By Stephen King and published by Hodder  Stoughton FICTION Carrie Salems Lot The Shining Night Shift The Stand The Dead Zone Firestarter Cujo Different Seasons Cycle of the Werewolf Christine The Talisman (with Peter Straub) Pet Sematary It Skeleton Crew The Eyes of the Dragon Misery The Tommyknockers The Dark Half Four Past Midnight Needful Things Geralds Game Dolores Claiborne Nightmares and Dreamscapes Insomnia Rose Madder Desperation Bag of Bones The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon Hearts in Atlantis Dreamcatcher Everythings Eventual From a Buick 8 Cell Liseys Story The Dark Tower I The Gunslinger The Dark Tower II The Drawing of the Three The Dark Tower III The Waste Lands The Dark Tower IV Wizard and Glass The Dark Tower V Wolves of the Calla The Dark Tower VI Song of Susannah The Dark Tower VII The Dark Tower Duma key Just After Sunset Under the Dome Stephen King Goes to the Movies By Stephen King as Richard Bachman Thinner The Running Man The Bachman Books The Regulators Blaze NONFICTION Danse Macabre On Writing (A Memoir of the Craft) Insomnia Stephen King www.hodder.co.uk Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following copyrighted material White Rabbit lyrics and music by Grace Slick.  1967 Irving Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. International copyright secured. The Pursuit from Cemetery Nights by Stephen Dobyns. Copyright  Stephen Dobyns, 1987. By permission of the author and Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc. You Cant Sit Down by Delecta Clark, Cornell Muldrow, and Kal Mann.  1960 (renewed), 1968 Conrad Music, a division of Arc Music Corp. All rights reserved. Used by permission. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien, Copyright  1965 by J. R. R. Tolkien  renewed 1993 by Christopher R. Tolkien, John F. R. Tolkien, and Priscilla M. A. R. Tolkien. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Co. and HarperCollins Publishers Limited. All rights reserved. Your Baby, words and music by P. F. Sloan and Steve Barri.  Copyright 1965 by MCA Music Publishing, a Division of MCA Inc. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Used by permission. Lantern by Michael McDernott  1993 EMI Blackwood Music, Inc., and Wanted Mann Music. All rights reserved for Wanted Man Music controlled and administered by EMI Blackwood Music, Inc. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Used by permission Copyright  1994 by Stephen King First published in Great Britain in 1994 by Hodder and Stoughton An Hachette Livre UK company The right of Stephen King to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data King, Stephen Insomnia I. Title 813.54[F] Epub ISBN 978 1 84894 072 7 Book ISBN 978 0 340 95279 5 Hodder and Stoughton An Hachette Livre UK company 338 Euston Road London NW1 3BH www.hodder.co.uk CONTENTS Insomnia Dedication Prologue Part 1 Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Part 2 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Part 3 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Epilogue About the Author Also by Stephen King Copyright For Tabby . . . and for Al Kooper, who knows the playingfield. No fault of mine. PROLOGUE WINDING THE DEATHWATCH (I) Old age is an island surrounded by death. Juan Montalvo On Beauty 1 No one  least of all Dr Litchfield  came right out and told Ralph Roberts that his wife was going to die, but there came a time when Ralph understood without needing to be told. The months between March and June were a jangling, screaming time inside his head  a time of conferences with doctors, of evening runs to the hospital with Carolyn, of trips to other hospitals in other states for special tests (Ralph spent much of his travel time on these trips thanking God for Carolyns Blue CrossMajor Medical coverage), of personal research in the Derry Public Library, at first looking for answers the specialists might have overlooked, later on just looking for hope and grasping at straws. Those four months were like being dragged drunk through some malign carnival where the people on the rides were really screaming, the people lost in the mirror maze were really lost, and the denizens of Freak Alley looked at you with false smiles on their lips and terror in their eyes. Ralph began to see these things by the middle of May, and as June set in, he began to understand that the pitchmen along the medical midway had only quack remedies to sell, and the cheery quickstep of the calliope could no longer quite hide the fact that the tune spilling out of the loudspeakers was The Funeral March. It was a carnival, all right; the carnival of lost souls. Ralph continued to deny these terrible images  and the even more terrible idea lurking behind them  all through the early summer of 1992, but as June gave way to July, this finally became impossible. The worst midsummer heatwave since 1971 rolled over central Maine, and Derry simmered in a bath of hazy sun, humidity, and daily temperatures in the midnineties. The city  hardly a bustling metropolis