Four Past Midnight

little girl?' Ardelia asked him. 'Yes,' he says. 'Do you know why that Bad Thing is getting ready to eat her?' Ardelia asks. 'No,' the kid says back, his eyes all big and solemn and full of tears. 'Because he forgot to bring back his library book on time,' she says. 'You won't ever do that, Willy, will you?' 'No, never,' the little boy says, and Ardelia says, 'You better not.' And then she led him into the Children's Room for Story Hour, still holdin him by the hand. That kid - it was Willy Klemmart, who got killed in Vietnam - looked back over his shoulder at where I was, standin on my scaffold with a paintbrush in my hand, and I could read his eyes like they were a newspaper headline. Save me from her, his eyes said. Please, Mr Duncan. But how could I? I couldn't even save myself.'

Dave produced a clean but badly wrinkled bandanna from the depths of one back pocket and blew a mighty honk into it.

'Mr Lavin began by thinkin Ardelia just about walked on water, but he changed his mind after awhile. They got into a hell of a scrap over that Red Ridin Hood poster about a week before he died. He never liked it. Maybe he didn't have a very good idea of what went on durin Story Hour - I'll get to that pretty soon -but he wasn't entirely blind. He saw the way the kids looked at that poster. At last he told her to take it down. That was when the argument started. I didn't hear it all because I was on the scaffold, high above them, and the acoustics were bad, but I heard enough. He said somethin about scaring the children, or maybe it was scarring the children, and she said somethin back about how it helped her keep 'the rowdy element' under control. She called it a teachin tool, just like the hickory stick.

'But he stuck to his guns and she finally had to take it down. That night, at her house, she was like a tiger in the zoo after some kid has spent all day pokin it with a stick. She went back and forth in great big long strides, not a stitch on, her hair flyin out behind her. I was in bed, drunk as a lord. But I remember she turned around and her eyes had gone from silver to bright red, as if her brains had caught afire, and her mouth looked funny, like it was tryin to pull itself right out of her face, or somethin. It almost scared me sober. I hadn't ever seen nothin like that, and never wanted to see it again.

' 'I'm going to fix him,' she said. 'I'm going to fix that fat old whoremaster, Davey. You wait and see.'

'I told her not to do anything stupid, not to let her temper get the best of her, and a lot of other stuff that didn't stand knee-high to jack shit. She listened to me for awhile and then she ran across the room so fast that ... well, I don't know how to say it. One second she was standin all the way across the room by the door, and the next second she was jumpin on top of me, her eyes red and glaring, her mouth all pooched out of her face like she wanted to kiss me so bad she was stretchin her skin somehow to do it, and I had an idea that instead of just scratchin me this time, she was gonna put her nails into my throat and peel me to the backbone.

'But she didn't. She put her face right down to mine and looked at me. I don't know what she saw - how scared I was, I guess - but it must have made her happy, because she tipped her head back so her hair fell all the way down to my thighs, and she laughed. 'Stop talking, you damned souse,' she said, and stick it in me. What else are you good for?'

'So I did. Because stickin it in her - and drinkin - was all I was good for by then. I surely wasn't paintin pitchers anymore, I lost my license after I got clipped for my third OUI - in '58 or early '59, that was - and I was gettin bad reports on some of my jobs. I didn't care much how I did them anymore, you see; all I wanted was her. Talk started to circulate about how Dave Duncan wasn't trustworthy no more ... but the reason they said I wasn't was always the booze. The word of what we were to each other never got around much. She was careful as the devil about that. My reputation went to hell in a handbasket, but she never got so much as a splash of mud on the hem of her skirts.

