, and her wide eyes regarded Dave from above them.

'Yes. It was. But it wasn't the end. Goldilocks was so tired from wreckin the house, you see, that when she went upstairs to tear their bedrooms apart, she fell asleep in Baby Bear's bed. And when the Three Bears came home and saw her, they fell upon her - that was just how Ardelia used to say it - they fell upon her and ate that wicked Bad Baby alive. They ate her from the feet up, while she screamed and struggled. All except for her head. They saved that, because they knew what she had done to their porridge. They smelled the poison. "They could do that, children, because they were bears," Ardelia used to say, and all the children - Ardelia's Good Babies - would nod their heads, because they saw how that could be. "They took Goldilocks' head down to the kitchen and boiled it and ate her brains for their breakfast. They all agreed it was very tasty ... and they lived happily ever after."

4

There was a thick, almost deathly silence on the porch. Dave reached for his glass of water and almost knocked it off the railing with his trembling fingers. He rescued it at the last moment, held it in both hands, and drank deeply. Then he put it down and said to Sam, 'Are you surprised that my boozing got a little bit out of control?'

Sam shook his head.

Dave looked at Naomi and said, 'Do you understand now why I was never able to tell this story? Why I put it in that room?'

'Yes,' she said in a trembling, sighing voice that was not much more than a whisper. 'And I think I understand why the kids never told, either. Some things are just too ... too monstrous.'

'For us, maybe,' Dave said. 'For kids? I don't know, Sarah. I don't think kids know monsters so well at first glance. It's their folks that tell em how to recognize the monsters. And she had somethin else goin for her. You remember me tellin you about how, when she told the kids a parent was comin, they looked like they were wakin up from a deep sleep? They were sleepin, in some funny way. It wasn't hypnosis - at least, I don't think it was - but it was like hypnosis. And when they went home, they didn't remember, in the top part of their minds, anyway, about the stories or the posters. Down underneath, I think they remembered plenty ... just like down underneath Sam knows who his Library Policeman is. I think they still remember today - the bankers and lawyers and big-time farmers who were once Ardelia's

Good Babies. I can. still see em, wearin pinafores and short pants, sittin in those little chairs, lookin at Ardelia in the middle of the circle, their eyes so big and round they looked like pie-plates. And I think that when it gets dark and the storms come, or when they are sleepin and the nightmares come, they go back to bein kids. I think the doors open and they see the Three Bears - Ardelia's Three Bears - eatin the brains out of Goldilocks' head with their wooden porridge-spoons, and Baby Bear wearin Goldilocks' scalp on his head like a long golden wig. I think they wake up sweaty, feelin sick and afraid. I think that's what she left this town. I think she left a legacy of secret nightmares.

'But I still haven't got to the worst thing. Those stories, you see - well, sometimes it was the posters, but mostly it was the stories - would scare one of them into a crying fit, or they'd start to faint or pass out or whatever. And when that happened, she'd tell the others, "Put your heads down and rest while I take Billy ... or Sandra ... or Tommy ... to the bathroom and make him feel better."

'They'd all drop their heads at the same instant. It was like they were dead. The first time I seen it happen, I waited about two minutes after she took some little girl out of the room, and then I got up and went over to the circle. I went to Willy Klemmart first.

' "Willy!" I whispered, and poked him in the shoulder. "You okay, Will?"

'He never moved, so I poked him harder and said his name again. He still didn't move. I could hear him breathin - kinda snotty and snory, the way kids are so much of the time, always runnin around with colds like they do - but it was still like he was dead. His eyelids were partway open, but I could only see the whites, and this long thread of spit was hangin off his lower lip. I got scared and went to three or four of the others, but wouldn't none of them look up at me or make a sound.'

'You're saying she enchanted them, aren't you?' Sam asked. 'That they were like Snow White after she ate the poisoned apple.'

'Yes,' Dave agreed. 'That's what they were like. In a different kind of way, that's what I was like, too. Then, just as I was gettin ready to take hold of Willy Klemmart and shake the shit out of him, I heard her comin back from the bathroom. I ran to my seat so she wouldn't catch me. Because I was more scared of what she might do to me than anything she might have done to them.

