Four Past Midnight

by Stephen King

  "Listen, why don't we terminate this discussion?" Sam reached for the roll of Turns he kept in his desk drawer. He suddenly felt he might need quite a few Turns during the next twenty-eight hours or so. "It looks as if I've got a speech to write."

  "You got it," Craig said. "Just remember--dinner at six, speech at seven-thirty. As they used to say on Hawaii Five-O, be there! Aloha!"

  "Aloha, Craig," Sam said, and hung up. He stared at the phone. He felt hot gas rising slowly up through his chest and into his throat. He opened his mouth and uttered a sour burp--the product of a stomach which had been reasonably serene until five minutes ago.

  He ate the first of what would prove to be a great many Turns indeed.

  3

  Instead of going bowling that night as he had planned, Sam Peebles shut himself in his study at home with a yellow legal pad, three sharpened pencils, a package of Kent cigarettes, and a six-pack of Jolt. He unplugged the telephone from the wall, lit a cigarette, and stared at the yellow pad. After five minutes of staring, he wrote this on the top line of the top sheet: SMALL-TOWN BUSINESSES: THE LIFEBLOOD OF AMERICA

  He said it out loud and liked the sound of it. Well ... maybe he didn't exactly like it, but he could live with it. He said it louder and liked it better. A little better. It actually wasn't that good; in fact, it probably sucked the big hairy one, but it beat the shit out of "Communism: Threat or Menace." And Craig was right--most of them would be too hung over on Saturday morning to remember what they'd heard on Friday night, anyway.

  Marginally encouraged, Sam began to write.

  "When I moved to Junction City from the more or less thriving metropolis of Ames in 1984 ..."

  4

  "... and that is why I feel now, as I did on that bright September morn in 1984, that small businesses are not just the lifeblood of America, but the bright and sparkly lifeblood of the entire Western world."

  Sam stopped, crushed out a cigarette in the ashtray on his office desk, and looked hopefully at Naomi Higgins.

  "Well? What do you think?"

  Naomi was a pretty young woman from Proverbia, a town four miles west of Junction City. She lived in a ramshackle house by the Proverbia River with her ramshackle mother. Most of the Rotarians knew Naomi, and wagers had been offered from time to time on whether the house or the mother would fall apart first. Sam didn't know if any of these wagers had ever been taken, but if so, their resolution was still pending.

  Naomi had graduated from Iowa City Business College, and could actually retrieve whole legible sentences from her shorthand. Since she was the only local woman who possessed such a skill, she was in great demand among Junction City's limited business population. She also had extremely good legs, and that didn't hurt. She worked mornings five days a week, for four men and one woman--two lawyers, one banker, and two realtors. In the afternoons she went back to the ramshackle house, and when she was not caring for her ramshackle mother, she typed up the dictation she had taken.

  Sam Peebles engaged Naomi's services each Friday morning from ten until noon, but this morning he had put aside his correspondence--even though some of it badly needed to be answered--and asked Naomi if she would listen to something.

  "Sure, I guess so," Naomi had replied. She looked a little worried, as if she thought Sam--whom she had briefly dated--might be planning to propose marriage. When he explained that Craig Jones had drafted him to stand in for the wounded acrobat, and that he wanted her to listen to his speech, she'd relaxed and listened to the whole thing-all twenty-six minutes of it--with flattering attention.

  "Don't be afraid to be honest," he added before Naomi could do more than open her mouth.

  "It's good," she said. "Pretty interesting."

  "No, that's okay--you don't have to spare my feelings. Let it all hang out."

  "I am. It's really okay. Besides, by the time you start talking, they'll all be--"

  "Yes, they'll all be hammered, I know." This prospect had comforted Sam at first, but now it disappointed him a little. Listening to himself read, he'd actually thought the speech was pretty good.

  "There is one thing," Naomi said thoughtfully.

  "Oh?"

  "It's kind of ... you know ... dry."

  "Oh," Sam said. He sighed and rubbed his eyes. He had been up until nearly one o'clock this morning, first writing and then revising.

  "But that's easy to fix," she assured him. "Just go to the library and get a couple of those books."

