Four Past Midnight

by Stephen King

  35

  He walked up to the place where the path and the road came together, the place where he had been talking to Shooter when Tom Greenleaf had had the misfortune to see them. For some reason he didn't like the idea of driving the Buick. The bushes on either side of the path were beaten down and skinned-looking, making a rough path. He walked jerkily down this path, knowing what he would find in the first good-sized copse of trees he came to ... and he did find it. It was Tom Greenleaf's Scout. Both men were inside.

  Greg Carstairs was sitting behind the wheel with his head thrown back and a screwdriver--a Phillips, this time--buried up to the hilt in his forehead, above his right eye. The screwdriver had come from a cupboard in the pantry of Mort's house. The red plastic handle was badly chipped and impossible not to recognize.

  Tom Greenleaf was in the back seat with a hatchet planted in the top of his head. His eyes were open. Dried brains had trickled down around his ears. Written along the hatchet's ash handle in faded but still legible red letters was one word: RAINEY. It had come from the toolshed.

  Mort stood silently. A chickadee called. A woodpecker used a hollow tree to send Morse code. A freshening breeze was producing whitecaps on the lake; the water was a dark cobalt today, and the whitecaps made a pretty contrast.

  There was a rustling sound behind him. Mort wheeled around so fast he almost fell--would have fallen, if he'd not had the Scout to lean against. It wasn't Shooter. It was a squirrel. It looked down at him with bright hate from where it was frozen halfway up the trunk of a maple which blazed with red fall fire. Mort waited for his galloping heart to slow. He waited for the squirrel to dash up the tree. His heart did; the squirrel did not.

  "He killed them both," he said at last, speaking to the squirrel. "He went to Tom's in my Buick. Then he went to Greg's in Tom's Scout, with Tom driving. He killed Greg. Then he had Tom drive down here, and killed him. He used my tools to do both of them. Then he walked back to Tom's house ... or maybe he jogged. He looks rugged enough to have jogged. Sonny didn't think Tom sounded like himself, and I know why. By the time Sonny got that call, the sun was getting ready to come up and Tom was already dead. It was Shooter, "imitating Tom. And it was probably easy. From the way Sonny had his music cranked this morning, he's a little deaf, anyway. Once he was done with Sonny Trotts, he got in my Buick again and drove it back to the house. Greg's Ranger is still parked in his own driveway, where it's been all along. And that's how--"

  The squirrel scurried up the trunk and disappeared into the blazing red leaves.

  "--that's how it worked," Mort finished dully.

  Suddenly his legs felt watery. He took two steps back up the path, thought of Tom Greenleaf's brains drying on his cheeks, and his legs just gave up. He fell down and the world swam away for awhile.

  36

  When he came to, Mort rolled over, sat up groggily, and turned his wrist to look at his watch. It said quarter past two, but of course it must have stopped at that time last night; he had found Tom's Scout at mid-morning, and this couldn't be afternoon. He had fainted, and, considering the circumstances, that wasn't surprising But no one faints for three and a half hours.

  The watch's second hand was making its steady little circle, however.

  Must have jogged it when I sat up, that's all.

  But that wasn't all. The sun had changed position, and would soon be lost behind the clouds which were filling up the sky. The color of the lake had dulled to a listless chrome.

  So he had started off fainting, or swooning, and then what? Well, it sounded incredible, but he supposed he must have fallen asleep. The last three days had been nerve-racking, and last night he had been sleepless until three. So call it a combination of mental and physical fatigue. His mind had just pulled the plug. And--

  Shooter! Christ, Shooter said he'd call!

  He tried to get to his feet, then fell back with a little oof! sound of mingled pain and surprise as his left leg buckled under him. It was full of pins and needles, all of them crazily dancing. He must have lain on the goddam thing. Why hadn't he brought the Buick, for Christ's sake? If Shooter called and Mort wasn't there to take the call, the man might do anything.

  He lunged to his feet again, and this time made it all the way up. But when he tried to stride on the left leg, it refused his weight and spilled him forward again. He almost hit his head on the side of the truck going down and was suddenly looking at himself in one of the hubcaps of the Scout. The convex surface made his face look like a grotesque funhouse mask. At least he had left the goddamned hat back at the house; if he had seen that on his head, Mort thought he would have screamed. He wouldn't have been able to help himself.