'She came in, and that little girl, who'd been as gray as a dirty sheet and half unconscious when Ardelia took her out, looked like somebody had just filled her up with the finest nerve-tonic in the world. She was wide awake, with roses in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eye. Ardelia patted her on the bottom and she ran for her seat. Then Ardelia clapped her hands together and said, "All Good Babies lift your heads up! Sonja feels much better, and she wants us to finish the story, don't you, Sonja?"

"Yes, ma'am," Sonja pipes up, just as pert as a robin in a birdbath. And their heads all came up. You never would have known that two seconds before that room looked like it was full of dead kids.

'The third or fourth time this happened, I let her get out of the room and then I followed her. I knew she was scarin them on purpose, you see, and I had an idea there was a reason for it. I was scared almost to death myself, but I wanted to see what it was.

'That time it was Willy Klemmart she'd taken down to the bathroom. He'd started havin hysterics during Ardelia's version of "Hansel and Gretel." I opened the door real easy and quiet, and I seen Ardelia kneelin in front of Willy down by where the washbasin was. He had stopped cryin, but beyond that I couldn't tell anything. Her back was to me, you see, and Willy was so short she blocked him right out of my view, even on her knees. I could see his hands were on the shoulders of the jumper she was wearin, and I could see one sleeve of his red sweater, but that was all. Then I heard somethin - a thick suckin sound, like a straw makes when you've gotten just about all of your milkshake out of the glass. I had an idea then she was ... you know, molestin him, and she was, but not the way I thought.

'I walked in a little further, and slipped over to the right, walkin high up on the toes of my shoes so the heels wouldn't clack. I expected her to hear me just the same, though - she had ears like goddam radar dishes, and I kept waitin for her to turn around and pin me with those red eyes of hers. But I couldn't stop. I had to see. And little by little, as I angled over to the right, I began to.

'Willy's face came into my sight over her shoulder, a little piece at a time, like a moon coming out of a 'clipse. At first all I could see of her was her blonde hair -there was masses of it, all in curls and ringlets - but then I began to see her face, as well. And I seen what she was doin. All the strength ran out of my legs just like water down a pipe. There was no way they were goin to see me, not unless I reached up and started hammerin on one of the overhead pipes. Their eyes were closed, but that wasn't the reason. They were lost in what they were doin, you see, and they were both lost in the same place, because they were hooked together.

'Ardelia's face wasn't human anymore. It had run like warm taffy and made itself into this funnel shape that flattened her nose and pulled her eyesockets all long and Chinese to the sides and made her look like some kind of insect ... a fly, maybe, or a bee. Her mouth was gone again. It had turned into that thing I started to see just after she killed Mr Lavin, the night we were layin in the hammock. It had turned into the narrow part of the funnel. I could see these funny red streaks on it, and at first I thought it was blood, or maybe veins under her skin, and then I realized it was lipstick. She didn't have lips anymore, but that red paint marked where her lips had been.

'She was usin that sucker thing to drink from Willy's eyes.'

Sam looked at Dave, thunderstuck. He wondered for a moment if the man had lost his mind. Ghosts were one thing; this was something else. He didn't have the slightest idea what this was. And yet sincerity and honesty shone on Dave's face like a lamp, and Sam thought: If he's lying, he doesn't know it.

'Dave, are you saying Ardelia Lortz was drinking his tears?' Naomi asked hesitantly.

'Yes ... and no. It was his special tears she was drinkin. Her face was all stretched out to him, it was beatin like a heart, and her features were drawn out flat. She looked like a face you might draw on a shopping bag to make a Halloween mask.

'What was comin out of the corners of Willy's eyes was gummy and pink, like bloody snot, or chunks of flesh that have almost liquefied. She sucked it in with that slurpin sound. It was his fear she was drinkin. She had made it real, somehow, and made it so big that it had to come out in those awful tears or kill him.'

'You're saying that Ardelia was some kind of vampire, aren't you?' Sam asked.

