Four Past Midnight

me to go?'

Her eyes closed again. Her mouth drew down in a trembling bow of anguish. When her eyes opened again, they were full of haunted terror and brimming with tears. 'Oh, Sam,. help me! Something is wrong and I don't know what it is or what to do!'

'I know what to do,' he told her. 'Trust in me, Sarah, and trust in what you said when we were on our way to the Library Monday night. Honesty and belief. Those things are the opposite of fear. Honesty and belief.'

'It's hard, though,' she whispered. 'Hard to trust. Hard to believe.'

He looked at her steadily.

Naomi's upper lip lifted suddenly, and her lower lip curled out, turning her mouth momentarily into a shape that was almost like a horn. 'Fuck yourself!' she said. 'Go on and fuck yourself, Sam Peebles!'

He looked at her steadily.

She raised her hands and pressed them against her temples. 'I didn't mean it. I don't know why I said it. I ... my head ... Sam, my poor head! It feels like it's splitting in two.'

The oncoming train whistled as it crossed the Proverbia River and rolled into Junction City. It was the midafternoon freight, the one that charged through without stopping on its way to the Omaha stockyards. Sam could see it now.

'There's not much time, Sarah. It has to be now. Turn around and look at the train. Watch it come.'

'Yes,' she said suddenly. 'All right. Do what you want to do, Sam. And if you see ... see it isn't going to work ... then push me. Push me in front of the train. Then you can tell the others that I jumped ... that it was suicide.' She looked at him pleadingly - deathly-tired eyes staring into his from her exhausted face. 'They know I haven't been feeling myself - the people in the Program. You can't keep how you feel from them. After awhile that's just not possible. They'll believe you if you say I jumped, and they'd be right, because I don't want to go on like this. But the thing is . Sam, the thing is, I think that before long I will want to go on. '

'Be quiet,' he said. 'We're not going to talk about suicide. Look at the train, Sarah, and remember I love you.'

She turned toward the train, less than a mile away now and coming fast. Her hands went to the nape of her neck and lifted her hair. Sam bent forward . . . and what he was looking for was there, crouched high on the clean white flesh of her neck. He knew that her brain-stem began less than half an inch below that place, and he felt his stomach twist with revulsion.

He bent forward toward the blistery growth. It was covered in a spiderweb skein of crisscrossing white threads, but he could see it beneath, a lump of pinkish jelly that throbbed and pulsed with the beat of her heart.

'Leave me alone!' Ardelia Lortz suddenly screamed from the mouth of the woman Sam had come to love. 'Leave me alone, you bastard!' But Sarah's hands were steady, holding her hair up, giving him access.

'Can you see the numbers on the engine, Sarah?' he murmured.

She moaned.

He drove his thumb into the soft glob of red licorice he held, making a well a little bigger than the parasite which lay on Sarah's neck. 'Read them to me, Sarah. Read me the numbers.'

'Two ... six ... oh Sam, oh my head hurts ... it feels like big hands pulling my brain into two pieces . . .'

'Read the numbers, Sarah,' he murmured, and brought the Bull's Eye licorice down toward that pulsing, obscene growth.

'Five ... nine . . . five . . .'

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?'