The scar overlaid the geography of that face exactly as it had in Sam’s imagination – across the left cheek, below the left eye, across the bridge of the nose. Except for the scar, it was the man in the poster … or was it? He could no longer be sure.
Come with me, son … I’m a poleethman.
Sam Peebles, darling of the Junction City Rotary Club, wet his pants. He felt his bladder let go in a warm gush, but that seemed far away and unimportant. What was important was that there was a monster in his kitchen, and the most terrible thing about this monster was that Sam almost knew his face. Sam felt a triple-locked door far back in his mind straining to burst open. He never thought of running. The idea of flight was beyond his capacity to imagine. He was a child again, a child who has been caught red-handed (the book isn’t The Speaker’s Companion)
doing some awful bad thing. Instead of running
(the book isn’t Best Loved Poems of the American People) he folded slowly over his own wet crotch and collapsed between the two stools which stood at the counter, holding his hands up blindly above his head.
(the book is)
‘No,’ he said in a husky, strengthless voice. ‘No, please – no, please, please don’t do it to me, please, I’ll be good, please don’t hurt me that way.’
He was reduced to this. But it didn’t matter; the giant in the fog-colored trenchcoat (the book is The Black Arrow by Robert Louts Stevenson) now stood directly over him.
Sam dropped his head. It seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. He looked at the floor and prayed incoherently that when he looked up – when he had the strength to look up – the figure would be gone.
‘Look at me,’ the distant, thudding voice instructed. It was the voice of an evil god.
‘No,’ Sam cried in a shrieky, breathless voice, and then burst into helpless tears. It was not just terror, although the terror was real enough, bad enough. Separate from it was a cold deep drift of childish fright and childish shame. Those feelings clung like poison syrup to whatever it was he dared not remember, the thing that had something to do with a book he had never read: The Black Arrow, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Whack!
Something struck Sam’s head and he screamed.
‘Look at me!’
‘No, please don’t make me,’ Sam begged.
Whack!
He looked up, shielding his streaming eyes with one rubbery arm, just in time to see the Library Policeman’s arm come down again.
Whack!
He was hitting Sam with Sam’s own rolled-up copy of the Gazette, whacking him the way you might whack a heedless puppy that has piddled on the floor.
‘That’th better,’ said the Library Policeman. He grinned, lips parting to reveal the points of sharp teeth, teeth which were almost fangs. He reached into the pocket of his trenchcoat and brought out a leather folder. He flipped it open and revealed the strange star of many points. It glinted in the clean morning light.
Sam was now helpless to look away from that merciless face, those silver eyes with their tiny birdshot pupils. He was slobbering and knew it but was helpless to stop that, either.
‘You have two books which belong to uth,’ the Library Policeman said. His voice still seemed to be coming from a distance, or from behind a thick pane of glass. ‘Mith Lorth is very upthet with you, Mr Peebles.’
‘I lost them,’ Sam said, beginning to cry harder. The thought of lying to this man about (The Black Arrow)
the books, about anything, was out of the question. He was all authority, all power, all force. He was judge, jury, and executioner.
Where’s the janitor? Sam wondered incoherently. Where’s the janitor who checks the dials and then goes back into the sane world? The sane world where things like this don’t have to happen?
‘I … I … I … I … I’
‘I don’t want to hear your thick ecthcuses,’ the Library Policeman said. He flipped his leather folder closed and stuffed it into his right pocket. At the same time he reached into his left pocket and drew out a knife with a long, sharp blade. Sam, who had spent three summers earning money for college as a stockboy, recognized it. It was a carton-slitter. There was undoubtedly a knife like that in every library in America.
‘You have until midnight. Then. . .’
He leaned down, extending the knife in one white, corpselike hand. That freezing envelope of air struck Sam’s face, numbed it. He tried to scream and could produce only a glassy whisper of silent air.
The tip of the blade pricked the flesh of his throat. It was like being pricked with an icicle. A single bead of scarlet oozed out and then froze solid, a tiny seed-pearl of blood.
‘ . . . then I come again,’ the Library Policeman said in his odd, lisprounded voice. ‘You better find what you lotht, Mr Peebles.’
The knife disappeared back into the pocket. The Library Policeman drew back up to his full height.
‘There is another thing,’ he said. ‘You have been athking questions, Mr Peebles. Don’t athk any more. Do you underthand me?’
Sam tried to answer and could only utter a deep groan.
The Library Policeman began to bend down, pushing chill air ahead of him the way the flat prow of a barge might push a chunk of river-ice. ‘Don’t pry into things that don’t conthern you. Do you underthand me?’
‘Yes!’ Sam screamed. ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’
‘Good. Because I will be watching. And I am not alone.’
He turned, his trenchcoat rustling, and recrossed the kitchen toward the entry. He spared not a single backward glance for Sam. He passed through a bright patch of morning sun as he went, and Sam saw a wonderful, terrible thing: the Library Policeman cast no shadow.
He reached the back door. He grasped the knob. Without turning around he said in a low, terrible voice: ‘If you don’t want to thee me again, Mr Peebles, find those bookth.’
He opened the door and went out.
A single frantic thought filled Sam’s mind the minute the door closed again and he heard the Library Policeman’s feet on the back porch: he had to lock the door.
He got halfway to his feet and then grayness swam over him and he fell forward, unconscious.
CHAPTER 10
Chron-o-lodge-ick-a-lee Speaking
1
‘May I … help you?’ the receptionist asked. The slight pause came as she took a second look at the man who had just approached the desk.
‘Yes,’ Sam said. ‘I want to look at some back issues of the Gazette, if that’s possible.’
‘Of course it is,’ she said. ‘But – pardon me if I’m out of line – do you feel all right, sir? Your color is very bad.’
‘I think I may be coming down with something, at that,’ Sam said.
‘Spring colds are the worst, aren’t they?’ she said, getting up. ‘Come right through the gate at the end of the counter, Mr – ?’
‘Peebles. Sam Peebles.’
She stopped, a chubby woman of perhaps sixty, and cocked her head. She put one red-tipped nail to the corner of her mouth. ‘You sell insurance, don’t you?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said.
‘I thought I recognized you. Your picture was in the paper last week. Was it some sort of award?’
‘No, ma’am,’ Sam said, ‘I gave a speech. At the Rotary Club.’ And would give anything to be able to turn back the clock, he thought. I’d tell Craig Jones to go fuck himself.
‘Well, that’s wonderful,’ she said … but she spoke as if there might be some doubt about it. ‘You looked different in the picture.’
Sam came in through the gate.
‘I’m Doreen McGill,’ the woman said, and put out a plump hand.
Sam shook it and said he was pleased to meet her. It took an effort. He thought that speaking to people –
and touching people, especially that – was going to be an effort for quite awhile to come. All of his old ease seemed to be gone.
She led him toward a carpeted flight of stairs and flicked a light-switch. The stairway was narrow, the overhead bulb dim, and Sam felt the horrors begin to crowd in on him at once. They came eagerly, as fans might congregate
around a person offering free tickets to some fabulous sold-out show. The Library Policeman could be down there, waiting in the dark. The Library Policeman with his dead white skin and red-rimmed silver eyes and small but hauntingly familiar lisp.
Stop it, he told himself. And if you can’t stop it, then for God’s sake control it. You have to. Because this is your only chance. What will you do if you can’t go down a flight of stairs to a simple office basement? Just cower in your house and wait for midnight?