Four Past Midnight

to make up for the missing volumes? It had been years since I'd thought of the Library Police (although not since childhood; I can clearly remember discussing them with Peter Straub and his son, Ben, six or eight years ago), but now all those old questions, both dreadful and somehow enticing, recurred.

I found myself musing on the Library Police over the next three or four days, and as I mused, I began to glimpse the outlines of the story which follows. This is the way stories usually happen for me, but the musing period usually lasts a lot longer than it did in this case. When I began, the story was titled 'The Library Police,' and I had no clear idea of where I was going with it. I thought it would probably be a funny story, sort of like the suburban nightmares the late Max Shulman used to bolt together. After all, the idea was funny, wasn't it? I mean, the Library Police! How absurd!

What I realized, however, was something I knew already: the fears of childhood have a hideous persistence. Writing is an act of self-hypnosis, and in that state a kind of total emotional recall often takes place and terrors which should have been long dead start to walk and talk again.

As I worked on this story, that began to happen to me. I knew, going in, that I had loved the library as a kid - why not? It was the only place a relatively poor kid like me could get all the books he wanted - but as I continued to write, I became reacquainted with a deeper truth: I had also feared it. I feared becoming lost in the dark stacks, I feared being forgotten in a dark corner of the reading room and ending up locked in for the night, I feared the old librarian with the blue hair and the cat's-eye glasses and the almost lipless mouth who would pinch the backs of your hands with her long, pale fingers and hiss 'Shhhh!' if you forgot where you were and started to talk too loud. And yes, I feared the Library Police.

What happened with a much longer work, a novel called Christine, began to happen here. About thirty pages in, the humor began to go out of the situation. And about fifty pages in, the whole story took a screaming left turn into the dark places I have travelled so often and which I still know so little about. Eventually I found the guy I was looking for, and managed to raise my head enough to look into his merciless silver eyes. I have tried to bring back a sketch of him for you, Constant Reader, but it may not be very good.

My hands were trembling quite badly when I made it, you see.

CHAPTER 1

The Stand-In

1

Everything, Sam Peebles decided later, was the fault of the goddamned acrobat. If the acrobat hadn't gotten drunk at exactly the wrong time, Sam never would have ended up in such trouble.

It is not bad enough, he thought with a perhaps justifiable bitterness, that life is like a narrow beam over an endless chasm, a beam we have to walk blindfolded. It's bad, but not bad enough. Sometimes, we also get pushed.

But that was later. First, before the Library Policeman, was the drunken acrobat.

2

In Junction City, the last Friday of every month was Speaker's Night at the local Rotarians' Hall. On the last Friday in March of 1990, the Rotarians were scheduled to hear - and to be entertained by - The Amazing Joe, an acrobat with Curry & Trembo's All-Star Circus and Travelling Carnival.

The telephone on Sam Peebles's desk at Junction City Realty and Insurance rang at five past four on Thursday afternoon. Sam picked it up. It was always Sam who picked it up - either Sam in person or Sam on the answering machine, because he was Junction City Realty and Insurance's owner and sole employee. He was not a rich man, but he was a reasonably happy one. He liked to tell people that his first Mercedes was still quite a distance in the future, but he had a Ford which was almost new and owned his own home on Kelton Avenue. 'Also, the business keeps me in beer and skittles,' he liked to add ... although in truth, he hadn't drunk much beer since college and wasn't exactly sure what skittles were. He thought they might be pretzels.

'Junction City Realty and In - '

'Sam, this is Craig. The acrobat broke his neck.'

'What?'

'You heard me!' Craig Jones cried in deeply aggrieved tones. 'The acrobat broke his fucking neck!'

'Oh,' Sam said. 'Gee.' He thought about this for a moment and then asked cautiously, 'Is he dead, Craig?'

'No, he's not dead, but he might as well be as far as we're concerned. He's in the hospital over in Cedar Rapids with his neck dipped in about twenty pounds of plaster. Billy Bright just called me. He said the guy came on drunk as a skunk at the matinee this afternoon, tried to do a back-over flip, and landed outside the center ring on the nape of his neck. Billy said he could hear it way up in the bleachers, where he was sitting. He said it sounded like when you step in a puddle that just iced over.'

'Ouch!' Sam exclaimed, wincing.

'I'm not surprised. After all - The Amazing Joe. What kind of name is that for a circus performer? I mean, The Amazing Randix, okay. The Amazing Tortellini, still not bad. But The Amazing Joe? It sounds like a prime example of brain damage in action to me.'

'Jesus, that's too bad.'

'Fucking shit on toast is what it is. It leaves us without a speaker tomorrow night, good buddy.'

Sam began to wish he had left the office promptly at four. Craig would have been stuck with Sam the answering machine, and that would have given Sam the living being a little more time to think. He felt he would soon need time to think. He also felt that Craig Jones was not going to give him any.

'Yes,' he said, 'I guess that's true enough.' He hoped he sounded philosophical but helpless. 'What a shame.'

'It sure is,' Craig said, and then dropped the dime. 'But I know you'll be happy to step in and fill the slot.'

'Me? Craig, you've got to be kidding! I can't even do a somersault, let alone a back- over fl - '

'Thought you could talk about the importance of the independently owned business in small-town life,' Craig Jones pressed on relentlessly. 'If that doesn't do it for you, there's baseball. Lacking that, you could always drop your pants and wag your wing-wang at the audience. Sam, I am not just the head of the Speaker's Committee - that would be bad enough. But since Kenny moved away and Carl quit coming, I am the Speaker's Committee. Now, you've got to help me. I need a speaker tomorrow night. There are about five guys in the whole damn club I feel I can trust in a pinch, and you're one of them.'

'But - '

'You're also the only one who hasn't filled in already in a situation like this, so you're elected, buddy-