Dave looked relieved. 'Yes. That's right. When I've thought of that day since -when I've dared to think of it - I believe that's just what she was. All those old stories about vampires sinking their teeth into people's throats and drinkin their blood are wrong. Not by much, but in this business, close is not good enough. They drink, but not from the neck; they grow fat and healthy on what they take from their victims, but what they take isn't blood. Maybe the stuff they take is redder, bloodier, when the victims are grownups. Maybe she took it from Mr Lavin. I think she did. But it's not blood.

'It's fear.'

5

'I dunno how long I stood there, watchin her, but it couldn't have been too long -she was never gone much more than five minutes. After awhile, the stuff comin from the corners of Willy's eyes started to get paler and paler, and there was less and less of it. I could see that ... you know, that thing of hers . . .'

'Proboscis,' Naomi said quietly. 'I think it must have been a proboscis.'

'Is it? All right. I could see that probos-thing stretchin further and further out, not wanting to miss any, wanting to get every last bit, and I knew she was almost done. And when she was, they'd wake up and she'd see me. And when she did, I thought she'd probably kill me.

'I started to back up, slow, one step at a time. I didn't think I was going to make it, but at last my butt bumped the bathroom door. I almost screamed when that happened, because I thought she'd got behind me somehow. I was sure of that even though I could see her kneelin there right in front of me.

'I clapped my hand over my mouth to keep the scream in and pushed out through the door. I stood there while it swung shut on the pneumatic hinge. It seemed to take forever. When it was closed, I started for the main door. I was half crazy; all I wanted to do was get out of there and never go back. I wanted to run forever.

'I got down into the foyer, where she'd put up that sign you saw, Sam - the one that just said SILENCE! - and then I caught hold of myself. If she led Willy back to the Children's Room and saw I was gone, she'd know I'd seen. She'd chase me, and she'd catch me, too. I didn't even think she'd have to try hard. I kept rememberin that day in the corn, and how she'd run rings all around me and never even worked up a sweat.

'So I turned around and walked back to my seat in the Children's Room instead. It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, but somehow I managed to do it. My ass wasn't on the chair two seconds before I heard them coming. And of course Willy was all happy and smilin and full of beans, and so was she. Ardelia looked ready to go three fast rounds with Carmen Basilio and whip him solid.

' "All Good Babies lift your heads up!" she called, and clapped her hands. They all raised their heads and looked at her. "Willy feels lots better, and he wants me to finish the story. Don't you, Willy?"

' "Yes, ma'am," Willy said. She kissed him and he ran back to his seat. She went on with the story. I sat there and listened. And when that Story Hour was done, I started drinkin. And from then until the end, I never really stopped.'

6

'How did it end?' Sam asked. 'What do you know about that?'

'Not as much as I would have known if I hadn't been so dog-drunk all the time, but more than I wish I knew. That last part of it, I'm not even sure how long it was. About four months, I think, but it might have been six, or even eight. By then I wasn't even noticin the seasons much. When a drunk like me really starts to slide, Sam, the only weather he notices is inside of a bottle. I know two things, though, and they are really the only two things that matter. Somebody did start to catch onto her, that was one thing. And it was time for her to go back to sleep. To change. That was the other.

'I remember one night at her house - she never came to mine, not once, she said to me, "I'm getting sleepy, Dave. All the time now I'm sleepy. Soon it will be time for a long rest. When that time comes, I want you to sleep with me. I've grown fond of you, you see."

'I was drunk, of course, but what she said still gave me a chill. I thought I knew what she was talkin about, but when I asked her, she only laughed.

' "No, not that," she said, and gave me a scornful, amused kind of look. "I'm talking about sleep, not death. But you'll need to feed with me."

'That sobered me up in a hurry. She didn't think I knew what she was talkin about, but I did. I'd seen.

'After that, she began to ask me questions about the kids. About which ones I didn't like, which ones I thought were sneaky, which ones were too loud, which ones were the brattiest. "They're Bad Babies, and they don't deserve to live," she'd say. "They're rude, they're destructive, they bring their books back with pencil marks in them and ripped pages. Which ones do you think deserve to die, Davey?"

