The Langoliers

by Stephen King

  “I’m sorry,” Rudy said for the fifth time. “I really thought he was out. Out cold.”

  Laurel ignored him. “How are you, Dinah?” she asked softly. She didn’t want to look at the wooden handle growing out of the girl’s dress, but couldn’t take her eyes from it. There was very little blood, at least so far; a circle the size of a demitasse cup around the place where the blade had gone in, and that was all.

  So far.

  “It hurts,” Dinah said in a faint voice. “It’s hard to breathe. And it’s hot.”

  “You’re going to be all right,” Laurel said, but her eyes were drawn relentlessly back to the handle of the knife. The girl was very small, and she couldn’t understand why the blade hadn’t gone all the way through her. Couldn’t understand why she wasn’t dead already.

  “… out of here,” Dinah said. She grimaced, and a thick, slow curdle of blood escaped from the corner of her mouth and ran down her cheek.

  “Don’t try to talk, honey,” Laurel said, and brushed damp curls back from Dinah’s forehead.

  “You have to get out of here,” Dinah insisted. Her voice was little more than a whisper. “And you shouldn’t blame Mr. Toomy. He’s… he’s scared, that’s all. Of them.”

  Don looked around balefully. “If I find that bastard, I’ll scare him,” he said, and curled both hands into fists. A lodge ring gleamed above one knuckle in the growing gloom. “I’ll make him wish he was born dead.”

  Nick came into the restaurant then, followed by Albert. He pushed past Rudy Warwick without a word of apology and knelt next to Dinah. His bright gaze fixed upon the handle of the knife for a moment, then moved to the child’s face.

  “Hello, love.” He spoke cheerily, but his eyes had darkened. “I see you’ve been air-conditioned. Not to worry; you’ll be right as a trivet in no time flat.”

  Dinah smiled a little. “What’s a trivet?” she whispered. More blood ran out of her mouth as she spoke, and Laurel could see it on her teeth. Laurel’s stomach did a slow, lazy roll.

  “I don’t know, but I’m sure it’s something nice,” Nick replied. “I’m going to turn your head to one side. Be as still as you can.”

  “Okay.”

  Nick moved her head, very gently, until her cheek was almost resting on the carpet. “Hurt?”

  “Yes,” Dinah whispered. “Hot. Hurts to… breathe.” Her whispery voice had taken on a hoarse, cracked quality. A thin stream of blood ran from her mouth and pooled on the carpet less than ten feet from the place where Craig Toomy’s blood was drying.

  From outside came the sudden high-pressure whine of aircraft engines starting. Don, Rudy, and Albert looked in that direction. Nick never looked away from the girl. He spoke gently. “Do you feel like coughing, Dinah?”

  “Yes… no… don’t know.”

  “It’s better if you don’t,” he said. “If you get that tickly feeling, try to ignore it. And don’t talk anymore, right?”

  “Don’t… hurt… Mr. Toomy.” Her words, whispered though they were, conveyed great emphasis, great urgency.

  “No, love, wouldn’t think of it. Take it from me.”

  “… don’t… trust… you…”

  He bent, kissed her cheek, and whispered in her ear: “But you can, you know—trust me, I mean. For now, all you’ve got to do is lie still and let us take care of things.”

  He looked at Laurel.

  “You didn’t try to remove the knife?”

  “I… no.” Laurel swallowed. There was a hot, harsh lump in her throat. The swallow didn’t move it. “Should I have?”

  “If you had, there wouldn’t be much chance. Do you have any nursing experience?”

  “No.”

  “All right, I’m going to tell you what to do… but first I need to know if the sight of blood—quite a bit of it—is going to make you pass out. And I need the truth.”

  Laurel said, “I haven’t really seen a lot of blood since my sister ran into a door and knocked out two of her teeth while we were playing hide-and-seek. But I didn’t faint then.”

  “Good. And you’re not going to faint now. Mr. Warwick, bring me half a dozen tablecloths from that grotty little pub around the corner.” He smiled down at the girl. “Give me a minute or two, Dinah, and I think you’ll feel much better. Young Dr. Hopewell is ever so gentle with the ladies—especially the ones who are young and pretty.”

