Four Past Midnight

by Stephen King

  The house in Derry took precedence over John Shooter and John Shooter's crazy ideas. It even took precedence over who had done the deed--Shooter or some other fruitcake with a grudge, a mental problem, or both. The house, and, he supposed, Amy. She was clearly in bad shape, and it couldn't hurt either of them for him to offer her what comfort he could. Maybe she would even...

  But he closed his mind to any speculation about what Amy might even do. He saw nothing but pain down that road. Better to believe that road was closed for good.

  He went into the bedroom, undressed, and lay down with his hands behind his head. The loon called again, desperate and distant. It occurred to him again that Shooter could be out there, creeping around, his face a pale circle beneath his odd black hat. Shooter was nuts, and although he had used his hands and a screwdriver on Bump, that did not preclude the possibility that he still might have a gun.

  But Mort didn't think Shooter was out there, armed or not.

  Calls, he thought. I'll have to make at least two on my way up to Derry. One to Greg Carstairs and one to Herb Creekmore. Too early to make them from here if I leave at seven, but I could use one of the pay phones at the Augusta tollbooths....

  He turned over on his side, thinking it would be a long time before he fell asleep tonight after all ... and then sleep rolled over him in a smooth dark wave, and if anyone came to peer in on him as he slept, he did not know it.

  16

  The alarm got him up at six-fifteen. He took half an hour to bury Bump in the sandy patch of ground between the house and the lake, and by seven he was rolling, just as planned. He was ten miles down the road and heading into Mechanic Falls, a bustling metropolis which consisted of a textile mill that had closed in 1970, five thousand souls, and a yellow blinker at the intersection of Routes 23 and 7, when he noticed that his old Buick was running on fumes. He pulled into Bill's Chevron, cursing himself for not having checked the gauge before setting out--if he had gotten through Mechanic Falls without noticing how low the gauge had fallen, he might have had a pretty good walk for himself and ended up very late for his appointment with Amy.

  He went to the pay phone on the wall while the pump jockey tried to fill the Buick's bottomless pit. He dug his battered address book out of his left rear pocket and dialled Greg Carstairs's number. He thought he might actually catch Greg in this early, and he was right.

  "Hello?"

  "Hi, Greg--Mort Rainey."

  "Hi, Mort. I guess you've got some trouble up in Derry, huh?"

  "Yes," Mort said. "Was it on the news?"

  "Channel 5."

  "How did it look?"

  "How did what look?" Greg replied. Mort winced... but if he had to hear that from anybody, he was glad it had been Greg Carstairs. He was an amiable, long-haired ex-hippie who had converted to some fairly obscure religious sect--the Swedenborgians, maybe--not long after Woodstock. He had a wife and two kids, one seven and one five, and so far as Mort could tell, the whole family was as laid back as Greg himself. You got so used to the man's small but constant smile that he looked undressed on the few occasions he was without it.

  "That bad, huh?"

  "Yes," Greg said simply. "It must have gone up like a rocket. I'm really sorry, man."

  "Thank you. I'm on my way up there now, Greg. I'm calling from Mechanic Falls. Can you do me a favor while I'm gone?"

  "If you mean the shingles, I think they'll be in by--"

  "No, not the shingles. Something else. There's been a guy bothering me the last two or three days. A crackpot. He claims I stole a story he wrote six or seven years ago. When I told him I'd written my version of the same story before he claims to have written his, and told him I could prove it, he got wiggy. I was sort of hoping I'd seen the last of him, but no such luck. Last evening, while I was sleeping on the couch, he killed my cat."

  "Bump?" Greg sounded faintly startled, a reaction that equalled roaring surprise in anyone else. "He killed Bump?"

  "That's right."

  "Did you talk to Dave Newsome about it?"

  "No, and I don't want to, either. I want to handle him myself, if I can."

  "The guy doesn't exactly sound like a pacifist, Mort."

  "Killing a cat is a long way from killing a man," Mort said, "and I think maybe I could handle him better than Dave."

  "Well, you could have something there," Greg agreed. "Dave's slowed down a little since he turned seventy. What can I do for you, Mort?"

  "I'd like to know where the guy is staying, for one thing." "What's his name?"