'That was when I knew I had to get away from her, and if killin myself was the only way, I'd have to take that way out. Something was happenin to her, you see. Her hair was gettin dull, and her skin, which had always been perfect, started to show up with blemishes. And there was something else - I could see that thing, that thing her mouth turned into - all the time, just under the surface of her skin. But it was starting to look all wrinkled and dewlapped, and there were strings like cobwebs on it.

'One night while we were in bed she saw me lookin at her hair and said, "You see the change in me, don't you, Davey?" She patted my face. "It's all right; it's perfectly natural. It's always this way when I'm getting ready to go to sleep again. I will have to do it soon, and if you mean to come with me, you will have to take one of the children soon. Or two. Or three. The more the merrier!" She laughed in the crazy way she had, and when she looked back at me, her eyes had gone red again. "In any case, I don't mean to leave you behind. All else aside, it wouldn't be safe. You know that, don't you?"

'I said I did.

' "So if you don't want to die, Davey, it has to be soon. Very soon. And if you've made up your mind not to, you should tell me now. We can end our time together pleasantly and painlessly, tonight."

'She leaned over me and I could smell her breath. It was like spoiled dogfood, and I couldn't believe I'd ever kissed the mouth that smell was coming out of, sober or drunk. But there was some part of me - some little part - that must have still wanted to live, because I told her I did want to come with her, but I needed a little more time to get ready. To prepare my mind.

' "To drink, you mean," she said. "You ought to get down on your knees and thank your miserable, unlucky stars for me, Dave Duncan. If not for me, you'd be dead in the gutter in a year, or even less. With me, you can live almost forever.

'Her mouth stretched out for just a second, stretched out until it touched my cheek. And somehow I managed to keep from screaming.'

Dave looked at them with his deep, haunted eyes. Then he smiled. Sam Peebles never forgot the eldritch quality of that smile; it haunted his dreams ever after.

'But that's all right,' he said. 'Somewhere, down deep inside of me, I have been screaming ever since.'

7

'I'd like to say that in the end I broke her hold over me, but that'd be a lie. It was just happenstance - or what Program people call a higher power. You have to understand that by 1960, I was entirely cut off from the rest of the town. Remember me tellin you that once I was a member of the Rotary Club, Sam? Well, by February of '60, those boys wouldn't have hired me to clean the urinals in their john. As far as Junction City was concerned, I was just another Bad Baby livin the life of a bum. People I'd known all my life would cross the street to get out of my way when they saw me comin. I had the constitution of a brass eagle in those days, but the booze was rustin me out just the same, and what the booze wasn't takin, Ardelia Lortz was.

'I wondered more'n once if she wouldn't turn to me for what she needed, but she never did. Maybe I was no good to her that way ... but I don't really think that was it. I don't think she loved me - I don't think Ardelia could love anybody -but think she was lonely. I think she's lived, if you can call what she does living, a very long time, and that she's had . . .'

Dave trailed off. His crooked fingers drummed restlessly on his knees and his eyes sought the grain elevator on the horizon again, as if for comfort.

'Companions seems like the word that comes closest to fittin. I think she's had companions for some of her long life, but I don't think she'd had one for a very long time when she came to Junction City. Don't ask what she said to make me feel that way, because I don't remember. It's lost, like so much of the rest. But I'm pretty sure it's true. And she had me tapped for the job. I'm pretty sure I would have gone with her, too, if she hadn't been found out.'

'Who found her out, Dave?' Naomi asked, leaning forward. 'Who?'

'Deputy Sheriff John Power. In those days, the Homestead County sheriff was Norman Beeman, and Norm's the best argument I know for why sheriffs should be appointed rather than elected. The voters gave him the job when he got back to Junction City in '45 with a suitcase full of medals he'd won when Patton's army was drivin into Germany. He was a hell of a scrapper, no one could take that away from him, but as county sheriff he wasn't worth a fart in a windstorm. What he had was the biggest, whitest smile you ever saw, and a load of bullshit two mules wide. And he was a Republican, of course. That's always been the most important thing in Homestead County.

I think Norm would be gettin elected still if he hadn't dropped dead of a stroke in Hughie's Barber Shop in the summer of 1963. I remember that real clear; by then Ardelia had been gone awhile and I'd come around a little bit.