  Laurel felt a sudden and absolutely absurd desire to reach out and touch Nick’s hair.

  What’s the matter with you? This little girl is probably dying, and you’re wondering what his hair feels like! Quit it! How stupid can you be?

  Well, let’s see… Stupid enough to have been flying across the country to meet a man I first contacted through the personals column of a so-called friendship magazine. Stupid enough to have been planning to sleep with him if he turned out to be reasonably presentable… and if he didn’t have bad breath, of course.

  Oh, quit it! Quit it, Laurel!

  Yes, the other voice in her mind agreed. You’re absolutely right, it’s crazy to be thinking things like that at a time like this, and I will quit it… but I wonder what Young Dr. Hopewell would be like in bed? I wonder if he would be gentle, or—

  Laurel shivered and wondered if this was the way your average nervous breakdown started.

  “They’re closer,” Dinah said. “You really…” She coughed, and a large bubble of blood appeared between her lips. It popped, splattering her cheeks. Don Gaffney muttered and turned away. “… really have to hurry,” she finished.

  Nick’s cheery smile didn’t change a bit. “I know,” he said.

  3

  Craig dashed across the terminal, nimbly vaulted the escalator’s handrail, and ran down the frozen metal steps with panic roaring and beating in his head like the sound of the ocean in a storm; it even drowned out that other sound, the relentless chewing, crunching sound of the langoliers. No one saw him go. He sprinted across the lower lobby toward the exit doors… and crashed into them. He had forgotten everything, including the fact that the electric-eye door-openers wouldn’t work with the power out.

  He rebounded, the breath knocked out of him, and fell to the floor, gasping like a netted fish. He lay there for a moment, groping for whatever remained of his mind, and found himself gazing at his right hand. It was only a white blob in the growing darkness, but he could see the black splatters on it, and he knew what they were: the little girl’s blood.

  Except she wasn’t a little girl, not really. She just looked like a little girl. She was the head langolier, and with her gone the others won’t be able to… won’t be able to… to…

  To what?

  To find him?

  But he could still hear the hungry sound of their approach: that maddening chewing sound, as if somewhere to the east a tribe of huge, hungry insects was on the march.

  His mind whirled. Oh, he was so confused.

  Craig saw a smaller door leading outside, got up, and started in that direction. Then he stopped. There was a road out there, and the road undoubtedly led to the town of Bangor, but so what? He didn’t care about Bangor; Bangor was most definitely not part of that fabled BIG PICTURE. It was Boston that he had to get to. If he could get there, everything would be all right. And what did that mean? His father would have known. It meant he had to STOP SCAMPERING AROUND and GET WITH THE PROGRAM.

  His mind seized on this idea the way a shipwreck victim seizes upon a piece of wreckage—anything that still floats, even if it’s only the shithouse door, is a prize to be cherished. If he could get to Boston, this whole experience would be… would be…

  “Set aside,” he muttered.

  At the words, a bright beam of rational light seemed to shaft through the darkness inside his head, and a voice (it might have been his father’s) cried out YES!! in affirmation.

  But how was he to do that? Boston was too far to walk and the others wouldn’t let him back on board the only plane that still worked. Not after what he had done
to their little blind mascot.

  “But they don’t know,” Craig whispered. “They don’t know I did them a favor, because they don’t know what she is.” He nodded his head sagely. His eyes, huge and wet in the dark, gleamed.

  Stow away, his father’s voice whispered to him. Stow away on the plane.

  Yes! his mother’s voice added. Stow away! That’s the ticket, Craiggy-weggy! Only if you do that, you won’t need a ticket, will you?

  Craig looked doubtfully toward the luggage conveyor belt. He could use it to get to the tarmac, but suppose they had posted a guard by the plane? The pilot wouldn’t think of it—once out of his cockpit, the man was obviously an imbecile—but the Englishman almost surely would.

  So what was he supposed to do?

  If the Bangor side of the terminal was no good, and the runway side of the terminal was also no good, what was he supposed to do and where was he supposed to go?