  "I don't know. The name on the story he showed me was John Shooter, but he got cute about that later on, told me it might be a pseudonym. I think it is--it sounds like a pseudonym. Either way, I doubt if he's registered under that name if he's staying at an area motel."

  "What does he look like?"

  "He's about six feet tall and forty-something. He's got a kind of weatherbeaten face--sun-wrinkles around the eyes and lines going down from the comers of the mouth, kind of bracketing the chin."

  As he spoke, the face of "John Shooter" floated into his consciousness with increasing clarity, like the face of a spirit swimming up to the curved side of a medium's crystal ball. Mort felt gooseflesh prick the backs of his hands and shivered a little. A voice in his midbrain kept muttering that he was either making a mistake or deliberately misleading Greg. Shooter was dangerous, all right. He hadn't needed to see what the man had done to Bump to know that. He had seen it in Shooter's eyes yesterday afternoon. Why was he playing vigilante, then?

  Because, another, deeper, voice answered with a kind of dangerous firmness. Just because, that's all.

  The midbrain voice spoke up again, worried: Do you mean to hurt him? Is that what this is all about? Do you mean to hurt him?

  But the deep voice would not answer. It had fallen silent.

  "Sounds like half the farmers around here," Greg was saying doubtfully.

  "Well, there's a couple of other things that may help pick him out," Mort said. "He's Southern, for one thing--got an accent on him that sticks out a mile. He wears a big black hat--felt, I think--with a round crown. It looks like the kind of hat Amish men wear. And he's driving a blue Ford station wagon, early or mid-sixties. Mississippi plates."

  "Okay--better. I'll ask around. If he's in the area, somebody' ll know where. Outta-state plates stand out this time of year."

  "I know." Something else crossed his mind suddenly. "You might start by asking Tom Greenleaf. I was talking to this Shooter yesterday on Lake Drive, about half a mile north of my place. Tom came along in his Scout. He waved at us when he went by, and both of us waved back. Tom must have gotten a damned fine look at him."

  "Okay. I'll probably see him up at Bowie's Store if I drop by for a coffee around ten."

  "He's been there, too," Mort said. "I know, because he mentioned the paperback book-rack. It's one of the old-fashioned ones."

  "And if I track him down, what?"

  "Nothing," Mort said. "Don't do a thing. I'll call you tonight. Tomorrow night I should be back at the place on the lake. I don't know what the hell I can do up in Derry, except scuffle through the ashes."

  "What about Amy?"

  "She's got a guy," Mort said, trying not to sound stiff and probably sounding that way just the same. "I guess what Amy does next is something the two of them will have to work out."

  "Oh. Sorry."

  "No need to be," Mort said. He looked over toward the gas islands and saw that the jockey had finished filling his tank and was now washing the Buick's windshield, a sight he had never expected to witness again in his lifetime.

  "Handling this guy yourself ... are you really sure it's what you want to do?"

  "Yes, I think so," Mort said.

  He hesitated, suddenly understanding what was very likely going on in Greg's mind: he was thinking that if he found the man in the black hat and Mort got hurt as a result, he, Greg, would be responsible.

  "Listen, Greg--you could go along whil
e I talk to the guy, if you wanted to."

  "I might just do that," Greg said, relieved.

  "It's proof he wants," Mort said, "so I'll just have to get it for him."

  "But you said you had proof."

  "Yes, but he didn't exactly take my word for it. I guess I'm going to have to shove it in his face to get him to leave me alone."

  "Oh." Greg thought it over. "The guy really is crazy, isn't he?"

  "Yes indeed."

  "Well, I'll see if I can find him. Give me a call tonight."

  "I will. And thanks, Greg."

  "Don't mention it. A change is as good as a rest."

  "So they say."

  He told Greg goodbye and checked his watch. It was almost seven-thirty, and that was much too early to call Herb Creekmore, unless he wanted to pry Herb out of bed, and this wasn't that urgent. A stop at the Augusta tollbooths would do fine. He walked back to the Buick, replacing his address book and digging out his wallet. He asked the pump jockey how much he owed him.

  "That's twenty-two fifty, with the cash discount," the jockey said, and then looked at Mort shyly. "I wonder if I could have your autograph, Mr. Rainey? I've all your books."