  All at once he remembered there were two dead men in the Scout. They were sitting above him, getting stiff, and there were tools sticking out of their heads.

  He crawled out of the Scout's shadow, dragged his left leg across his right with his hands, and began to pound at it with his fists, like a man trying to tenderize a cheap cut of meat.

  Stop it! a small voice cried--it was the last kernel of rationality at his command, a little sane light in what felt like a vast bank of black thunderheads between his ears. Stop it! He said he'd call late in the afternoon, and it's only quarter past two! Plenty of time!

  But what if he called early? Or what if "late afternoon" started after two o'clock in the deep-dish, crackerbarrel South?

  Keep beating on your leg like that and you'll wind up with a charley horse. Then you can see how you like trying to crawl back in time to take his call.

  That did the trick. He was able to make himself stop. This time he got up more cautiously and just stood for a moment (he was careful to keep his back to Tom's Scout--he did not want to look inside again) before trying to walk. He found that the pins and needles were subsiding. He walked with a pronounced limp at first, but his gait began to smooth out after the first dozen strides.

  He was almost clear of the bushes Shooter had stripped and beaten down with Tom's Scout when he heard a car approaching. Mort dropped to his knees without even thinking about it and watched as a rusty old Cadillac swept by. It belonged to Don Bassinger, who owned a place on the far side of the lake. Bassinger, a veteran alcoholic who spent most of his time drinking up what remained of his once-substantial inheritance, often used Lake Drive as a shortcut to what was known as Bassinger Road. Don was about the only year-round resident down here, Mort thought.

  After the Caddy was out of sight, Mort got to his feet and hurried the rest of the way up to the road. Now he was glad he hadn't brought the Buick. He knew Don Bassinger's Cadillac, and Bassinger knew Mort's Buick. It was probably too early in the day for Don to be in a blackout, and he might well have remembered seeing Mort's car, if it had been there, parked not far from the place where, before too much longer, someone was going to make an extremely horrible discovery.

  He's busy tying you to this business, Mort thought as he limped along Lake Drive toward his house. He's been doing it all along. If anyone saw a car near Tom Greenleaf's last night, it will almost certainly turn out to be your Buick. He killed them with your tools--

  I could get rid of the tools, he thought suddenly. I could throw them in the lake. I might heave up a time or two getting them out, but I think I could go through with it.

  Could you? I wonder. And even if you did... well, Shooter almost certainly will have thought of that possibility, too. He seems to have thought of all the others. And he knows that if you tried to get rid of the hatchet and the screwdriver and the police dragged the bottom for them and they were found, things would look even worse for you. Do you see what he's done? Do you?

  Yes. He saw. John Shooter had given him a present. It was a tar baby. A large, glistening tar baby. Mort had smacked the tar baby in the head with his left hand and it had stuck fast. So he had whopped that old tar baby in the gut with his right hand to make it let go, only his right hand had stuck, too. He had been--what was the word he had kept using with such smug satisf
action? "Disingenuous," wasn't it? Yes, that was it. And all the time he had been getting more entangled with John Shooter's tar baby. And now? Well, he had told lies to all sorts of people, and that would look bad if it came out, and a quarter of a mile behind him a man was wearing a hatchet for a hat and Mort's name was written on the handle, and that would look even worse.

  Mort imagined the telephone ringing in the empty house and forced himself into a trot.

  37

  Shooter didn't call.

  The minutes stretched out like taffy, and Shooter didn't call. Mort walked restlessly through the house, twirling and pulling at his hair. He imagined this was what it felt like to be a junkie waiting for the pusher-man.

  Twice he had second thoughts about waiting, and went to the phone to call the authorities--not old Dave Newsome, or even the county sheriff, but the State Police. He would hew to the old Vietnam axiom: Kill em all and let God sort em out. Why not? He had a good reputation, after all; he was a respected member of two Maine communities, and John Shooter was a--

  Just what was Shooter?

  The word "phantom" came to mind.

  The word "will-o'-the-wisp" also came to mind.