  Craig looked nervously at the dead escalator. They would be hunting him soon—the Englishman undoubtedly leading the pack—and here he stood in the middle of the floor, as exposed as a stripper who has just tossed her pasties and g-string into the audience.

  I have to hide, at least for awhile.

  He had heard the jet engines start up outside, but this did not worry him; he knew a little about planes and understood that Engle couldn’t go anywhere until he had refuelled. And refuelling would take time. He didn’t have to worry about them leaving without him.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Hide, Craiggy-weggy. That’s what you have to do right now. You have to hide before they come for you.

  He turned slowly, looking for the best place, squinting into the growing dark. And this time he saw a sign on a door tucked between the Avis desk and the Bangor Travel Agency.

  AIRPORT SERVICES,

  it read. A sign which could mean almost anything.

  Craig hurried across to the door, casting nervous looks back over his shoulder as he went, and tried it. As with the door to Airport Security, the knob would not turn but the door opened when he pushed on it. Craig took one final look over his shoulder, saw no one, and closed the door behind him.

  Utter, total dark swallowed him; in here, he was as blind as the little girl he had stabbed. Craig didn’t mind. He was not afraid of the dark; in fact, he rather liked it. Unless you were with a woman, no one expected you to do anything significant in the dark. In the dark, performance ceased to be a factor.

  Even better, the chewing sound of the langoliers was muffled.

  Craig felt his way slowly forward, hands outstretched, feet shuffling. After three of these shuffling steps, his thigh came in contact with a hard object that felt like the edge of a desk. He reached forward and down. Yes. A desk. He let his hands flutter over it for a moment, taking comfort in the familiar accoutrements of white-collar America: a stack of paper, an IN/OUT basket, the edge of a blotter, a caddy filled with paper-clips, a pencil-and-pen set. He worked his way around the desk to the far side, where his hip bumped the arm of a chair. Craig maneuvered himself between the chair and the desk and then sat down. Being behind a desk made him feel better still. It made him feel like himself—calm, in control. He fumbled for the top drawer and pulled it open. Felt inside for a weapon—something sharp. His hand happened almost immediately upon a letter-opener.

  He took it out, shut the drawer, and put it on the desk by his right hand.

  He just sat there for a moment, listening to the muffled whisk-thud of his heartbeat and the dim sound of the jet engines, then sent his hands fluttering delicately over the surface of the desk again until they re-encountered the stack of papers. He took the top sheet and brought it toward him, but there wasn’t a glimmer of white… not even when he held it right in front of his eyes.

  That’s all right, Craiggy-weggy. You just sit here in the dark. Sit here and wait until it’s time to move. When the time comes—

  I’ll tell you, his father finished grimly.

  “That’s right,” Craig said. His fingers spidered up the unseen sheet of paper to the righthand corner. He tore smoothly downward.

  Riii-ip.

  Calm filled his mind like cool blue water. He dropped the unseen strip on the unseen desk and returned his fingers to the top of the sheet. Everything was going to be fine. Just fine. He began to sing under his breath in a tuneless little whisper.

  “Just call me angel… of the morn-ing, ba-by…”

  Riii-ip.

  “Just touch my cheek before you leave me… ba-by…”

  Calm now, at peace, Craig sat and waited for his father to tell him what he should do next, just as he had done so many times as a child.

  4

  “Listen carefully, Albert,” Nick said. “We have to take her on board the plane, but we’ll need a litter to do it. There won’t be one on board, but there must be one in here. Where?”

  “Gee, Mr. Hopewell, Captain Engle would know better than—”

  “But Captain Engle isn’t here,” Nick said patiently. “We shall have to manage on our own.”

  Albert frowned… then thought of a sign he had seen on the lower level. “Airport Services?” he asked. “Does that sound right?”

  “It bloody well does,” Nick said. “Where did you see that?”

  “On the lower level. Next to the rent-a-car counters.”

  “All right,” Nick said. “Here’s how we’re going to handle this. You and Mr. Gaffney are designated litter-finders and litter-bearers. Mr. Gaffney, I suggest you check by the grill behind the counter. I expect you’ll find some sharp knives. I’m sure that’s where our unpleasant friend found his. Get one for you and one for Albert.”

