Four Past Midnight

pitcher in his place. And when each man batted, Joe would hold that ball in his hands. So -'

Stan Soames broke off abruptly and hid his face in his bandanna. His chest hitched twice, and Sam could see his throat locked against a sob. Then he wiped his eyes again and stuffed the bandanna briskly into his back pocket.

'So now you know why I took you two to Des Moines today, and why I would have taken you to New York to pick up those two books if that's where you'd needed to go. It wasn't my treat; it was Dave's. He's a special sort of man.'

'I think maybe you are, too,' Sam said.

Soames gave him a smile - a strange, crooked smile - and opened the door of Dawson's Buick. 'Well, thank you,' he said. 'Thank you kindly. And now I think we ought to be rolling along if we want to beat the rain. Don't forget the books, Miss Higgins.'

'I won't,' Naomi said as she got out with the top of the bag wrapped tightly in her hand. 'Believe me, I won't.'

CHAPTER 13

The Library Policeman (II)

1

Twenty minutes after they took off from Des Moines, Naomi tore herself away from the view - she had been tracing Route 79 and marvelling at the toy cars bustling back and forth along it - and turned to Sam. What she saw frightened her. He had fallen asleep with his head resting against one of the windows, but there was no peace on his face; he looked like a man suffering from deep and private pain.

Tears trickled slowly from beneath his closed lids and ran down his face.

She leaned forward to shake him awake and heard him say in a trembling little-boy's voice: 'Am I in trouble, sir?'

The Navajo arrowed its way into the clouds now massing over western Iowa and began to buck, but Naomi barely noticed. Her hand paused just above Sam's shoulder for a moment, then withdrew.

Who was YOUR Library Policeman, Sam?

Whoever it was, Naomi thought, he's found him again, I think. I think he's with him now. I'm sorry, Sam ... but I can't wake you. Not now. Right now I think you're where you're supposed to be ... where you have to be. I'm sorry, but dream on. And remember what you dreamed when you wake up. Remember.

Remember.

2

In his dream, Sam Peebles watched as Little Red Riding Hood set off from a gingerbread house with a covered basket over one arm; she was bound for Gramma's house, where the wolf was waiting to eat her from the feet up. It would finish by scalping her and then eating her brains out of her skull with a long wooden spoon.

Except none of that was right, because Little Red Riding Hood was a boy in this dream and the gingerbread house was the two-story duplex in St Louis where he had lived with his mother after Dad died and there was no food in the covered basket. There was a book in the basket, The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson, and he had read it, every word, and he was not bound for Gramma's house but for the Briggs Avenue Branch of the St Louis Public Library, and he had to hurry because his book was already four days overdue.

This was a watching dream.

He watched as Little White Walking Sam waited at the comer of Dunbar Street and Johnstown Avenue for the light to change. He watched as he scampered across the street with the book in his hand ... the basket was gone now. He watched as Little White Walking Sam went into the Dunbar Street News and then he was inside, too, smelling the old mingled smells of camphor, candy, and pipe tobacco, watching as Little White Walking Sam approached the counter with a nickle package of Bull's Eye red licorice - his favorite. He watched as the little boy carefully removed the dollar bill his mother had tucked into the card-pocket in the back of The Black Arrow. He watched as the clerk took the dollar and returned ninety-five cents ... more than enough to pay the fine. He watched as Little White Walking Sam left the store and paused on the street outside long enough to put the change in his pocket and tear open the package of licorice with his teeth. He watched as Little White Walking Sam went on his way - only three blocks to the Library now - munching the long red whips of candy as he went.

He tried to scream at the boy.

Beware! Beware! The wolf is waiting, little boy! Beware the wolf! Beware the wolf!

But the boy walked on, eating his red licorice; now he was on Briggs Avenue and the Library, a great pile of red brick, loomed ahead.

At this point Sam - Big White Plane-Riding Sam - tried to pull himself out of the dream. He sensed that Naomi and Stan Soames and the world of real things were just outside this hellish egg of nightmare in which he found himself. He could hear the drone of the Navajo's engine behind the sounds of the dream: the traffic on Briggs Avenue, the brisk brrrinnng!-brrrinnng! of some kid's bike-bell, the birds squabbling in the rich leaves of the midsummer elms. He closed his dreaming eyes and yearned toward that world outside the shell, the world of real things. And more: he sensed he could reach it, that he could hammer through the shell

No, Dave said. No, Sam, don't do that. You mustn't do that. If you want to save Sarah from Ardelia, forget about breaking out of this dream. There's only one coincidence in this business, but it's a killer: once You had a Library Policeman, too. And you have to get that memory back.

I don't want to see. I don't want to know. Once was bad enough.

Nothing is as bad as what's watting for you, Sam. Nothing.

He opened his eyes - not his outer eyes but the inside ones; the dreaming eyes.

Now Little White. Walking Sam is on the concrete path which approaches the east side of the Public Library, the concrete path which leads to the Children's Wing. He moves in a kind of portentous slow motion, each step the soft swish of a pendulum in the glass throat of a grandfather clock, and everything is clear: the tiny sparks of mica and quartz gleaming in the concrete walk; the cheerful roses which border the concrete walk; the thick drift of green bushes along the side of the building; the climbing ivy on the red brick wall; the strange and somehow frightening Latin motto, Fuimus, non sumus, carved in a brief semicircle over the green doors with their thick panes of wire-reinforced glass.

And the Library Policeman standing by the steps is clear, too.

He is not pale. He is flushed. There are pimples on his forehead, red and flaring. He is not tall but of medium height with extremely broad shoulders. He is wearing not a trenchcoat but an overcoat, and that's very odd because this is a summer day, a hot St Louis summer day. His eyes might be silver; Little White Walking Sam cannot see what color they are, because the Library Policeman is wearing little round black glasses - blind man's