Sleeping Beauties: A Novel

by Stephen King

  “She took my phone,” said Hicks.

  “Pardon? How did she do that?”

  “She threatened me with rats. The rats are with her. They do her bidding.”

  “The rats do her bidding.”

  “You see the implications, don’t you? Like every hotel, every prison has rodents. Cutbacks exacerbate the problem. I remember Coates complaining about having to cancel the exterminator. No room in the budget. They don’t think about that at the legislature, do they? ‘It’s just a prison. What are a few rats to an inmate, when they are rats themselves?’ Well, what if one of the inmates learns to control the rats? What then?” Hicks pushed his plate away. Apparently his appetite had left him. “Rhetorical question, of course. Legislature doesn’t think of things like that.”

  Frank hovered in the doorway of the Hickses’ dining room, contemplating the likelihood that the man was suffering from hallucinations brought on by stress and grief. But there was the fragment of web that had turned into moths—what about that? Frank had seen it happen. And hadn’t a moth stared Frank down? That might have been a hallucination (he himself was suffering from stress and grief, after all), but Frank didn’t really think so. Who was to say that the assistant warden hadn’t completely lost his marbles? And who was to say he wasn’t telling the truth?

  Maybe he’d lost his marbles because he was telling the truth. How about that for an unpleasant possibility?

  Hicks stood up. “Since you’re here, would you mind helping me carry her outside? My back’s aching, and I’m not exactly young anymore.”

  There were few things he wanted to do less, but Frank agreed. He took Nadine Hicks’s bulked-up legs and her husband gripped her under her bulked-up armpits. They hoisted her and went out the front door, down the steps, and along the side of the house, carefully carrying the woman between them. The webbing crackled like Christmas paper.

  “Just hold on there, Nadine,” Hicks told the white membrane that surrounded his wife’s face. “We’re going to get you set up good in the Adirondack. Get you some sun. I’m sure it filters through.”

  “So who’s supposed to be in charge now?” Frank asked. “At the prison?”

  “No one,” said Hicks. “Oh, I suppose Van Lampley could make a claim, if she’s still upright. She’s the senior officer.”

  “The psychiatrist, Dr. Norcross, claims he’s the acting warden,” Frank said.

  “Nonsense.”

  They settled Mrs. Hicks in a bright yellow Adirondack chair on the stone patio. There was, of course, no sun. Not today. Just the same light rain. Instead of soaking in, the precipitation beaded on the surface of the cocoon, the way it would on the fabric of a waterproof tent. Hicks began to half-rock, half-drag over a stand-up umbrella. The umbrella’s base screeched across the stone. “Have to be careful, can’t apply sunblock with that stuff on her, and she burns very easily.”

  “Norcross? The psychiatrist?”

  Hicks chuckled. “Norcross is just a contractor. He doesn’t have any authority. He wasn’t appointed by anybody.”

  This didn’t surprise Frank. He’d suspected that Norcross’s line of bullshit was just that—a line. It did piss him off, though. Lives were at stake. Plenty of them, but it was okay to think mostly of Nana, because she stood for all the rest. There was no selfishness in what he was doing when you looked at it that way; seen in that light, it was altruistic! Meanwhile, he needed to stay cool.

  “What kind of a man is he? This shrink?”

  Hicks got the umbrella situated and opened it over his wife. “There.” He took a few deep breaths. Sweat and rain had darkened his collar. “He’s smart, I’ll give him that. Too smart, actually. No business working in a prison. And think of this: he is awarded a full-time salary, almost the equal of my own, and yet we cannot afford an exterminator. This is politics as we know it in the twenty-first century, Officer Geary.”

  “What do you mean when you say he has no business working in a prison?”

  “Why didn’t he go into private practice? I’ve seen his records. He’s published. Got the right degrees. I’ve always figured there was something off about him, wanting to hang around with reprobates and drug addicts, but I couldn’t say what. If it’s a sex thing, he’s been extremely cautious. That’s your first idea when you think of a man who likes to work with female criminals. But I don’t think that’s it.”

  “How would you deal with him? Is he reasonable?”