at the best of times  fell into a complete stupor, and it was in this hot silence that Ralph Roberts first heard the ticking of the deathwatch and understood that in the passage from Junes cool damp greens to the baked stillness of July, Carolyns slim chances had become no chances at all. She was going to die. Not this summer, probably  the doctors claimed to have quite a few tricks up their sleeves yet, and Ralph was sure they did  but this fall or this winter. His longtime companion, the only woman he had ever loved, was going to die. He tried to deny the idea, scolding himself for being a morbid old fool, but in the gasping silences of those long hot days, Ralph heard that ticking everywhere  it even seemed to be in the walls. Yet it was loudest from within Carolyn herself, and when she turned her calm white face toward him  perhaps to ask him to turn on the radio so she could listen while she shelled some beans for their supper, or to ask him if he would go across to the Red Apple and get her an icecream on a stick  he would see that she heard it, too. He would see it in her dark eyes, at first only when she was straight, but later even when her eyes were hazed by the pain medication she took. By then the ticking had grown very loud, and when Ralph lay in bed beside her on those hot summer nights when even a single sheet seemed to weigh ten pounds and he believed every dog in Derry was barking at the moon, he listened to it, to the deathwatch ticking inside Carolyn, and it seemed to him that his heart would break with sorrow and terror. How much would she be required to suffer before the end came? How much would he be required to suffer? And how could he possibly live without her? It was during this strange, fraught period that Ralph began to go for increasingly long walks through the hot summer afternoons and slow, twilit evenings, returning on many occasions too exhausted to eat. He kept expecting Carolyn to scold him for these outings, to say, Why dont you stop it, you stupid old man? Youll kill yourself if you keep walking in this heat! But she never did, and he gradually realized she didnt even know. That he went out, yes  she knew that. But not all the miles he went, or that when he came home he was often trembling with exhaustion and near sunstroke. Once upon a time it had seemed to Ralph she saw everything, even a change of half an inch in where he parted his hair. No more; the tumor in her brain had stolen her powers of observation, as it would soon steal her life. So he walked, relishing the heat in spite of the way it sometimes made his head swim and his ears ring, relishing it mostly because of the way it made his ears ring; sometimes there were whole hours when they rang so loudly and his head pounded so fiercely that he couldnt hear the tick of Carolyns deathwatch. He walked over much of Derry that hot July, a narrowshouldered old man with thinning white hair and big hands that still looked capable of hard work. He walked from Witcham Street to the Barrens, from Kansas Street to Neibolt Street, from Main Street to the Kissing Bridge, but his feet took him most frequently west along Harris Avenue, where the still beautiful and much beloved Carolyn Roberts was now spending her last year in a haze of headaches and morphine, to the Harris Avenue Extension and Derry County Airport. He would walk out the Extension  which was treeless and completely exposed to the pitiless sun  until he felt his legs threatening to cave in beneath him, and then double back. He often paused to catch his second wind in a shady picnic area close to the airports service entrance. At night this place was a teenage drinking and makeout spot, alive with the sounds of rap coming from boombox radios, but during the days it was the moreorless exclusive domain of a group Ralphs friend Bill McGovern called the Harris Avenue Old Crocks. The Old Crocks gathered to play chess, to play gin, or just to shoot the shit. Ralph had known many of them for years (had, in fact, gone to grammar school with Stan Eberly), and was comfortable with them . . . as long as they didnt get too nosy. Most didnt. They were oldschool Yankees, for the most part, raised to believe that what a man doesnt choose to talk about is no ones business but his own. It was on one of these walks that he first became aware that something had gone very wrong with Ed Deepneau, his neighbor from up the street. 