'I think Mr Lavin suspected. At first he thought I just had a crush on her and she never so much as knew I was makin calfs eyes at her from up on my scaffold, but I think that in the end he suspected. But then Mr Lavin died. They said it was a heart attack, but I know better. We were in the hammock on her back porch that night after it happened, and that night it was her that couldn't get enough of it. She screwed me until I hollered uncle. Then she lay down next to me and looked at me as content as a cat that's had its fill of cream, and her eyes had that deep-red glow again. I am not talking about something in my imagination; I could see the reflection of that red glow on the skin of my bare arm. And I could feel it. It was like sitting next to a woodstove that's been stoked and then damped down. 'I told you I'd fix him, Davey,' she says all at once in this mean, teasin voice.

'Me, I was drunk and half killed with fuckin - what she said hardly registered on me. I felt like I was fallin asleep in a pit of quicksand. 'What'd you do to him?' I asked, half in a doze.

' 'I hugged him,' she said. 'I give special hugs, Davey - you don't know about my special hugs, and if you're lucky, you never will. I got him in the stacks and put my arms around him and showed him what I really looked like. Then he began to cry. That's how scared he was. He began to cry his special tears, and I kissed them away, and when I was done, he was dead in my arms.'

' 'His special tears.' That's what she called them. And then her face . it changed. It rippled, like it was underwater. And I seen something . . .'

Dave trailed off, looking out into the flatlands, looking at the grain elevator, looking at nothing. His hands had gripped the porch rail. They flexed, loosened, flexed again.

'I don't remember,' he said at last. 'Or maybe I don't want to remember. Except for two things: it had red eyes with no lids, and there was a lot of loose flesh around its mouth, lyin in folds and flaps, but it wasn't skin. It looked ... dangerous. Then that flesh around its mouth started to move somehow and I think I started to scream. Then it was gone. All of it was gone. It was only Ardelia again, peepin up at me and smilin like a pretty, curious cat.

' 'Don't worry,' she says. 'You don't have to see, Davey. As long as you do what I tell you, that is. As long as you're one of the Good Babies. As long as you behave. Tonight I'm very happy, because that old fool is gone at last. The Town Council is going to appoint me in his place, and I'll run things the way I want.'

'God help us all, then, I thought, but I didn't say it. You wouldn't've, either, if you'd looked down and seen that thing with those starin red eyeballs curled up next to you in a hammock way out in the country, so far out nobody would hear you screamin even if you did it at the top of your lungs.

'A little while later she went into the house and come back out with two of those tall glasses full of Scotch, and pretty soon I was twenty thousand leagues under the sea again, where nothing mattered.

'She kept the Library closed for a week . . . 'out of respect for Mr Lavin' was how she put it, and when she opened up again, Little Red Ridin Hood was back on the door of the Children's Room. A week or two after that, she told me she wanted me to make some new posters for the Children's Room.'

He paused, then went on in a lower, slower voice.

'There's a part of me, even now, that wants to sugarcoat it, make my part in it better than it was. I'd like to tell you that I fought with her, argued, told her I didn't want nothin to do with scarin a bunch of kids ... but it wouldn't be true. I went right along with what she wanted me to do. God help me, I did. Partly it was because I was scared of her by then. But mostly it was because I was still besotted with her. And there was something else, too. There was a mean, nasty part of me - I don't think it's in everyone, but I think it's in a lot of us - that liked what she was up to. Liked it.

'Now, you're wonderin what I did do, and I can't really tell you all of it. I really don't remember. Those times is all jumbled up, like the broken toys you send to the Salvation Army just to get the damned things out of the attic.

'I didn't kill anyone. That's the only thing I'm sure of. She wanted me to ... and I almost did ... but in the end I drew back. That's the only reason I've been able to go on livin with myself, because in the end I was able to crawl away. She kept part of my soul with her - the best part, maybe - but she never kept all of it.'

He looked at Naomi and Sam thoughtfully. He seemed calmer now, more in control; perhaps even at peace with himself, Sam thought.

'I remember going in one day in the fall of 1959 - I think it was '59 - and her telling me that she wanted me to make a poster for the Children's Room. She told me exactly what she wanted, and I agreed willingly enough. I didn't see nothing wrong with it. I thought it was kind of funny, in fact. What she wanted, you