Low men in yellow coats by Stephen King

‘You shouldn’t hit Bobby,’ Carol said. ‘He’s not like those men.’

‘Is he your boyfriend?’ She laughed. ‘Yeah? Good for you! But I’ll let you in on a secret, sweetheart — he’s just like his daddy and your daddy and all the rest of them. Go in the bathroom. I’ll clean you up and find something for you to wear. Christ, what a mess!’

Carol looked at her a moment longer, then turned and went into the bathroom. Her bare back looked small and vulnerable. And white. So white in contrast to her brown arms.

‘Carol!’ Ted called after her. ‘Is it better now?’ Bobby didn’t think he was talking about her arm. Not this time.

‘Yes,’ she said without turning. ‘But I can still hear her, far away. She’s screaming.’

‘Who’s screaming?’ Liz asked. Carol didn’t answer her. She went into the bathroom and closed the door. Liz looked at it for a moment, as if to make sure Carol wasn’t going to pop back out again, then turned to Ted. ‘Who’s screaming?’

Ted only looked at her warily, as if expecting another ICBM attack at any moment.

Liz began to smile. It was a smile Bobby knew: her I’m-losing-my-temper smile. Was it possible she had any left to lose? With her black eyes, broken nose, and swollen lip, the smile made her look horrid: not his mother but some lunatic.

‘Quite the Good Samaritan, aren’t you? How many feels did you cop while you were fixing her up? She hasn’t got much, but I bet you checked what you could, didn’t you? Never miss an opportunity, right? Come on and fess up to your mamma.’

Bobby looked at her with growing despair. Carol had told her everything — all of the truth

— and it made no difference. No difference! God!

‘There is a dangerous adult in this room,’ Ted said, ‘but it isn’t me.’

She looked first uncomprehending, then incredulous, then furious. ‘How dare you? How dare you? ‘

‘He didn’t do anything!’ Bobby screamed. ‘Didn’t you hear what Carol said? Didn’t you — ‘

‘Shut your mouth,’ she said, not looking at him. She looked only at Ted. ‘The cops are going to be very interested in you, I think. Don called Hartford on Friday, before . . . before. I asked him to. He has friends there. You never worked for the State of Connecticut, not in the office of the Comptroller, not anywhere else. You were in jail, weren’t you?’

‘In a way I suppose I was,’ Ted said. He seemed calmer now in spite of the blood flowing down the side of his face. He took the cigarettes out of his shirt pocket, looked at them, put them back. ‘But not the kind you’re thinking of.’

And not in this world, Bobby thought.

‘What was it for?’ she asked. ‘Making little girls feel better in the first degree?’

‘I have something valuable,’ Ted said. He reached up and tapped his temple. The finger he tapped with came away dotted with blood. ‘There are others like me. And there are people whose job it is to catch us, keep us, and use us for . . . well, use us, leave it at that. I and two others escaped. One was caught, one was killed. Only I remain free. If, that is . . . ‘ He looked around. ‘ . . . you call this freedom.’

‘You’re crazy. Crazy old Brattigan, nuttier than a holiday fruitcake. I’m calling the police.

Let them decide if they want to put you back in the jail you broke out of or in Danbury Asylum.’ She bent, reached for the spilled phone.

‘No, Mom!’ Bobby said, and reached for her. ‘Don’t — ‘

‘Bobby, no!’ Ted said sharply.

Bobby pulled back, looking first at his mom as she scooped up the phone, then at Ted.

‘Not as she is now,’ Ted told him. ‘As she is now, she can’t stop biting.’

Liz Garfield gave Ted a brilliant, almost unspeakable smile — Good try, you bastard —

and took the receiver off the cradle.

‘What’s happening?’ Carol cried from the bathroom. ‘Can I come out now?’

‘Not yet, darling,’ Ted called back. ‘A little longer.’