Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [188]
I know you, Mort said in the dream.
That's right, pilgrim, John Kintner said in his bald, drawling Southern accent. You just put me together wrong. Now keep on writing. It's not five hundred. It's five thousand.
Mort started to turn, but his foot slipped on the edge of the gutter, and suddenly he was spilling outward, screaming into the dry, chalky air, and John Kintner was laughing, and he
41
- woke up on the floor with his head almost underneath the rogue coffee table, clutching at the carpet and crying out in high-pitched, whinnying shrieks.
He was at Tashmore Lake. Not in some weird, cyclopean classroom but at the lake ... and dawn was coming up misty in the east.
I'm all right. It was just a dream and I'm all right.
But he wasn't. Because it hadn't just been a dream. John Kintner had been real. How in God's name could he have forgotten John Kintner?
Mort had gone to college at Bates, and had majored in creative writing. Later, when he spoke to classes of aspiring writers (a chore he ducked whenever possible), he told them that such a major was probably the worst mistake a man or woman could make, if he or she wanted to write fiction for a living.
'Get a job with the post office,' he'd say. 'It worked for Faulkner.' And they would laugh. They liked to listen to him, and he supposed he was fairly good at keeping them entertained. That seemed very important, since he doubted that he or anyone else could teach them how to write creatively. Still, he was always glad to get out at the end of the class or seminar or workshop. The kids made him nervous. He supposed John Kintner was the reason why.
Had Kintner been from Mississippi? Mort couldn't remember, but he didn't think so. But he had been from some enclave of the Deep South all the same - Alabama, Louisiana, maybe the toolies of north Florida. He didn't know for sure. Bates College had been a long time ago, and he hadn't thought of John Kintner, who had suddenly dropped out one day for reasons known only to himself, in years.
That's not true. You thought about him last night.
Dreamed about him, you mean, Mort corrected himself quickly, but that hellish little voice inside would not let it go.
No, earlier than that. You thought about him while you were talking to Shooter on the telephone.
He didn't want to think about this. He wouldn't think about this. John Kintner was in the past; John Kintner had nothing to do with what was happening now. He got up and walked unsteadily toward the kitchen in the milky, early light to make strong coffee. Lots and lots of strong coffee. Except the hellish little voice wouldn't let him be. Mort looked at Amy's set of kitchen knives hanging from their magnetized steel runners and thought that if he could cut that little voice out, he would try the operation immediately.
You were thinking that you rocked the man - that you finally rocked him. You were thinking that the story had become the central issue again, the story and the accusation of plagiarism. Shooter treating you like a goddam college kid was the issue. Like a goddam college kid. Like a
'Shut up,' Mort said hoarsely. 'Just shut the fuck up.'
The voice did, but he found himself unable to stop thinking about John Kintner anyway.
As he measured coffee with a shaking hand, he thought of his constant, strident protestations that he hadn't plagiarized Shooter's story, that he had never plagiarized anything.
But he had, of course.
Once.
Just once.
'But that was so long ago,' he whispered. 'And it doesn't have anything to do with this.'
It might be true, but that did not stop his thoughts.
42
He had been a junior, and it was spring semester. The creative-writing class of which he was a part was focussing on