‘I would have said so until today,’ Sam said after a moment’s thought. ‘I would have said the only good friends I made since I came to Junction City have moved away. But I consider you and Naomi my friends, Dave. I consider you very good friends indeed. The best.’
Naomi took Sam’s hand and squeezed it briefly.
‘I appreciate that,’ Dave said, ‘but it doesn’t matter, because she intends to do for me and Sarah as well. The more the merrier, as she told me once. She has to take lives to get through her time of change … and waking up must be a time of change for her, too.’
‘You’re saying that she means to possess Sam somehow, aren’t you?’ Naomi asked.
‘I think I mean a little more than that, Sarah. I think she means to destroy whatever there is inside Sam that makes him Sam – I think she means to clean him out the way a kid cleans out a pumpkin to make a Halloween jack-o-lantern, and then she’s going to put him on like you’d put on a suit of new clothes. And after that happens – if it does – he’ll go on lookin like a man named Sam Peebles, but he won’t be a man anymore, no more than Ardelia Lortz was ever a woman. There’s somethin not human, some it hidin inside her skin, and I think I always knew that. It’s inside . . . but it’s forever an outsider. Where did Ardelia Lortz come from? Where did she live before she came to Junction City? I think, if you checked, you’d find that everything she put on the references she showed Mr Lavin was a lie, and that nobody in town really knew. I think it was John Power’s curiosity about that very thing that sealed his fate. But I think there was a real Ardelia Lortz at one time . . . in Pass Christian, Mississippi … or Harrisburg, Pennsylvania … or Portland, Maine … and the it took her over and put her on. Now she wants to do it again. If we let that happen, I think that later this year, in some other town, in San Francisco, California … or Butte, Montana … or Kingston, Rhode Island … a man named Sam Peebles will show up. Most people will like him. Children in particular will like him … although they may be afraid of him, too, in some way they don’t understand and can’t talk about.
‘And, of course, he will be a librarian.’
CHAPTER 12
By Air to Des Moines
1
Sam looked at his wristwatch and was astounded to see it was almost 3:00 P.M. Midnight was only nine hours away, and then the tall man with the silver eyes would be back. Or Ardelia Lortz would be back. Or maybe both of them together.
‘What do you think I should do, Dave? Go out to the local graveyard and find Ardelia’s body and pound a stake through her heart?’
‘A good trick if you could do it,’ he replied, ‘since the lady was cremated.’
‘Oh,’ Sam said. He settled back into his chair with a little helpless sigh.
Naomi took his hand again. ‘In any case, you won’t be doing anything alone,’ she said firmly. ‘Dave says she means to do us as well as you, but that’s almost beside the point. Friends stand by when there’s trouble.
That’s the point. What else are they for?’
Sam lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. ‘Thank you – but I don’t know what you can do. Or me, either.
There doesn’t seem to be anything to do. Unless . . .’ He looked at Dave hopefully. ‘Unless I ran?’
Dave shook his head. ‘She – or it – sees . I told you that. I guess you could drive most of the way to Denver before midnight if you really put your foot down and the cops didn’t catch you, but Ardelia Lortz would be right there to greet you when you got out of your car. Or you’d look over in some dark mile and see the Library Policeman sittin next to you on the seat.’
The thought of that – the white face and silver eyes, illuminated only by the green glow of the dashboard lights – made Sam shiver.
‘What, then?’
‘I think you both know what has to be done first,’ Dave said. He drank the last of his iced tea and then set the glass on the porch. ‘Just think a minute, and you’ll see.’
Then they all looked out toward the grain elevator for awhile. Sam’s mind was a roaring confusion; all he could catch hold of were isolated snatches of Dave Duncan’s story and the voice of the Library Policeman, with his strange little lisp, saying I don’t want to hear your thick ecthcuses … You have until midnight …
then I come again.
It was on Naomi’s face that light suddenly dawned.
‘Of course!’ she said. ‘How stupid! But . . .’
She asked Dave a question, and Sam’s own eyes widened in understanding.
‘There’s a place in Des Moines, as I recall,’ Dave said. ‘Pell’s. If any place can help, it’ll be them. Why don’t you make a call, Sarah?’
2
When she was gone, Sam said: ‘Even if they can help, I don’t think we could get there before the close of business hours. I can try, I suppose . . .’
‘I never expected you’d drive,’ Dave said. ‘No – you and Sarah have to go out to the Proverbia Airport.’
Sam blinked. ‘I didn’t know there was an airport in Proverbia.’
Dave smiled. ‘Well … I guess that is stretchin it a little. There’s a half-mile of packed dirt Stan Soames calls a runway. Stan’s front parlor is the office of Western Iowa Air Charter. You and Sarah talk to Stan. He’s got a little Navajo. He’ll take you to Des Moines and have you back by eight o’clock, nine at the latest.’
‘What if he’s not there?’
‘Then we’ll try to figure out somethin else. I think he will be, though. The only thing Stan loves more than flyin is farmin, and come the spring of the year, farmers don’t stray far. He’ll probably tell you he can’t take you because of his garden, come to that – he’ll say you shoulda made an appointment a few days in advance so he could get the Carter boy to come over and babysit his back ninety. If he says that, you tell him Dave Duncan sent you, and Dave says it’s time to pay for the baseballs. Can you remember that?’
‘Yes, but what does it mean?’
‘Nothing that concerns this business,’ Dave said. ‘He’ll take you, that’s the important thing. And when he lands you again, never mind comin here. You and Sarah drive straight into town.’
Sam felt dread begin to seep into his body. ‘To the Library.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Dave, what Naomi said about friends is all very sweet – and maybe even true -but I think I have to take it from here. Neither one of you has to be a part of this. I was the one responsible for stirring her up again -‘
Dave reached out and seized Sam’s wrist in a grip of surprising strength. ‘If you really think that, you haven’t heard a word I’ve said. You’re not responsible for anything. I carry the deaths of John Power and
two little children on my conscience – not to mention the terrors I don’t know how many other children may have suffered – but I’m not responsible, either. Not really. I didn’t set out to be Ardelia Lortz’s companion any more than I set out to be a thirty-year drunk. Both things just happened. But she bears me a grudge, and she will be back for me, Sam. If I’m not with you when she comes, she’ll visit me first. And I won’t be the only one she visits. Sarah was right, Sam. She and I don’t have to stay close to protect you; the three of us have to stay close to protect each other. Sarah knows about Ardelia, don’t you see? If Ardelia don’t know that already, she will as soon as she shows up tonight. She plans to go on from Junction City as you, Sam.
Do you think she’ll leave anybody behind who knows her new identity?’
‘But -‘
‘But nothing,’ Dave said. ‘In the end it comes down to a real simple choice, one even an old souse like me can understand: we share this together or we’re gonna die at her hands.’
He leaned forward.
‘If you want to save Sarah from Ardelia, Sam, forget about bein a hero and start rememberin who your Library Policeman was. You have to. Because I don’t believe Ardelia can take just anyone. 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.’