  Sam felt a sudden sharp pain in his lower belly and grabbed his roll of Turns. Research for a stupid Rotary Club speech? Library research? That was going a little overboard, wasn't it? He had never been to the Junction City Library before, and he didn't see a reason to go there now. Still, Naomi had listened very closely, Naomi was trying to help, and it would be rude not to at least listen to what she had to say.

  "What books?"

  "You know--books with stuff in them to liven up speeches. They're like ..." Naomi groped. "Well, you know the hot sauce they give you at China Light, if you want it?"

  "Yes--"

  "They're like that. They have jokes. Also, there's this one book, Best Loved Poems of the American People. You could probably find something in there for the end. Something sort of uplifting."

  "There are poems in this book about the importance of small businesses in American life?" Sam asked doubtfully.

  "When you quote poetry, people get uplifted, Naomi said. "Nobody cares what it's about, Sam, let alone what it's for."

  "And they really have joke-books especially for speeches?" Sam found this almost impossible to believe, although hearing that the library carried books on such esoterica as small-engine repair and wig-styling wouldn't have surprised him in the least.

  "Yes."

  "How do you know?"

  "When Phil Brakeman was running for the State House, I used to type up speeches for him all the time," Naomi said. "He had one of those books. I just can't remember what the name of it was. All I can think of is Jokes for the John, and of course that's not right."

  "No," Sam agreed, thinking that a few choice tidbits from Jokes for the John would probably make him a howling success. But he began to see what Naomi was getting at, and the idea appealed to him despite his reluctance to visit the local library after all his years of cheerful neglect. A little spice for the old speech. Dress up your leftovers, turn your meatloaf into a masterpiece. And a library, after all, was just a library. If you didn't know how to find what you wanted, all you had to do was ask a librarian. Answering questions was one of their jobs, right?

  "Anyway, you could leave it just the way it is," Naomi said. "I mean, they will be drunk." She looked at Sam kindly but severely and then checked her watch. "You have over an hour left--did you want to do some letters?"

  "No, I guess not. Why don't you type up my speech instead?" He had already decided to spend his lunch hour at the library.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE LIBRARY (1)

  1

  Sam had gone by the Library hundreds of times during his years in Junction City, but this was the first time he had really looked at it, and he discovered a rather amazing thing: he hated the place on sight.

  The Junction City Public Library stood on the corner of State Street and Miller Avenue, a square granite box of a building with windows so narrow they looked like loopholes. A slate roof overhung all four sides of the building, and when one approached it from the front, the combination of the narrow windows and the line of shadow created by the roof made the building look like the frowning face of a stone robot. It was a fairly common style of Iowa architecture, common enough so Sam Peebles, who had been selling real estate for nearly twenty years, had given it a name: Midwestern Ugly. During spring, summer, and fall, the building's forbidding aspect was softened by the maples which stood around it in a kind of grove, but now, at the end of a hard Iowa winter, the maples were still bare and the Library looked like an oversized crypt.

  He didn't like it; it mad
e him uneasy; he didn't know why. It was, after all, just a library, not the dungeons of the Inquisition. Just the same, another acidic burp rose up through his chest as he made his way along the flagstone walk. There was a funny sweet undertaste to the burp that reminded him of something ... something from a long time ago, perhaps. He put a Tum in his mouth, began to crunch it up, and came to an abrupt decision. His speech was good enough as it stood. Not great, but good enough. After all, they were talking Rotary Club here, not the United Nations. It was time to stop playing with it. He was going to go back to the office and do some of the correspondence he had neglected that morning.

  He started to turn, then thought: That's dumb. Really dumb. You want to be dumb? Okay. But you agreed to give the goddam speech; why not give a good one?

  He stood on the Library walk, frowning and undecided. He liked to make fun of Rotary. Craig did, too. And Frank Stephens. Most of the young business types in Junction City laughed about the meetings. But they rarely missed one, and Sam supposed he knew why: it was a place where connections could be made. A place where a fellow like him could meet some of the not-so-young business types in Junction City. Guys like Elmer Baskin, whose bank had helped float a strip shopping center in Beaverton two years ago. Guys like George Candy--who, it was said, could produce three million dollars in development money with one phone call ... if he chose to make it.

