Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [205]
Ted clearly didn't; Evans clearly did. 'You didn't want to touch it.'
'That's right. I didn't want to touch it. It landed right side up on one of the green trash bags - I'd swear to that. Then, about an hour later, I went out with a bag of old medicines and shampoos and things from the bathroom. When I opened the lid of the garbage cabinet to put it in, the hat was turned over again. And this was tucked into the sweatband.' She pulled a folded sheet of paper from her purse and offered it to Evans with a hand that still trembled minutely. 'It wasn't there when the hat came out from behind the desk. I know that.'
Evans took the folded sheet and just held it for a moment. He didn't like it. It felt too heavy, and the texture was somehow wrong.
'I think there was a John Shooter,' she said. 'I think he was Mort's greatest creation - a character so vivid that he actually did become real.
'And I think that this is a message from a ghost.'
He took the slip of paper and opened it. Written halfway down was this message:
Missus - I am sorry for all the trouble. Things got out of hand. I am going back to my home now, I got my story, which is all I came for in the first place. It is called 'Crowfoot Mile,' and it is a crackerjack. Yours truly,
John Shooter
The signature was a bald scrawl below the neat lines of script.
'Is this your late husband's signature, Amy?' Evans asked.
'No,' she said. 'Nothing like it.'
The three of them sat in the office, looking at one another. Fred Evans tried to think of something to say and could not. After awhile, the silence (and the smell of Ted Milner's pipe) became more than any of them could stand. So Mr and Mrs Milner offered their thanks, said their goodbyes, and left his office to get on with their lives as best they could, and Fred Evans got on with his own as best he could, and sometimes, late at night, both he and the woman who had been married to Morton Rainey woke from dreams in which a man in a round-crowned black hat looked at them from sun-faded eyes caught in nets of wrinkles. He looked at them with no love ... but, they both felt, with an odd kind of stern pity.
It was not a kind expression, and it left no feeling of comfort, but they also both felt, in their different places, that they could find room to live with that look. And to tend their gardens.
THREE PAST MIDNIGHT:
A note on 'The Library Policeman'
On the morning when this story started to happen, I was sitting at the breakfast table with my son Owen. My wife had already gone upstairs to shower and dress. Those two vital seven o'clock divisions had been made: the scrambled eggs and the newspaper. Willard Scott, who visits our house five days out of every seven, was telling us about a lady in Nebraska who had just turned a hundred and four, and I think Owen and I had one whole pair of eyes open between us. A typical weekday morning chez King, in other words.
Owen tore himself away from the sports section just long enough to ask me if I'd be going by the mall that day - there was a book he wanted me to pick up for a school report. I can't remember what it was - it might have been Johnny Tremain or April Morning, Howard Fast's novel of the American Revolution - but it was one of those tomes you can never quite lay your hands on in a bookshop; it's always just out of print or just about to come back into print or some damned thing.
I suggested that Owen try the local library, which is a very good one. I was sure they'd have it. He muttered some reply. I only caught two words of it, but, given my interests, those two words were more than enough to pique my interest. They were 'library police.'
I put my half