  That made him think of Amy again, and how Amy had hated the autograph seekers. Mort himself didn't understand them, but saw no harm in them. For her they had seemed to sum up an aspect of their lives which she found increasingly hateful. Toward the end, he had cringed inwardly every time someone asked that question in Amy's presence. Sometimes he could almost sense her thinking: If you love me, why don't you STOP them? As if he could, he thought. His job was to write books people like this guy would want to read... or so he saw it. When he succeeded at that, they asked for autographs.

  He scribbled his name on the back of a credit slip for the pump jockey (who had, after all, actually washed his windshield) and reflected that if Amy had blamed him for doing something they liked--and he thought that, on some level she herself might not be aware of, she had--he supposed he was guilty. But it was only the way he had been built.

  Right was right, after all, just as Shooter had said. And fair was fair.

  He got back into his car and drove off toward Derry.

  17

  He paid his seventy-five cents at the Augusta toll plaza, then pulled into the parking area by the telephones on the far side. The day was sunny, chilly, and windy--coming out of the southwest from the direction of Litchfield and running straight and unbroken across the open plain where the turnpike plaza lay, that wind was strong enough to bring tears to Mort's eyes. He relished it, all the same. He could almost feel it blowing the dust out of rooms inside his head which had been closed and shuttered too long.

  He used his credit card to call Herb Creekmore in New York--the apartment, not the office. Herb wouldn't actually make it to James and Creekmore, Mort Rainey's literary agency, for another hour or so, but Mort had known Herb long enough to guess that the man had probably been through the shower by now and was drinking a cup of coffee while he waited for the bathroom mirror to unsteam so he could shave.

  He was lucky for the second time in a row. Herb answered in a voice from which most of the sleep-fuzz had departed. Am I on a roll this morning, or what? Mort thought, and grinned into the teeth of the cold October wind. Across the four lanes of highway, he could see men stringing snowfence in preparation for the winter which lay just over the calendar's horizon.

  "Hi, Herb," he said. "I'm calling you from a pay telephone outside the Augusta toll plaza. My divorce is final, my house in Derry burned flat last night, some nut killed my cat, and it's colder than a well-digger's belt buckle--are we having fun yet?"

  He hadn't realized how absurd his catalogue of woes sounded until he heard himself reciting them aloud, and he almost laughed. Jesus, it was cold out here, but didn't it feel good! Didn't it feel clean!

  "Mort?" Herb said cautiously, like a man who suspects a practical joke.

  "At your service," Mort said.

  "What's this about your house?"

  "I'll tell you, but only once. Take notes if you have to, because I plan to be back in my car before I freeze solid to this telephone." He began with John Shooter and John Shooter's accusation. He finished with the conversation he'd had with Amy last night.

  Herb, who had spent a fair amount of time as Mort and Amy's guest (and who had been entirely dismayed by their breakup, Mort guessed), expressed his surprise and sorrow at what had happened to the house in Derry. He asked if Mort had any idea who had done it. Mort said he didn't.

  "Do you suspect this guy Shooter?" Herb asked. "I understand the significance of the cat being killed only a short time before you woke up, but--"

  "I guess it's technically possible, and I'm not ruling it out completely," Mort said, "but I doubt it like hell. Maybe it's only because I can't get my mind around the idea of a man burning down a twenty-four-room house in order to get rid of a magazine. But I think it's mostly because I met him. He really believes I stole his story, Herb. I mean, he has no doubts at all. His attitude when I told him I could show him proof was 'Go ahead, motherfucker, make my day.' "

  "Still ... you called the police, didn't you?"

  "Yeah, I made a call this morning," Mort said, and while this statement was a bit disingenuous, it was not an out-and-out lie. He had made a call this morning. To Greg Carstairs. But if he told Herb Creekmore, whom he could visualize sitting in the living room of his New York apartment in a pair of natty tweed pants and a strap-style tee shirt, that he intended to handle this himself, with only Greg to lend a hand, he doubted if Herb would understand. Herb was a good friend, but he was something of a stereotype: Civilized Man, late-twentieth-century model, urban and urbane. He was the sort of man who believed in counselling. The sort of man who believed in meditation and mediation. The sort of man who believed in discussion when reason was present, and the immediate delegation of the problem to Persons in Authority when it was absent. To Herb, the concept that sometimes a man has got to do what a man has got to do was one which had its place ... but its place was in movies starring Sylvester Stallone.