'There were two secrets to Norm's success - other than that big grin and the line of bullshit, I mean. First, he was honest. So far as I know, he never took a dime. Second, he always made sure he had at least one deputy sheriff under him who could think fast and didn't have no interest in runnin for the top job himself. He always played square with those fellows; every one of them got a rock-solid recommendation when he was ready to move on and move up. Norm took care of his own. I think, if you looked, you'd find there are six or eight town police chiefs and State Police colonels scattered across the Midwest who spent two or three years here in Junction City, shovelling shit for Norm Beeman.

'Not john Power, though. He's dead. If you looked up his obituary, it'd say he died of a heart attack, although he wasn't yet thirty years old and with none of the bad habits that cause people's tickers to seize up early sometimes. I know the truth - it wasn't a heart attack killed john any more than it was a heart attack that killed Lavin. She killed him.'

'How do you know that, Dave?' Sam asked.

'I know because there were supposed to be three children killed in the Library on that last day.'

Dave's voice was still calm, but Sam heard the terror this man had lived with so long running just below the surface like a low-voltage electrical charge. Supposing that even half of what Dave had told them this afternoon was true, then he must have lived these last thirty years with terrors beyond Sam's capacity to imagine. No wonder he had used a bottle to keep the worst of them at bay.

'Two did die - Patsy Harrigan and Tom Gibson. The third was to be my price of admission to whatever circus it is that Ardelia Lortz is ringmaster of. That third was the one she really wanted, because she was the one who turned the spotlight on Ardelia just when Ardelia most needed to operate in the dark. That third had to be mine, because that one wasn't allowed to come to the Library anymore, and Ardelia couldn't be sure of gettin near her. That third Bad Baby was Tansy Power, Deputy Power's daughter.'

'You aren't talking about Tansy Ryan, are you?' Naomi asked, and her voice was almost pleading.

'Yeah, I am. Tansy Ryan from the post office, Tansy Ryan who goes to meetins with us, Tansy Ryan who used to be Tansy Power. A lot of the kids who used to come to Ardelia's Story Hours are in AA around these parts, Sarah -make of it what you will. In the summer of 1960, I came very close to killin Tansy Power ... and that's not the worst of it. I only wish it were.'

8

Naomi excused herself, and after several minutes had dragged by, Sam got up to go after her.

'Let her be,' Dave said. 'She's a wonderful woman, Sam, but she needs a little time to put herself back in order. You would, too, if you found out that one of the members of the most important group in your life once came close to murderin your closest friend. Let her abide. She'll be back - Sarah's strong.'

A few minutes later, she did come back. She had washed her face - the hair at her temples was still wet and slick - and she was carrying a tray with three glasses of iced tea on it.

'Ah, we're getting down to the hard stuff at last, ain't we, dear?' Dave said.

Naomi did her best to return his smile. 'You bet. I just couldn't hold out any longer.'

Sam thought her effort was better than good; he thought it was noble. All the same, the ice was talking to the glasses in brittle, chattery phrases. Sam rose again and took the tray from her unsteady hands. She looked at him gratefully.

'Now,' she said, sitting down. 'Finish, Dave. Tell it to the end.'

9

'A lot of what's left is stuff she told me,' Dave resumed, 'because by then I wasn't in a position to see anything that went on first hand. Ardelia told me sometime late in '59 that I wasn't to come around the Public Library anymore. If she saw me in there, she said she'd turn me out, and if I hung around outside, she'd sic the cops on me. She said I was gettin too seedy, and talk would start if I was seen goin in there anymore.

"'Talk about you and me?" I asked. "Ardelia, who'd believe it?"

' "Nobody," she said. "It's not talk about you and me that concerns me, you idiot."

"Well then, what does?"

"Talk about you and the children," she said. I guess that was the first time I really understood how low I'd fallen. You've seen me low in the years since we started goin to the AA meetins together, Sarah, but you've never seen me that low. I'm glad, too.