  “Sure, he’s reasonable. A very reasonable man who also happens to be a politically correct softie. And that’s exactly why I hate to, as you put it, deal with him. We’re not a rehab facility, you know. Prison’s a storage center for people who won’t play by the rules and suck at cheating. A garbage can, when you come right down to it, and we’re paid to sit on the lid. Coates gets her jollies sparring with him, they’re pally, but he exhausts me. He’ll reason you right out of your shoes.” From his pocket Hicks withdrew a crumpled handkerchief. He used it to dab away some water beads from his wife’s shroud. “Big on eye contact. Makes you think he thinks you’re nuts.”

  Frank thanked Lawrence Hicks for his help and went back around to the front where he’d parked. What was Norcross thinking? What reason would he have to keep them from seeing the woman? Why wouldn’t he trust them? The facts only seemed to support one conclusion, and it was an ugly one: for some reason, the doctor was working on the woman’s behalf.

  Hicks came jogging after him. “Mr. Geary! Officer!”

  “What is it?”

  The assistant warden’s expression was tight. “Listen, that woman—” He rubbed his hands together. The light rain stained the shoulders of his wrinkled suit jacket. “If you do talk to her, to Eve Black, I don’t want you to give her the impression that I care about getting my phone back, all right? She can keep it. I’ll use my wife’s if I need to make any calls.”

  8

  When Jared hurried out to the rear of the demo house where he and Mary were currently living (if you can call this living, he thought), Mary was leaning against the stake fence with her head in her arms. Fine white threads were spinning out of her hair.

  He sprinted to her, almost tripping over the neat-as-pie doghouse (a match for the demo, right down to the miniature blue window frames), grabbed her, shook her, then pinched both earlobes, as she’d told him to do if she started to drift away. She said she’d read on the Internet that it was the quickest way to wake someone up when they were dozing off. Of course there were all sorts of stay-awake remedies on the Internet now, as many as there had once been go-to-sleep strategies.

  It worked. Her eyes came back into focus. The strands of white webbing detached themselves from her and lazed upward, disappearing as they went.

  “Whoa,” she said, touching her ears and trying on a smile. “Thought I was getting my ears pierced again. There’s a big purple blotch floating over your face, Jere.”

  “You were probably looking into the sun.” He took her arm. “Come on. We have to hurry.”

  “Why?”

  Jared didn’t answer. If his dad was paranoid, then it was catching. In the living room, with its perfectly matching but somehow sterile items of furniture—even the pictures on the wall matched—he paused to look out the window at the sheriff’s department cruiser parked six or seven houses down the street. As he watched, two officers emerged from one of the houses. His mom had invited all her deputies and their wives to dinner at one time or another over the years, and Jared knew most of them. Those two were Rangle and Barrows. Given that all the houses except for this one were empty of furniture, the cops would probably just give them a lick and a promise. They’d be here in no time.

  “Jared, stop pulling!”

  They had stashed Platinum, Molly, Mrs. Ransom, and Lila in the master bedroom. Mary had wanted to leave them on the ground floor, said it wasn’t as if they were going to care about the décor, or anything. Jared had insisted, thank God, but even the second floor wasn’t enough. Because the demo house was fu
rnished, Rangle and Barrows might decide to really search it.

  He got Mary up the stairs, she muttering complaints the whole way. From the bedroom he grabbed the basket containing Platinum’s swathed little body and rushed to pull down the ringbolt in the hallway ceiling. The ladder to the attic descended with a bang. It would have clocked Mary on the head if he hadn’t pulled her out of the way. Jared climbed up, shoved the baby’s basket up over the edge onto the attic floor, and slid back down. Ignoring her questions, he ran to the end of the hall and looked out. The cruiser was creeping along the curb. Only four houses away now. No, three.

  He ran to where Mary was standing with her shoulders slumped and her head down. “We have to carry them up there.” He pointed to the ladder.

  “I can’t carry anyone,” she said, sounding like a whiny child. “I’m tiyy-erd, Jere!”

  “I know. But you can manage Molly, she’s light. I’ll get her gram and my mother.”

  “Why? Why do we have to?”

  “Because those cops might be looking for us. My father said so.”

