Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [283]
Naomi took Sam's hand and squeezed it briefly.
'I appreciate that,' Dave said, 'but it doesn't matter, because she intends to do for me and Sarah as well. The more the merrier, as she told me once. She has to take lives to get through her time of change ... and waking up must be a time of change for her, too.'
'You're saying that she means to possess Sam somehow, aren't you?' Naomi asked.
'I think I mean a little more than that, Sarah. I think she means to destroy whatever there is inside Sam that makes him Sam - I think she means to clean him out the way a kid cleans out a pumpkin to make a Halloween jack-o-lantern, and then she's going to put him on like you'd put on a suit of new clothes. And after that happens - if it does - he'll go on lookin like a man named Sam Peebles, but he won't be a man anymore, no more than Ardelia Lortz was ever a woman. There's somethin not human, some it hidin inside her skin, and I think I always knew that. It's inside . . . but it's forever an outsider. Where did Ardelia Lortz come from? Where did she live before she came to Junction City? I think, if you checked, you'd find that everything she put on the references she showed Mr Lavin was a lie, and that nobody in town really knew. I think it was John Power's curiosity about that very thing that sealed his fate. But I think there was a real Ardelia Lortz at one time . . . in Pass Christian, Mississippi ... or Harrisburg, Pennsylvania ... or Portland, Maine ... and the it took her over and put her on. Now she wants to do it again. If we let that happen, I think that later this year, in some other town, in San Francisco, California ... or Butte, Montana ... or Kingston, Rhode Island ... a man named Sam Peebles will show up. Most people will like him. Children in particular will like him ... although they may be afraid of him, too, in some way they don't understand and can't talk about.
'And, of course, he will be a librarian.'
CHAPTER 12
By Air to Des Moines
1
Sam looked at his wristwatch and was astounded to see it was almost 3:00 P.M. Midnight was only nine hours away, and then the tall man with the silver eyes would be back. Or Ardelia Lortz would be back. Or maybe both of them together.
'What do you think I should do, Dave? Go out to the local graveyard and find Ardelia's body and pound a stake through her heart?'
'A good trick if you could do it,' he replied, 'since the lady was cremated.'
'Oh,' Sam said. He settled back into his chair with a little helpless sigh.
Naomi took his hand again. 'In any case, you won't be doing anything alone,' she said firmly. 'Dave says she means to do us as well as you, but that's almost beside the point. Friends stand by when there's trouble. That's the point. What else are they for?'
Sam lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. 'Thank you - but I don't know what you can do. Or me, either. There doesn't seem to be anything to do. Unless . . .' He looked at Dave hopefully. 'Unless I ran?'
Dave shook his head. 'She - or it - sees. I told you that. I guess you could drive most of the way to Denver before midnight if you really put your foot down and the cops didn't catch you, but Ardelia Lortz would be right there to greet you when you got out of your car. Or you'd look over in some dark mile and see the Library Policeman sittin next to you on the seat.'
The thought of that - the white face and silver eyes, illuminated only by the green glow of the dashboard lights - made Sam shiver.
'What, then?'
'I think you both know what has to be done first,' Dave said. He drank the last of his iced tea and then set the glass on the porch. 'Just think a minute, and you'll see.'
Then they all looked out toward the grain elevator for awhile. Sam's mind was a roaring confusion; all he could catch hold of were isolated snatches of Dave Duncan's story and the voice of the Library Policeman, with his strange little lisp, saying