  Don went behind the counter without a word. Rudy Warwick returned from The Red Baron Bar with an armload of red-and-white-checked tablecloths.

  “I’m really sorry—” he began again, but Nick cut him off. He was still looking at Albert, his face now only a circle of white above the deeper shadow of Dinah’s small body. The dark had almost arrived.

  “You probably won’t see Mr. Toomy; my guess is that he left here unarmed, in a panic. I imagine he’s either found a bolthole by now or has left the terminal. If you do see him, I advise you very strongly not to engage him unless he makes it necessary.” He swung his head to look at Don as Don returned with a pair of butcher knives. “Keep your priorities straight, you two. Your mission isn’t to recapture Mr. Toomy and bring him to justice. Your job is to get a stretcher and bring it here as quick as you can. We have to get out of here.”

  Don offered Albert one of the knives, but Albert shook his head and looked at Rudy Warwick. “Could I have one of those tablecloths instead?”

  Don looked at him as if Albert had gone crazy. “A tablecloth? What in God’s name for?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  Albert had been kneeling by Dinah. Now he got up and went behind the counter. He peered around, not sure exactly what he was looking for, but positive he would know it when he saw it. And so he did. There was an old-fashioned two-slice toaster sitting well back on the counter. He picked it up, jerking the plug out of the wall, and wrapped the cord tightly around it as he came back to where the others were. He took one of the tablecloths, spread it, and placed the toaster in one corner. Then he turned it over twice, wrapping the toaster in the end of the tablecloth like a Christmas present. He fashioned tight rabbit’s-ear knots in the corners to make a pocket. When he gripped the loose end of the tablecloth and stood up, the wrapped toaster had become a rock in a makeshift sling.

  “When I was a kid, we used to play Indiana Jones,” Albert said apologetically. “I made something like this and pretended it was my whip. I almost broke my brother David’s arm once. I loaded an old blanket with a sashweight I found in the garage. Pretty stupid, I guess. I didn’t know how hard it would hit. I got a hell of a spanking for it. It looks stupid, I guess, but it actually works pretty well. It always did, at least.”

  Nick looked at Albert’s makeshift weapon dubiousl
y but said nothing. If a toaster wrapped in a tablecloth made Albert feel more comfortable about going downstairs in the dark, so be it.

  “Good enough, then. Now go find a stretcher and bring it back. If there isn’t one in the Airport Services office, try someplace else. If you don’t find anything in fifteen minutes—no, make that ten—just come back and we’ll carry her.”

  “You can’t do that!” Laurel cried softly. “If there’s internal bleeding—”

  Nick looked up at her. “There’s internal bleeding already. And ten minutes is all the time I think we can spare.”

  Laurel opened her mouth to answer, to argue, but Dinah’s husky whisper stopped her. “He’s right.”

  Don slipped the blade of his knife into his belt. “Come on, son,” he said. They crossed the terminal together and started down the escalator to the first floor. Albert wrapped the end of his loaded tablecloth around his hand as they went.

  5

  Nick turned his attention back to the girl on the floor. “How are you feeling, Dinah?”

  “Hurts bad,” Dinah said faintly.

  “Yes, of course it does,” Nick said. “And I’m afraid that what I’m about to do is going to make it hurt a good deal more, for a few seconds, at least. But the knife is in your lung, and it’s got to come out. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” Her dark, unseeing eyes looked up at him. “Scared.”

  “So am I, Dinah. So am I. But it has to be done. Are you game?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good girl.” Nick bent and planted a soft kiss on her cheek. “That’s a good, brave girl. It won’t take long, and that’s a promise. I want you to lie just as still as you can, Dinah, and try not to cough. Do you understand me? It’s very important. Try not to cough.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “There may be a moment or two when you feel that you can’t breathe. You may even feel that you’re leaking, like a tire with a puncture. That’s a scary feeling, love, and it may make you want to move around, or cry out. You mustn’t do it. And you mustn’t cough.”