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By Root 1063 0

was gone, too, and I had to start sellin things - my TV, my guitar, my truck, finally my house. But that don't matter. What matters is that I was there a lot, and I saw what went on. The little ones would have their chairs drawn up 'm a circle with Ardelia sittin in the middle. I'd be in the back of the room, sittin in one of those kid-sized chairs myself, wearin my old paint-spotted duster more often than not, drunk as a skunk, needin a shave, reekin of Scotch. And she'd be readin - readin one of her special Ardelia-stories - and then she'd break off and cock her head to one side, like she was listenin. The kids would stir around and look uneasy. They looked another way, too - like they was wakin out of a deep sleep she'd put em into.

' "We're going to have company," she'd say, smiling. "Isn't that special, children? Do I have some GoodBaby volunteers to help me get ready for our Big People company?" They'd all raise their hands when she said that, because they all wanted to be Good Babies. The posters I'd made showed em what happened to Bad Babies who didn't do right. Even I'd raise my hand, sittin drunk in the back of the room in my filthy old duster, lookin like the world's oldest, tiredest kid. And then they'd get up and some would take down my posters and others would take the regular posters out of the bottom drawer of her desk. They'd swap em. Then they'd sit down and she'd switch from whatever horrible thing she'd been tellin em to a story like "The Princess and the Pea," and sure enough, a few minutes later some mother'd poke her head in and see all the do-right Good Babies listenin to that nice Miss Lortz readin em a story, and they'd smile at whatever kid was theirs, and the kid would smile back, and things would go on.'

'What do you mean, "whatever horrible thing she'd been telling them?"

Sam asked. His voice was husky and his mouth felt dry. He had been listening to Dave with a mounting sense of horror and revulsion.

'Fairy tales,' Dave said. 'But she'd change em into horror stories. You'd be surprised how little work she had to do on most of em to make the change.'

'I wouldn't,' Naomi said grimly. 'I remember those stories.'

'I'll bet you do,' he said, 'but you never heard em like Ardelia told em. And the kids liked them - part of them liked the stories, and they liked her, because she drew on them and fascinated them the same way she drew on me. Well, not exactly, because there was never the sex thing - at least, I don't think so - but the darkness in her called to the darkness in them. Do you understand me?'

And Sam, who remembered his dreadful fascination with the story of Bluebeard and the dancing brooms in Fantasia, thought he did understand. Children hated and feared the darkness ... but it drew them, didn't it? It beckoned to them,

(come with me, son)

didn't it? It sang to them,

(I'm a poleethman)

didn't it?

Didn't it?

'I know what you mean, Dave,' he said.

He nodded. 'Have you figured it out yet, Sam? Who your Library Policeman was?'

'I still don't understand that part,' Sam said, but he thought part of him did. It was as if his mind was some deep, dark body of water and there was a boat sunk at the bottom of it - but not just any boat. No - this was a pirate schooner, full of loot and dead bodies, and now it had begun to shift in the muck which had held it so long. Soon, he feared, this ghostly, glaring wreck would surface again, its blasted masts draped with black seaweed and a skeleton with a million-dollar grin still lashed to the rotting remains of the wheel.

'I think maybe you do,' Dave said, 'or that you're beginning to. And it will have to come out, Sam. Believe me.'

'I still don't really understand about the stories' 'Naomi said.

'One of her favorites, Sarah - and it was a favorite of the children, too; you have to understand that, and believe it - was "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." You know the story, but you don't know it the way some people in this town -people who are grownups now, bankers and lawyers and big-time farmers with whole