  He expected her to ask why it would be bad for the deputies to find them, but she didn’t. Jared led her to the bedroom—the women were on the double bed, Molly reposing on a fluffy towel in the en suite bathroom. He picked Molly up and put her in Mary’s arms. Then he got Mrs. Ransom, who seemed heavier than he remembered. But not too heavy, Jared thought, and remembered what his mother liked to sing when he was small: Ack-sen-tuate the positive, elim-i-nate the negative.

  “And don’t mess with Mr. In Between,” he said, getting a better grip on what remained of the old lady.

  “Huh? Wha?”

  “Never mind.”

  With Molly in her arms, Mary began to mount the ladder one slow step at a time. Jared (imagining the prowl car already pulling up out front, Rangle and Barrows looking at the sign on the lawn reading COME IN AND LOOK AROUND) socked his shoulder into Mary’s butt when she stopped halfway to the top. She looked down over her shoulder.

  “You’re getting a little personal there, Jared.”

  “Hurry up, then.”

  Somehow she struggled to the top without dropping her burden on his head. Jared followed, panting, pushing Mrs. Ransom through the opening. Mary had set Molly’s small body on the bare boards of the attic. The space ran the length of the house. It was low and very hot.

  “I’ll be back,” Jared said.

  “Okay, but I’m finding it very hard to care. The heat is making my head ache.”

  Jared hurried back to the master bedroom. He got his arms around Lila’s wrapped body and felt his sore knee give a warning twang. He had forgotten about her uniform, her heavy workshoes, and her utility belt. How much did all that add to the weight of a healthy, well-nourished female? Ten pounds? Twenty?

  He got her as far as the ladder, contemplated its steep incline, and thought, I’ll never be able to get her up there. No way.

  Then the doorbell rang, four cheery ascending chimes, and he started to climb, not panting now but gasping. He made it three-quarters of the way up the ladder, then ran out of gas. Just as he was trying to decide if he could get down without dropping his mother, two slim arms appeared, hands open. Mary, thank God. Jared managed another two steps, and Mary was able to grab Lila.

  From below, one of the deputies said, “Not even locked. Door’s wide open. Come on.”

  Jared shoved. Mary pulled. Together they managed to get Lila above the level of the trapdoor. Mary collapsed on her back, yanking Lila over and in. Jared grabbed the top of the ladder and pulled. It came up, folding in on itself as it did, and he pressed against it, easing it the last couple of feet so it wouldn’t bang shut.

  Down below, the other deputy called, “Yoo-hoo, anybody home?”

  “Like some woman in a bitch-bag is going to answer,” the other said, and the two of them laughed.

  Bitch-bags? Jared thought. Is that what you’re calling them? If my mother heard something like that come out of your mouths, she’d kick your country asses right up between your shoulder blades.

  They were still talking, but moving toward the kitchen side of the house, and Jared could no longer tell what they were saying. His fear had communicated itself to Mary, even in her dopey state, and she put her arms around him. He could smell her sweat, and when her cheek pressed against his, he could feel it.

  The voices came back, and Jared sent the cops below a thought command: Leave! The place is obviously empty, so just leave!

  Mary whispered in his ear. “There’s food in the fridge, Jere. In the pantry, too. A wrapper I tossed in the wastebasket. What if they—”

  Big cop shoes going clump-clump-clump, the deputies came up the stairs to the second floor. That was bad, but they weren’t talking about food in the fridge, or fresh trash in the can beside it, and that was good. (Ack-sen-tuate the positive.) They were discussing what to do about their lunch.

  From beneath them and to the left, one of the cops—Rangle, maybe—said, “This bedspread looks kinda rumpled to me. Does it to you?”

  “Yeah,” said the other. “Wouldn’t shock me if someone’s been squatting here, but more likely, people that come in to look at the place, prospective buyers, they probably sit down, too, sometimes, right? Or even try the bed. Natural thing to do.”

  More footsteps, back out into the hall. Clump-clump-clump. Then they stopped, and this time when the voices came, they were directly below. Mary tightened her arms around Jared’s neck and whispered. “If they catch us hiding up here, they’ll arrest us, won’t they!”