  These were small-town fellows, high-school basketball fans, guys who got their hair cut at Jimmy's, guys who wore boxer shorts and strappy tee-shirts to bed instead of pajamas, guys who still drank their beer from the bottle, guys who didn't feel comfortable about a night on the town in Cedar Rapids unless they were turned out in Full Cleveland. They were also Junction City's movers and shakers, and when you came right down to it, wasn't that why Sam kept going on Friday nights? When you came right down to it, wasn't that why Craig had called in such a sweat after the stupid acrobat broke his stupid neck? You wanted to get noticed by the movers and shakers ... but not because you had fucked up. They'll all be drunk, Craig had said, and Naomi had seconded the motion, but it now occurred to Sam that he had never seen Elmer Baskin take anything stronger than coffee. Not once. And he probably wasn't the only one. Some of them might be drunk ... but not all of them. And the ones who weren't might well be the ones who really mattered.

  Handle this right, Sam, and you might do yourself some good. It's not impossible.

  No. It wasn't. Unlikely, of course, but not impossible. And there was something else, quite aside from the shadow politics which might or might not attend a Friday-night Rotary Club speaker's meeting: he had always prided himself on doing the best job possible. So it was just a dumb little speech. So what?

  Also, it's just a dumb little small-town library. What's the big deal? There aren't even any bushes growing along the sides.

  Sam had started up the walk again, but now he stopped with a frown creasing his forehead. That was a strange thought to have; it seemed to have come right out of nowhere. So there were no bushes growing along the sides of the Library-what difference did that make? He didn't know ... but he did know it had an almost magical effect on him. His uncharacteristic hesitation fell away and he began to move forward once more. He climbed the four stone steps and paused for a moment. The place felt deserted, somehow. He grasped the door-handle and thought, I bet it's locked. I bet the place is closed Friday afternoons. There was something strangely comforting in this thought.

  But the old-fashioned latch-plate depressed under his thumb, and the heavy door swung noiselessly inward. Sam stepped into a small foyer with a marble floor in checkerboard black and white squares. An easel stood in the center of this antechamber. There was a sign propped on the easel; the message consisted of one word in very large letters.

  SILENCE!

  it read. Not SILENCE IS GOLDEN

  or QUIET, PLEASE

  but just that one staring, glaring word: SILENCE!

  "You bet," Sam said. He only murmured the words, but the acoustics of the place were very good, and his low murmur was magnified into a grouchy grumble that made him cringe. It actually seemed to bounce back at him from the high ceiling. At that moment he felt as if he was in the fourth grade again, and about to be called to task by Mrs. Glasters for cutting up rough at exactly the wrong moment. He looked around uneasily, half-expecting an ill-natured librarian to come swooping out of the main room to see who had dared profane the silence.

  Stop it, for Christ's sake. You're forty years old. Fourth grade was a long time ago, buddy.

  Except it didn't seem like a long time ago. Not in here. In here, fourth grade seemed almost close enough to reach out and touch.

  He crossed the marble floor to the left of the easel, unconsciously walking with his weight thrown forward so the heels of his loafers would not click, and entered the main lobby of the Junction City Library.

  There were a number of glass globes hanging down from the ceiling (which was at least twenty feet higher than the ceiling of the foyer), but none of them were on. The light was provided by two large, angled skylights. On a sunny day these would have been quite enough to light the room; they might even have rendered it cheery and welcoming. But this Friday was overcast and dreary, and the light was dim. The comers of the lobby were filled with gloomy webs of shadow.

  What Sam Peebles felt was a sense of wrongness. It was as if he had done more than step through a door and cross a foyer; he felt as if he had entered another world, one which bore absolutely no resemblance to the small Iowa town that he sometimes liked, sometimes hated, but mostly just took for granted. The air in here seemed heavier than normal air, and did not seem to conduct light as well as normal air did. The silence was thick as a blanket. As cold as snow.

  The library was deserted.

