Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [242]
In the bright light of a spring morning his fears of the previous night seemed both distant and absurd, and he felt a strong temptation - almost a need - to simply let the matter rest. Something had happened to him, he thought, something which had no reasonable, rational explanation. The question was, so what?
He had read about such things, about ghosts and premonitions and possessions, but they held only minimal interest for him. He liked a spooky movie once in awhile, but that was about as far as it went. He was a practical man, and he could see no practical use for paranormal episodes ... if they did indeed occur. He had experienced ... well, call it an event, for want of a better word. Now the event was over. Why not leave it at that?
Because she said she wanted the books back by tomorrow - what about that?
But this seemed to have no power over him now. In spite of the message she had left on his answering machine, Sam no longer exactly believed in Ardelia Lortz.
What did interest him was his own reaction to what had happened. He found himself remembering a college biology lecture. The instructor had begun by saying that the human body had an extremely efficient way of dealing with the incursion of alien organisms. Sam remembered the teacher saying that because the bad news - cancer, influenza, and sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis - got all the headlines, people tended to believe they were a lot more vulnerable to disease than they really were. 'The human body,' the instructor had said, 'has its own Green Beret force at its disposal.
When the human body is attacked by an outsider, ladies and gentlemen, the response of this force is quick and without mercy. No quarter is given. Without this army of trained killers, each of you would have been dead twenty times over before the end of your first year.'
The prime technique the body employed to rid itself of invaders was isolation. The invaders were first surrounded, cut off from the nutrients they needed to live, then either eaten, beaten, or starved. Now Sam was discovering - or thought he was - that the mind employed exactly the same technique when it was attacked. He could remember many occasions when he had felt he was coming down with a cold only to wake up the next morning feeling fine. The body had done its work. A vicious war had been going on even as he slept, and the invaders had been wiped out to the last man ... or bug. They had been eaten, beaten, or starved.
Last night he had experienced the mental equivalent of an impending cold. This morning the invader, the threat to his clear, rational perceptions, had been surrounded. Cut off from its nutrients. Now it was only a matter of time. And part of him was warning the rest of him that, by investigating this business further, he might be feeding the enemy.
This is how it happens, he thought. This is why the world isn't full of reports of strange happenings and inexplicable phenomena. The mind experiences them ... reels around for awhile ... then counterattacks.
But he was curious. That was the thing. And didn't they say that, although curiosity killed the cat, satisfaction brought the beast back?
Who? Who says?
He didn't know ... but he supposed he could find out. At his local library. Sam smiled a little as he took his dishes over to the sink. And discovered he had already made his decision: he would pursue this crazy business just a little further.
Just a little bit.
2
Sam arrived back at Angle Street around twelve-thirty. He was not terribly surprised to see Naomi's old blue Datsun parked in the driveway. Sam parked behind it, got out, and climbed the rickety steps past the sign telling him he'd have to drop any bottles he might have in the trash barrel. He knocked, but there was no answer. He pushed the door open, revealing a wide hall that was barren of furniture ... unless the pay telephone halfway down counted. The wallpaper was clean but faded. Sam saw