Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [213]
His clearest sense, however, was one of almost wistful pleasure. On one wall was a photograph of a puppy with large, thoughtful eyes. Written beneath the puppy's anxious-hopeful face was one of the world's great truths: IT IS HARD TO BE GOOD. On another wall was a drawing of mallards making their way down a riverbank to the reedy verge of the water. MAKE WAY FOR DUCKLINGS! the poster trumpeted.
Sam looked to his left, and the faint smile on his lips first faltered and then died. Here was a poster which showed a large, dark car speeding away from what he supposed was a school building. A little boy was looking out of the passenger window. His hands were plastered against the glass and his mouth was open in a scream. In the background, a man - only a vague, ominous shape - was hunched over the wheel, driving hell for leather. The words beneath this picture read:
NEVER TAKE RIDES FROM STRANGERS!
Sam recognized that this poster and the Little Red Riding Hood picture on the door of the Children's Library both appealed to the same primitive emotions of dread, but he found this one much more disturbing. Of course children shouldn't accept rides from strangers, and of course they had to be taught not to do so, but was this the right way to make the point?
How many kids, he wondered, have had a week's worth of nightmares thanks to that little public service announcement?
And there was another one, posted right on the front of the checkout desk, that struck a chill as deep as January down Sam's back. It showed a dismayed boy and girl, surely no older than eight, cringing back from a man in a trenchcoat and gray hat. The man looked at least eleven feet tall; his shadow fell on the upturned faces of the children. The brim of his 1940s-style fedora threw its own shadow, and the eyes of the man in the trenchcoat gleamed relentlessly from its black depths. They looked like chips of ice as they studied the children, marking them with the grim gaze of Authority. He was holding out an ID folder with a star pinned to it - an odd sort of star, with at least nine points on it. Maybe as many as a dozen. The message beneath read:
AVOID THE LIBRARY POLICE!
GOOD BOYS AND GIRLS RETURN THEIR BOOKS ON TIME!
That taste was in his mouth again. That sweet, unpleasant taste. And a queer. frightening thought occurred to him: I have seen this man before. But that was ridiculous, of course. Wasn't it?
Sam thought of how such a poster would have intimidated him as a child - of how much simple, unalloyed pleasure it would have stolen from the safe haven of the library - and felt indignation rise in his chest. He took a step toward the poster to examine the odd star more closely, taking his roll of Tums out of his pocket at the same time.
He was putting one of them into his mouth when a voice spoke up from behind him. 'Well, hello there!'
He jumped and turned around, ready to do battle with the library dragon, now that it had finally disclosed itself.
2
No dragon presented itself. There was only a plump, white-haired woman of about fifty-five, pushing a trolley of books on silent rubber tires. Her white hair fell around her pleasant, unlined face in neat beautyshop curls.
'I suppose you were looking for me,' she said. 'Did Mr Peckham direct you in here?'
'I didn't see anybody at all.'
'No? Then he's gone along home,' she said. 'I'm not really surprised, since it's Friday. Mr Peckham comes in to dust and read the paper every morning around eleven. He's the janitor - only part-time, of course. Sometimes he stays until one -one-thirty