  Shelves of books stretched above him on every side. Looking up toward the skylights with their crisscrosses of reinforcing wire made Sam a little dizzy, and he had a momentary illusion: he felt that he was upside down, that he had been hung by his heels over a deep square pit lined with books.

  Ladders leaned against the walls here and there, the kind that were mounted on tracks and rolled along the floor on rubber wheels. Two wooden islands broke the lake of space between the place where he stood and the checkout desk on the far side of the large, high room. One was a long oak magazine rack. Periodicals, each encased in a clear plastic cover, hung from this rack on wooden dowels. They looked like the hides of strange animals which had been left to cure in this silent room. A sign mounted on top of the rack commanded : RETURN ALL MAGAZINES TO THEIR PROPER PLACES!

  To the left of the magazine rack was a shelf of brand-new novels and nonfiction books. The sign mounted on top of the shelf proclaimed them to be seven-day rentals.

  Sam passed down the wide aisle between the magazines and the seven-day bookshelf, his heels rapping and echoing in spite of his effort to move quietly. He found himself wishing he had heeded his original impulse to just turn around and go back to the office. This place was spooky. Although there was a small, hooded microfilm camera alight and humming on the desk, there was no one manning--or womaning--it. A small plaque reading A. LORTZ

  stood on the desk, but there was no sign of A. Lortz or anyone else.

  Probably taking a dump and checking out the new issue of Library Journal.

  Sam felt a crazy desire to open his mouth and yell, "Everything coming out all right, A. Lortz?" It passed quickly. The Junction City Public Library was not the sort of place that encouraged amusing sallies.

  Sam's thoughts suddenly spun back to a little rhyme from his childhood. No more laughing, no more fun; Quaker meeting has begun. If you show your teeth or tongue, you may pay a forfeit.

  If you show your teeth or tongue in here, does A. Lortz make you pay a forfeit? he wondered. He looked around again, let his nerve endings feel the frowning quality of the silence, and thought you could make book on it.

  No longer interested in obtaining a joke-book or Best Loved Poems of the Am
erican People, but fascinated by the library's suspended, dreamy atmosphere in spite of himself, Sam walked toward a door to the right of the seven-day books. A sign over the door said this was the Children's Library. Had he used the Children's Library when he had been growing up in St. Louis? He thought so, but those memories were hazy, distant, and hard to hold. All the same, approaching the door of the Children's Library gave him an odd and haunting feeling. It was almost like coming home.

  The door was closed. On it was a picture of Little Red Riding Hood, looking down at the wolf in Grandma's bed. The wolf was wearing Grandma's nightgown and Grandma's nightcap. It was snarling. Foam dripped from between its bared fangs. An expression of almost exquisite horror had transfixed Little Red Riding Hood's face, and the poster seemed not just to suggest but to actually proclaim that the happy ending of this story--of all fairy tales--was a convenient lie. Parents might believe such guff, Red Riding Hood's ghastly-sick face said, but the little ones knew better, didn't they?

  Nice, Sam thought. With a poster like that on the door, I bet lots of kids use the Children's Library. I bet the little ones are especially fond of it.

  He opened the door and poked his head in.

  His sense of unease left him; he was charmed at once. The poster on the door was all wrong, of course, but what was behind it seemed perfectly right. Of course he had used the library as a child; it only took one look into this scale-model world to refresh those memories. His father had died young; Sam had been an only child raised by a working mother he rarely saw except on Sundays and holidays. When he could not promote money for a movie after school--and that was often--the library had to do, and the room he saw now brought those days back in a sudden wave of nostalgia that was sweet and painful and obscurely frightening.

  It had been a small world, and this was a small world; it had been a well-lighted world, even on the grimmest, rainiest days, and so was this one. No hanging glass globes for this room; there were shadow-banishing fluorescent lights behind frosted panels in the suspended ceiling, and all of them were on. The tops of the tables were only two feet from the floor; the seats of the chairs were even closer. In this world the adults would be the interlopers, the uncomfortable aliens. They would balance the tables on their knees if they tried to sit at them, and they would be apt to crack their skulls bending to drink from the water fountain which was mounted on the far wall.