Four Past Midnight

see, was a poster that showed a little kid flattened by a steamroller in the middle of the street. Underneath it was supposed to say HASTE MAKES WASTE! GET YOUR LIBRARY BOOKS BACK IN PLENTY OF TIME!

'I thought it was just a joke, like when the coyote is chasing the Road Runner and gets flattened by a freight train or something. So I said sure. She was pleased as punch. I went into her office and drew the poster. It didn't take long, because it was just a cartoon.

'I thought she'd like it, but she didn't. Her brows drew down and her mouth almost disappeared. I'd made a cartoon boy with crosses for eyes, and as a joke I had a word-balloon comin out of the mouth of the guy drivin the steamroller. 'If you had a stamp, you could mail him like a postcard,' he was saying.

'She didn't even crack a smile. 'No, Davey,' she says, 'you don't understand. This won't make the children bring their books back on time. This will only make them laugh, and they spend too much time doing that as it is.'

' 'Well,' I says, 'I guess I didn't understand what you wanted.'

'We were standin behind the circulation desk, so nobody could see us except from the waist up. And she reached down and took my balls in her hand and looked at me with those big silver eyes of hers and said, 'I want you to make it realistic.'

'It took me a second or two to understand what she really meant. When I did, I couldn't believe it. 'Ardelia,' I says, 'you don't understand what you're sayin. If a kid really did get run over by a steamroller - '

'She gave my balls a squeeze, one that hurt - as if to remind me just how she had me - and said: 'I understand, all right. Now you understand me. I don't want them to laugh, Davey; I want them to cry. So why don't you go on back in there and do it right this time?'

'I went back into her office. I don't know what I meant to do, but my mind got made up in a hurry. There was a fresh piece of posterboard on the desk, and a tall glass of Scotch with a straw and a sprig of mint in it, and a note from Ardelia that said, 'D. - Use a lot of red this time.'

He looked soberly at Sam and Naomi.

'But she'd never been in there, you see. Never for a minute.'

3

Naomi brought Dave a fresh glass of water, and when she came back, Sam noticed that her face was very pale and that the corners of her eyes looked red. But she sat down very quietly and motioned for Dave to go on.

'I did what alcoholics do best,' he said. 'I drank the drink and did what I was told. A kind of ... of frenzy, I suppose you'd say ... fell over me. I spent two hours at her desk, workin with a box of five-and-dime watercolors, sloppin water and paint all over her desk, not givin a shit what flew where. What I came out with was somethin I don't like to remember ... but I do remember. It was a little boy splattered all over Rampole Street with his shoes knocked off and his head all spread out like a pat of butter that's melted in the sun. The man drivin the steamroller was just a silhouette, but he was lookin back, and you could see the grin on his face. That guy showed up again and again in the posters I did for her. He was drivin the car in the poster you mentioned, Sam, the one about never takin rides from strangers.

'My father left my mom about a year after I was born, just left her flat, and I got an idea now that was who I was tryin to draw in all those posters. I used to call him the dark man, and I think it was my dad. I think maybe Ardelia prodded him out of me somehow. And when I took the second one out, she liked it fine. She laughed over it. 'It's perfect, Davey!' she said. 'It'll scare a whole mountain of do-right into the little snotnoses! I'll put it up right away!' She did, to, on the front of the checkout desk in the Children's Room. And when she did, I saw somethin that really chilled my blood. I knew the little boy I'd drawn, you see. It was Willy Klemmart. I'd drawn him without even knowin it, and the expression on what was left of his face was the one I'd seen that day when she took his hand and led him into the Children's Room.

'I was there when the kids came in for Story Hour and saw that poster for the first time. They were scared. Their eyes got big, and one little girl started to cry. And I liked it that they were scared. I thought, 'That'll pound the do-right into em, all right. That'll teach em what'll happen if they cross her, if they don't do what she says.' And part of me thought, You're gettin to think like her, Dave. Pretty soon you'll get to be like her, and then you'll be lost. You'll be lost forever.

'But I went on, just the same. I felt like I had a one-way ticket and I wasn't goin to get off until I rode all the way to the end of the line. Ardelia hired some college kids, but she always put em in the circulation room and the reference room and on the main desk. She kept complete charge of the kids ... they were the easiest to scare, you see. And I think they were the best scares, the ones that fed her the best. Because that's what she lived on, you know - she fed on their fright. And I made more posters. I can't remember them all, but I remember the Library Policeman. He was in a lot of them. In one - it was called LIBRARY POLICEMEN GO ON VACATION, TOO - he was standin on the edge of a stream and fishin. Only what he'd baited his hook with was that little boy the kids called Simple Simon. In another one, he had Simple Simon strapped to the nose of a rocket and was pullin the switch that would send him into outer space. That one said LEARN MORE ABOUT SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY AT THE LIBRARY - BUT BE SURE TO DO RIGHT AND GET YOUR BOOKS BACK ON TIME.

'We turned the Children's Room into a house of horrors for the kids who came there,' Dave said. He spoke slowly, and his voice was full of tears. 'She and I. We did that to the children. But do you know what? They always came back. They always came back for more. And they never, never told. She saw to that.'

'But the parents!' Naomi exclaimed suddenly, and so sharply that Sam jumped. 'Surely when the parents saw - '

'No!' Dave told her. 'Their parents never saw nothing. The only scary poster they ever saw was the one of Little Red Ridin Hood and the wolf. Ardelia left that one up all the time, but the others only went up during Story Hour - after school, on Thursday nights, and Saturday mornings. She wasn't a human bein, Sarah. You've got to get that straight in your mind. She was not human. She knew when grownups was comin, and she always got the posters I'd drawn off the walls and the other ones - regular posters that said things like READ BOOKS JUST FOR THE FUN OF IT - up before they came.

'I can remember times when I'd be there for Story Hour - in those days I never left her if I could stay close, and I had lots of time to stay close, because I'd quit paintin pictures, all my regular jobs had fell through, and I was livin on the little I'd managed to save up. Before long the money 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.'