  "Well, that's good." Herb sounded relieved. "You've got enough on your plate without worrying about some psycho from Mississippi. If they find him, what will you do? Have him charged with harassment?"

  "I'd rather convince him to take his persecution act and put it on the road," Mort said. His feeling of cheery optimism, so unwarranted but indubitably real, persisted. He supposed he would crash soon enough, but for the time being, he couldn't stop grinning. So he wiped his leaking nose with the cuff of his coat and went right on doing it. He had forgotten how good it could feel to have a grin pasted onto your kisser.

  "How will you do that?"

  "With your help, I hope. You've got files of my stuff, right?"

  "Right, but--"

  "Well, I need you to pull the June, 1980, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. That's the one with 'Sowing Season' in it. I can't very well pull mine because of the fire, so--"

  "I don't have it," Herb said mildly.

  "You don't?" Mort blinked. This was one thing he hadn't expected. "Why not?"

  "Because 1980 was two years before I came on board as your agent. I have at least one copy of everything I sold for you, but that's one of the stories you sold yourself."

  "Oh, shit!" In his mind's eye, Mort could see the acknowledgment for "Sowing Season" in Everybody Drops the Dime. Most of the other acknowledgments contained the line, "Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agents, James and Creekmore." The one for "Sowing Season" (and two or three other stories in the collection) read only, "Reprinted by permission of the author."

  "Sorry," Herb said.

  "Of course I sent it in myself--I remember writing the query letter before I submitted. It's just that it seems like you've been my agent forever." He laughed a little then and added, "No offense."

  "None taken," Herb said. "Do you want me to make a call to EQMM? They must have back issues."
/>   "Would you?" Mort asked gratefully. "That'd be great."

  "I'll do it first thing. Only--" Herb paused.

  "Only what?"

  "Promise me you're not planning to confront this guy on your own once you have a copy of the printed story in hand."

  "I promise," Mort agreed promptly. He was being disingenuous again, but what the hell-he had asked Greg to come along when he did it, and Greg had agreed, so he wouldn't be alone. And Herb Creekmore was his literary agent, after all, not his father. How he handled his personal problems wasn't really Herb's concern.

  "Okay," Herb said. "I'll take care of it. Call me from Derry, Mort--maybe it isn't as bad as it seems."

  "I'd like to believe that."

  "But you don't?"

  "Afraid not."

  "Okay." Herb sighed. Then, diffidently, he added: "Is it okay to ask you to give Amy my best?"

  "It is, and I will."

  "Good. You go on and get out of the wind, Mort. I can hear it shrieking in the receiver. You must be freezing."

  "Getting there. Thanks again, Herb."

  He hung up and looked thoughtfully at the telephone for a moment. He'd forgotten that the Buick needed gas, which was minor, but he'd also forgotten that Herb Creekmore hadn't been his agent until 1982, and that wasn't so minor. Too much pressure, he supposed. It made a man wonder what else he might have forgotten.

  The voice in his mind, not the midbrain voice but the one from the deep ranges, spoke up suddenly: What about stealing the story in the first place? Maybe you forgot that.

  He snorted a laugh as he hurried back to his car. He had never been to Mississippi in his life, and even now, stuck in a writer's block as he was, he was a long way from stooping to plagiarism. He slid behind the wheel and started the engine, reflecting that a person's mind certainly got up to some weird shit every now and again.

  18

  Mort didn't believe that people--even those who tried to be fairly honest with themselves--knew when some things were over. He believed they often went on believing, or trying to believe, even when the handwriting was not only on the wall but writ in letters large enough to read a hundred yards away without a spyglass. If it was something you really cared about and felt that you needed, it was easy to cheat, easy to confuse your life with TV and convince yourself that what felt so wrong would eventually come right ... probably after the next commercial break. He supposed that, without its great capacity for self-deception, the human race would be even crazier than it already was.