Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [311]
He closed the licorice gently over it. He could feel it suddenly, wriggling and squirming under the sugary blanket. What if it breaks? What if it just breaks open before I can pull it off her? It's all Ardelia's concentrated poison ... what if it breaks before I get it off?
The oncoming train whistled again. The sound buried Sarah's shriek of pain.
'Steady
He simultaneously pulled the licorice back and folded it over. He had it; it was caught in the candy, pulsing and throbbing like a tiny sick heart. On the back of Sarah's neck were three tiny dark holes, no bigger than pinpricks.
'It's gone!' she cried. 'Sam, it's gone!'
'Not yet,' Sam said grimly. The licorice lay on his palm again, and a bubble was pushing up its surface, straining to break through
The train was roaring past the Junction City depot now, the depot where a man named Brian Kelly had once tossed Dave Duncan four bits and then told him to get in the wind. Less than three hundred yards away and coming fast.
Sam pushed past Sarah and knelt by the tracks.
'Sam, what are you doing?'
'Here you go, Ardelia,' he murmured. 'Try this.' He slapped the pulsing, stretching blob of red licorice down on one of the gleaming steel rails.
In his mind he heard a shriek of unutterable fury and terror. He stood back, watching the thing trapped inside the licorice struggle and push. The candy split open ... he saw a darker red inside trying to push itself out ... and then the 2:20 to Omaha rushed over it in an organized storm of pounding rods and grinding wheels.
The licorice disappeared, and inside of Sam Peebles's mind, that drilling shriek was cut off as if with a knife.
He stepped back and turned to Sarah. She was swaying on her feet, her eyes wide and full of dazed joy. He slipped his arms around her waist and held her as the boxcars and flatcars and tankers thundered past them, blowing their hair back.
They stood like that until the caboose passed, trailing its small red lights off into the west. Then she drew away from him a little - but not out of the circle of his arms - and looked at him.
'Am I free, Sam? Am I really free of her? It feels like I am, but I can hardly believe it.'
'You're free,' Sam agreed. 'Your fine is paid, too, Sarah. Forever and ever, your fine is paid.'
She brought her face to his and began to cover his lips and cheeks and eyes with small kisses. Her own eyes did not close as she did this; she looked at him gravely all the while.
He took her hands at last and said, 'Why don't we go back inside, and finish paying our respects? Your friends will be wondering where you are.'
'They can be your friends, too, Sam ... if you want them to be.'
He nodded. 'I do. I want that a lot.'
'Honesty and belief,' she said, and touched his cheek.
'Those are the words.' He kissed her again, then offered his arm. 'Will you walk with me, lady?'
She linked her arm through his. 'Anywhere you want, sir. Anywhere at all.'
They walked slowly back across the lawn to Angle Street together, arm in arm.
A Note on 'The Sun Dog'
Every now and then someone will ask me, 'When are you going to get tired of this horror stuff, Steve, and write something serious?'
I used to believe the implied insult in this question was accidental, but as the years go by I have become more and more convinced that it is not. I watch the faces of the people who drop that particular dime, you see, and most of them look like bombardiers waiting to see if their last stick of bombs is going to fall wide or hit the targeted factory or munitions dump dead on.
The fact is, almost all of the stuff I have written - and that includes a lot of the funny stuff - was written in a serious frame of mind. I can remember very few occasions when I sat at the typewriter laughing
uncontrollably over some wild and crazy bit of fluff I had just finished churning out. I'm never going to be Reynolds Price or Larry Woiwode - it isn't in me - but that doesn't mean I don't care as deeply about what I do. I have to do what I can do,