  But it was not this that stopped him. What stopped him was a horrible certainty that Shooter would be trying to call while Mort himself was using the line ... that Shooter would hear the busy signal, hang up, and Mort would never hear from him again.

  At quarter of four, it began to rain--a steady fall rain, cold and gentle, sighing down from a white sky, tapping on the roof and the stiff leaves around the house.

  At ten of, the telephone rang. Mort leaped for it.

  It was Amy.

  Amy wanted to talk about the fire. Amy wanted to talk about how unhappy she was, not just for herself, but for both of them. Amy wanted to tell him that Fred Evans, the insurance investigator, was still in Derry, still picking over the site, still asking questions about everything from the most recent wiring inspection to who had keys to the wine cellar, and Ted was suspicious of his motives. Amy wanted Mort to wonder with her if things would have been different if they had had children.

  Mort responded to all this as best he could, and all the time he was talking with her, he felt time--prime late-afternoon time--slipping away. He was half mad with worry that Shooter would call, find the line busy, and commit some fresh atrocity. Finally he said the only thing he could think of to get her off the line: that if he didn't get to the bathroom soon, he was going to have an accident.

  "Is it booze?" she asked, concerned. "Have you been drinking?"

  "Breakfast, I think," he said. "Listen, Amy, I--"

  "At Bowie's?"

  "Yes," he said, trying to sound strangled with pain and effort. The truth was, he felt strangled. It was all quite a comedy, when you really considered it. "Amy, really, I--"

  "God, Mort, she keeps the dirtiest grill in town," Amy said. "Go. I'll call back later." The phone went dead in his ear. He put the receiver into its cradle, stood there a moment, and was amazed and dismayed to discover his fictional complaint was suddenly real: his bowels had drawn themselves into an aching, throbbing knot.

  He ran for the bathroom, unclasping his belt as he went.

  It was a near thing, but he made it. He sat on the ring in the rich odor of his own wastes, his pants around his ankles, catching his breath ... and the phone began to ring again.

  He sprang up like a jack released from its box, cracking one knee smartly on the side of the washstand, and ran for it, holding his pants up with one hand and mincing along like a girl in a tight skirt. He had that miserable, embarrassing I-didn' t-have-time-to-wipe feeling, and he guessed it happened to everyone, but it suddenly occurred to him he had never read about it in a book--not one single book, ever.

  Oh, life was such a comedy.

  This time it was Shooter.

  "I saw you down there," Shooter said. His voice was as calm and serene as ever. "Down where I left them, I mean. Looked like you had you a heat-stroke, only it isn't summer."

  "What do you want?" Mort switched the telephone to his other ear. His pants slid down to his ankles again. He let them go and stood there with the waistband of his Jockey shorts suspended halfway between his knees and his hips. What an author photograph this would make, he thought.

  "I almost pinned a note on you," Shooter said. "I decided not to." He paused, then added with a kind of absent contempt : "You scare too easy."

  "What do you want?"

  "Why, I told you that already, Mr. Rainey. I want a story to make up for the one you stole. Ain't you ready to admit it yet?"

  Yes-tell him yes! Tell him anything, the earth is flat, John Kennedy and Elvis Presley are alive and well and playing banjo duets in Cuba, Meryl Streep's a transvestite, tell him ANYTHING-

  But he wouldn't.

  All the fury and frustration and horror and confusion suddenly burst out of his mouth in a howl.

  "I DIDN'T.! I DIDN'T! YOU'RE CRAZY, AND I CAN PROVE IT! I HAVE THE MAGAZINE, YOU LOONY! DO YOU HEAR ME? I HAVE THE GODDAM MAGAZINE!"

  The response to this was no response. The line was silent and dead, without even the faraway gabble of a phantom voice to break that smooth darkness, like that which crept up to the window-wall each night he had spent here alone.

  "Shooter?"

  Silence.

  "Shooter, are you still there?"

  More silence. He was gone.

  Mort let the telephone sag away from his ear. He was returning it to the cradle when Shooter's voice, tinny and distant and almost lost, said: "... now?"

  Mort put the phone back to his ear. It seemed to weigh eight hundred pounds. "What?" he asked. "I thought you were gone."