'That left her house. It was the only place I was allowed to see her, and the only time I was allowed to come was long after dark. She told me not to come by the road any closer than the Orday farm. After that I was to cut through the fields. She told me she'd know if I tried to cheat an that, and I believed her - when those silver eyes of hers turned red, Ardelia saw everything. I'd usually show up sometime between eleven o'clock and one in the morning, dependin on how much I'd had to drink, and I was usually frozen almost to the bone. I can't tell you much about those months, but I can tell you that in 1959 and 1960 the state of Iowa had a damned cold winter. There were lots of nights when I believe a sober man would have frozen to death out there in those cornfields.

'There wasn't no problem on the night I want to tell you about next, though - it must have been July of 1960 by then, and it was hotter than the hinges of hell. I remember how the moon looked that night, bloated and red, hangin over the fields. It seemed like every dog in Homestead County was yarkin up at that moon.

'Walkin into Ardelia's house that night was like walkin under the skirt of a cyclone. That week - that whole month, I guess - she'd been slow and sleepy, but not that night. That night she was wide awake, and she was in a fury. I hadn't seen her that way since the night after Mr Lavin told her to take the Little Red Ridin Hood poster down because it was scarin the children. At first she didn't even know I was there. She went back and forth through the downstairs, naked as the day she was born - if she ever was born - with her head down and her hands rolled into fists. She was madder'n a bear with a sore ass. She usually wore her hair up in an old-maidy bun when she was at home, but it was down when I let myself in through the kitchen door and she was walkin so fast it went flyin out behind her. I could hear it makin little crackly sounds, like it was full of static electricity. Her eyes were red as blood and glowin like those railroad lamps they used to put out in the old days when the tracks were blocked someplace up the line, and they seemed to be poppin right out of her face. Her body was oiled with sweat, and bad as I was myself, I could smell her; she stank like a bobcat in heat. I remember I could see big oily drops rollin down her bosom and her belly. Her hips and thighs shone with it. It was one of those still, muggy nights we get out here in the summer sometimes, when the air smells green and sits on your chest like a pile of junk iron, and it seems like there's cornsilk in every breath you pull in. You wish it would thunder and lightnin and pour down a gusher on nights like that, but it never does. You wish the wind would blow, at least, and not just because it would cool you off if it did, but because it would make the sound of the corn a little easier to bear ... the sound of it pushin itself up out of the ground all around you, soundin like an old man with arthritis tryin to get out of bed in the mornin without wakin his wife.

'Then I noticed she was scared as well as mad this time - someone had really looped the fear of God into her. And the change in her was speedin up. Whatever it was that happened to her, it had knocked her into a higher gear. She didn't look older, exactly; she looked less there. Her hair had started to look finer, like a baby's hair. You could see her scalp through it. And her skin looked like it was startin to grow its own skin - this fine, misty webbing over her cheeks, around her nostrils, at the corners of her eyes, between her fingers. Wherever there was a fold in the skin, that was where you could see it best. It fluttered a little as she walked. You want to hear something crazy? When the County Fair comes to town these days, I can't bear to go near the cotton-candy stands on the midway. You know the machine they make it with? Looks like a doughnut and goes round and round, and the man sticks in a paper cone and winds the pink sugar up on it? That's what Ardelia's skin was starting to look like -those fine strands of spun sugar. I think I know now what I was seein. She was doin what caterpillars do when they go to sleep. She was spinnin a cocoon around herself.

'I stood in the doorway for some time, watchin her go back and forth. She didn't notice me for a long while. She was too busy rollin around in whatever bed of nettles it was she'd stumbled into. Twice she hammered her fist against a wall and smashed all the way through it - paper, plaster, and lath. It sounded like breakin bones, but it didn't seem to do her no hurt at all, and there was no blood. She screamed each time, too, but not with pain. What I heard was the sound of a pissed-off she-cat ... but, like I said, there was fear underneath her anger. And what she screamed was that deputy's name.