  “Shhh,” Jared whispered back, thinking, They would have arrested us even if they found us down there. Only they’d probably call it protective custody.

  “Trapdoor in the ceiling,” the one who was probably Barrows said. “You want to go up and check the attic, or should I?”

  The question was followed by a moment of silence that seemed to stretch out forever. Then the one who was probably Rangle said, “You can go up if you want to, but if Lila and her kid were in the house they’d be down here. And I got allergies. I’m not going up and breathing a lot of dust.”

  “Still . . .”

  “Have at it, buddy,” Rangle said, and all at once the ladder went flopping back down, spilling muted light into the attic. If Lila’s cocooned body had been even six inches closer to the open trapdoor, it would have been in view. “Enjoy the heat up there, too. I bet it’s a hundred and ten.”

  “Fuck it,” Barrows said. “And while I’m at it, fuck you and the horse you rode in on. Allergies. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  The ladder came back up, this time closing with a loud bang that made Jared twitch even though he’d known it was coming. The big cop shoes went clump-clump-clumping back down the stairs. Jared listened, holding his breath, as the deputies stood in the foyer, talking some more. Low tones. Impossible to catch more than a word or a phrase. Something about Terry Coombs; something about a new deputy named Geary; and something else again about lunch.

  Leave! Jared wanted to scream at them. Leave before Mary and me have fucking heatstrokes!

  At last the front door shut. Jared strained his ears to catch the sound of their cruiser starting up, but couldn’t. Either he’d spent too much time listening to loud music with his headphones on, or the attic insulation was too thick. He counted to a hundred, then back down to zero. He couldn’t stand to wait any longer. The heat was killing him.

  “I think they’re gone,” he said.

  Mary didn’t answer, and he realized her formerly tight grip on his neck had slackened. He had been concentrating too hard to notice until now. When he turned to look at her, her arms fell limply to her sides and she collapsed to the board floor.

  “Mary! Mary! Don’t go to sleep!”

  There was no response. Jared shoved the trapdoor open, not caring about the bang the ladder made when its feet landed on the hardwood floor below. He had forgotten about the cops. Mary was what he cared about now, and all he cared about.
Maybe it wasn’t too late.

  Only it was. Shaking did no good. Mary had fallen asleep while he was listening to make sure the cops weren’t coming back. Now she was lying beside Lila, her fine features already blurring beneath the white threads that were busily knitting themselves out of nothing.

  “No,” Jared whispered. “She tried so hard.”

  He sat there for almost five minutes, watching the cocoon thicken, weaving relentlessly, then called his father.

  It was all he could think to do.

  CHAPTER 4

  1

  In the world the women had somehow exited, Candy Meshaum had resided in a house on West Lavin, in the direction of the prison. Which was fitting, because her house had also been a prison. In this new world, she had chosen to live with some other women, all regular attendees of the Meeting, in an enclave they’d made out of a storage facility. The storage facility, like the Shopwell (and unlike the great majority of the other buildings in the area), had stayed almost entirely water-tight over the indeterminate number of years of abandonment. It was an L-shaped structure of two levels, box-upon-box-upon-box, hacked out of the surrounding woods and planted on a cement tarmac. Built of hard plastics and fiberglass, the storage pods had admirably fulfilled the leakproof promise of the faded advertisement on the sign outside. Grasses and trees had encroached on the tarmac, and leaves clogged the gutter system, but it had been an easy project to cut back the overgrowth and clear the drainage, and the opened pods, once emptied of useless boxes of possessions, had proven to be excellent if not exactly beautiful housing.

  Although Candy Meshaum had made a sweet try at it, hadn’t she, Lila thought.

  She walked around the box, which was filled with the natural light that came through the open bay door. There was a nicely made bed in the middle of the room, draped in a glossy red comforter that picked up the daylight. Hung on the windowless wall was a framed seascape: fair skies and a length of rocky coast. It had perhaps been scavenged from the original stored contents of the pod. In the corner was a rocking chair, and on the floor beside the chair was a basket of yarn punctured by two brass needles. Another basket nearby contained pairs of expertly knitted socks, examples of her work.