  "You have it? You have this so-called magazine? Now?" He thought Shooter sounded upset for the first time. Upset and unsure.

  "No," Mort said.

  "Well, there!" Shooter said, sounding relieved. "I think you might finally be ready to talk turk--"

  "It's coming Federal Express," Mort interrupted. "It will be at the post office by ten tomorrow."

  "What will be?" Shooter asked. "Some fuzzy old thing that's supposed to be a copy?"

  "No," Mort said. The feeling that he had rocked the man, that he had actually gotten past his defenses and hit him hard enough to make it hurt, was strong and undeniable. For a moment or two Shooter had sounded almost afraid, and Mort was angrily glad. "The magazine. The actual magazine."

  There was another long pause, but this time Mort kept the telephone screwed tightly against his ear. Shooter was there. And suddenly the story was the central issue again, the story and the accusation of plagiarism; Shooter treating him like he was a goddam college kid was the issue, and maybe the man was on the run at last.

  Once, in the same parochial school where Mort had learned the trick of swallowing crooked, he had seen a boy stick a pin in a beetle which had been trundling across his desk. The beetle had been caught--pinned, wriggling, and dying. At the time, Mort had been sad and horrified. Now he understood. Now he only wanted to do the same thing to this man. This crazy man.

  "There can't be any magazine," Shooter said finally. "Not with that story in it. That story is mine!"

  Mort could hear anguish in the man's voice. Real anguish. It made him glad. The pin was in Shooter. He was wriggling around on it.

  "It'll be here at ten tomorrow," Mort said, "or as soon after as FedEx drops the Tashmore stuff. I'll be happy to meet you there. You can take a look. As long a look as you want, you goddamned maniac."

  "Not there," Shooter said after another pause. "At your house."

  "Forget it. When I show you that issue of Ellery Queen, I want to be someplace where I can yell for help if you go apeshit."

  "You'll do it my way," Shooter said. He sounded a little more in control ... but Mort did not believe Shooter had even half the control he'd had previously. "If you don't, I'll see you in the Maine State Prison for murder."

  "Don't make me laugh." But Mort felt his bowels be
gin to knot up again.

  "I hooked you to those two men in more ways than you know," Shooter said, "and you have told a right smart of lies. If I just disappear, Mr. Rainey, you are going to find yourself standing with your head in a noose and your feet in Crisco."

  "You don't scare me."

  "Yeah, I do," Shooter said. He spoke almost gently. "The only thing is, you're startin to scare me a little, too. I can't quite figure you out."

  Mort was silent.

  "It'd be funny," Shooter said in a strange, ruminating tone, "if we had come by the same story in two different places, at two different times."

  "The thought had occurred to me."

  "Did it?"

  "I dismissed it," Mort said. "Too much of a coincidence. If it was just the same plot, that would be one thing. But the same language? The same goddam diction?"

  "Uh-huh," Shooter said. "I thought the same thing, pilgrim. It's just too much. Coincidence is out. You stole it from me, all right, but I'm goddamned if I can figure out how or when."

  "Oh, quit it!" Mort burst out. "I have the magazine! I have proof! Don't you understand that? It's over! Whether it was some nutty game on your part or just a delusion, it is over! I have the magazine!"

  After a long silence, Shooter said: "Not yet, you don't."

  "How true," Mort said. He felt a sudden and totally unwanted sense of kinship with the man. "So what do we do tonight?"

  "Why, nothing," Shooter said. "Those men will keep. One has a wife and kids visiting family. The other lives alone. You go and get your magazine tomorrow morning. I will come to your place around noon."

  "You'll kill me," Mort said. He found that the idea didn't carry much terror with it--not tonight, anyway. "If I show you the magazine, your delusion will break down and you'll kill me."

  "No!" Shooter replied, and this time he seemed clearly surprised. "You? No, sir! But those others were going to get in the way of our business. I couldn't have that... and I saw that I could use them to make you deal with me. To face up to your responsibility."

  "You're crafty," Mort said. "I'll give you that. I believe you're nuts, but I also believe you're just about the craftiest son of a bitch I ever ran across in my life."