'"John Power!" she'd scream, and whack! Right through the wall her fist would go. "God damn you, John Power! I'll teach you to stay out of my business! You want to look at me? Fine! But I'll teach you how to do it! I'll teach you, little baby of mine!" Then she'd walk on, so fast she was almost runnin, and her bare feet'd come down so hard they shook the whole damn house, it seemed like. She'd be mutterin to herself while she walked. Then her lip would curl, her eyes would glare redder'n ever, and whack! would go her fist, right through the wall and a little puff of plaster comin out through the hole. "John Power, you don't dare!" she'd snarl. "You don't dare cross me!"

'But you only had to look into her face to know she was afraid he did dare. And if you'd known Deputy Power, you'd have known she was right to be worried. He was smart, and he wasn't afraid of nothing. He was a good deputy and a bad man to cross.

'She got into the kitchen doorway on her fourth or fifth trip through the house, and all at once she saw me. Her eyes glared into mine, and her mouth began to stretch out into that horn shape - only now it was all coated with those spidery, smoky threads - and I thought I was dead. If she couldn't lay hands on John Power, she'd have me in his place.

'She started toward me and I slid down the kitchen door in a kind of puddle. She saw that and she stopped. The red light went out of her eyes. She changed in the wink of an eye. She looked and spoke as if I'd come into a fancy cocktail party she was throwin instead of walking into her house at midnight to find her, rammin around naked and smashin holes in the walls.

' "Davey!" she says. "I'm so glad you're here! Have a drink. In fact, have two!"

'She wanted to kill me - I saw it in her eyes - but she needed me, and not just for a companion no more, neither. She needed me to kill Tansy Power. She knew she could take care of the cop, but she wanted him to know his daughter was dead before she did him. For that she needed me.

' "There isn't much time," she said. "Do you know this Deputy Power?"

'I said I ought to. He'd arrested me for public drunkenness half a dozen times.

' "What do you make of him?" she asked.

' "He's got a lot of hard bark on him," I says.

' "Well, fuck him and fuck you, too!"

'I didn't say nothing to that. It seemed wiser not to.

'"That goddam square head came into the Library this afternoon and asked to see my references. And he kept asking me questions. He wanted to know where I'd been before I came to Junction City, where I went to school ' where I grew up. You should have seen the way he looked at me, Davey - but I'll teach him the right way to look at a lady like me. You see if I don't."

' "You don't want to make a mistake with Deputy Power," I said. "I don't think he's afraid of anything."

' "Yes, he is - he's afraid of me. He just doesn't know it yet," she said, but I caught the gleam of fear in her eyes again. He had picked the worst possible time to start askin questions, you see - she was gettin ready for her time of sleeping and change, and it weakened her somehow.'

'Did Ardelia tell you how he caught on?' Naomi asked.

'It's obvious,' Sam said. 'His daughter told him.'

'No,' Dave said. 'I didn't ask - I didn't dare, not with her in the mood she was in -but I don't think Tansy told her dad. I don't think she could have - not in so many words, at least. When they left the Children's Room, you see, they'd forget all about what she'd told them ... and done to them in there. And it wasn't just forgetting, either - she put other memories, false memories into their heads, so they'd go home just as jolly as could be. Most of their parents thought Ardelia was just about the greatest thing that ever happened to the Junction City Library.

'I think it was what she took from Tansy that put her father's wind up, and I think Deputy Power must have done a good deal of investigating before he ever went to see Ardelia at the Library. I don't know what difference he noticed in Tansy, because the kids weren't all pale and listless, like the people who get their blood sucked in the vampire movies, and there weren't any marks on their necks. But she was takin something from them, just the same, and John Power saw it or sensed it.'

'Even if he did see something, why did it make him suspicious of Ardelia?' Sam asked.

'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 earlymorning 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 hear 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 loadin 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's 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 beard this hard don't-fuck-with-me voice say, "Sheriffs 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 on 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 Sheriffs 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 merrygo-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-O, 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-O. 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 calendars - 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 - Garson 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 Sheriffs 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 bein dead. And when she turned whatever eye she had in her mind outward, looking 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 foldedover 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.

'She probably would have found me anyway if she'd had more time, but she didn't. Her plans were laid, that was one thing. And then there was the way her change was speedin up. Her time of sleep was comin on, and she couldn't waste time lookin for me. Besides, she must have known she'd have another chance, further up the line. And now her chance has come.'

'I don't understand what you mean,' Sam said.

'Of course you do,' Dave replied. 'Who took the books that have put you in this jam? Who sent em to the pulper, along with your newspapers? I did. Don't you think she knows that?'

'Do you think that she still wants you?' Naomi asked.

'Yes, but not the way she did. Now she only wants to kill me.' His head turned and his bright, sorrowful eyes gazed into Sam's. 'You're the one she wants now.'

Sam laughed uneasily. 'I'm sure she was a firecracker thirty years ago,' he said, 'but the lady has aged. She's really not my type.'

'I guess you don't understand after all,' Dave said. 'She doesn't want to fuck you, Sam; she wants to be you.'

10

After a few moments Sam said, 'Wait. just hold on a second.'

'You've heard me, but you haven't taken it to heart the way you need to,' Dave told him. His voice was patient but weary; terribly weary. 'So let me tell you a little more.

'After Ardelia killed John Power, she put him far enough away so she wouldn't be the first one to fall under suspicion. Then she went ahead and opened the Library that afternoon, just like always. Part of it was because a guilty person looks more suspicious if they swerve away from their usual routines, but that wasn't all of it. Her change was right upon her, and she had to have those children's lives. Don't even think about asking me why, because I don't know. Maybe she's like a bear that has to stuff itself before it goes into hibernation. All I can be sure of is that she had to make sure there was a Story Hour that Monday afternoon . . . and she did.

'Sometime during that Story Hour, when all the kids were sittin around her in the trance she could put em into, she told Tom and Patsy that she wanted em to come to the Library on Tuesday morning, even though the Library was closed Tuesdays and Thursdays in the summer. They did, and she did for em, and then she went to sleep ... that sleep that looks so much like death. And now you come along, Sam, thirty years later. You know me, and Ardelia still owes me a settling up, so that is a start ... but there's something a lot better than that. You also know about the Library Police.'

'I don't know how -'

'No, you don't know how you know, and that makes you even better. Because secrets that are so bad that we even have to hide them from ourselves ... for someone like Ardelia Lortz, those are the best secrets of all. Plus, look at the bonuses - you're young, you're single, and you have no close friends. That's true, isn't it?'

'I would have said so until today,' Sam said after a moment's thought. 'I would have said the only good friends I made since I came to Junction City have moved away. But I consider you and Naomi my friends, Dave. I consider you very good friends indeed. The best.'

Naomi took Sam's hand and squeezed it briefly.

'I appreciate that,' Dave said, 'but it doesn't matter, because she intends to do for me and Sarah as well. The more the merrier, as she told me once. She has to take lives to get through her time of change ... and waking up must be a time of change for her, too.'

'You're saying that she means to possess Sam somehow, aren't you?' Naomi asked.

'I think I mean a little more than that, Sarah. I think she means to destroy whatever there is inside Sam that makes him Sam - I think she means to clean him out the way a kid cleans out a pumpkin to make a Halloween jack-o-lantern, and then she's going to put him on like you'd put on a suit of new clothes. And after that happens - if it does - he'll go on lookin like a man named Sam Peebles, but he won't be a man anymore, no more than Ardelia Lortz was ever a woman. There's somethin not human, some it hidin inside her skin, and I think I always knew that. It's inside . . . but it's forever an outsider. Where did Ardelia Lortz come from? Where did she live before she came to Junction City? I think, if you checked, you'd find that everything she put on the references she showed Mr Lavin was a lie, and that nobody in town really knew. I think it was John Power's curiosity about that very thing that sealed his fate. But I think there was a real Ardelia Lortz at one time . . . in Pass Christian, Mississippi ... or Harrisburg, Pennsylvania ... or Portland, Maine ... and the it took her over and put her on. Now she wants to do it again. If we let that happen, I think that later this year, in some other town, in San Francisco, California ... or Butte, Montana ... or Kingston, Rhode Island ... a man named Sam Peebles will show up. Most people will like him. Children in particular will like him ... although they may be afraid of him, too, in some way they don't understand and can't talk about.

'And, of course, he will be a librarian.'