2 Ralph had walked much farther out the Harris Avenue Extension than usual that day, possibly because thunderheads had blotted out the sun and a cool, if still sporadic, breeze had begun to blow. He had fallen into a kind of trance, not thinking of anything, not watching anything but the dusty toes of his sneakers, when the four fortyfive United Airlines flight from Boston swooped low overhead, startling him back to where he was with the teethrattling whine of its jet engines. He watched it cross above the old GSWM railroad tracks and the Cyclone fence that marked the edge of the airport, watched it settle toward the runway, marked the blue puffs of smoke as its wheels touched down. Then he glanced at his watch, saw how late it was getting, and looked up with wide eyes at the orange roof of the Howard Johnsons just up the road. He had been in a trance, all right; he had walked more than five miles without the slightest sense of time passing. Carolyns time, a voice deep inside his head muttered. Yes, yes; Carolyns time. She would be back in the apartment, counting the minutes until she could have another Darvon Complex, and he was out on the far side of the airport . . . halfway to Newport, in fact. Ralph looked up at the sky and for the first time really saw the bruisepurple thunderheads which were stacking up over the airport. They did not mean rain, not for sure, not yet, but if it did rain, he was almost surely going to be caught in it; there was nowhere to shelter between here and the little picnic area back by Runway 3, and there was nothing there but a ratty little gazebo that always smelled faintly of beer. He took another look at the orange roof, then reached into his righthand pocket and felt the little sheaf of bills held by the silver moneyclip Carolyn had given him for his sixtyfifth. There was nothing to prevent him walking up to HoJos and calling a cab . . . except maybe for the thought of how the driver might look at him. Stupid old man, the eyes in the rearview mirror might say. Stupid old man, walked a lot further than you should on a hot day. If youd been swimming, you woulda drownded. Paranoid, Ralph, the voice in his head told him, and now its clucky, slightly patronizing tone reminded him of Bill McGovern. Well, maybe it was and maybe it wasnt. Either way, he thought he would chance the rain and walk back. What if it doesnt just rain? Last summer it hailed so hard that one time in August it broke windows all over the west side. Let it hail, then, he said. I dont bruise that easy. Ralph began to walk slowly back toward town along the shoulder of the Extension, his old hightops raising small, parched puffs of dust as he went. He could hear the first rumbles of thunder in the west, where the clouds were stacking up. The sun, although blotted out, was refusing to quit without a fight; it edged the thunderheads with bands of brilliant gold and shone through occasional rifts in the clouds like the fragmented beam of some huge movieprojector. Ralph found himself feeling glad he had decided to walk, in spite of the ache in his legs and the steady nagging pain in the small of his back. One thing, at least, he thought. Ill sleep tonight. Ill sleep like a damn rock. The verge of the airport  acres of dead brown grass with the rusty railroad tracks sunk in them like the remains of some old wreck  was now on his left. Far in the distance beyond the Cyclone fence he could see the United 747, now the size of a childs toy plane, taxiing toward the small terminal which United and Delta shared. Ralphs gaze was caught by another vehicle, this one a car, leaving the General Aviation terminal, which stood at this end of the airport. It was heading across the tarmac toward the small service entrance which gave on the Harris Avenue Extension. Ralph had watched a lot of vehicles come and go through that entrance just lately; it was only seventy yards or so from the picnic area where the Harris Avenue Old Crocks gathered. As the car approached the gate, Ralph recognized it as Ed and Helen Deepneaus Datsun . . . and it was really moving. Ralph stopped on the shoulder, unaware that his hands had curled into anxious fists as the small brown car bore down on the closed gate. You needed a keycard to open the gate from the outside; from the inside an electriceye beam did the job. But the beam was set close to the gate, very close, and at the speed the Datsun was going . . . At the last moment (or so it seemed to Ralph), the small brown car scrunched to a stop, the tires sending up puffs of blue smoke that made Ralph think of the 747 touching down, and the gate began to trundle slowly open on its track. Ralphs fisted hands relaxed. An arm emerged from the drivers side window of the Datsun and began to wave up and down, apparently haranguing the gate, urging it to hurry it up. There was something so absurd about this that Ralph began to smile. The smile died before it had exposed even a gleam of teeth, however. The wind was still freshening from the west, where the thunderheads were, and it carried the screaming voice of the Datsuns driver. You son of a bitch fucker! You bastard! Eat my cock! Hurry up! Hurry up and lick shit, you fucking asshole cuntlapper! Fucking booger! Ratdick ringmeat! Suckhole! That cant be Ed Deepneau, Ralph murmured. He began to walk again without realizing it. Cant be. Ed was a research chemist at the Hawking Laboratories research facility in Fresh Harbor, one of the kindest, most civil young men Ralph had ever met. Both he and Carolyn were very fond of Eds wife, Helen, and their new baby, Natalie, as well. A visit from Natalie was one of the few things with the power to lift Carolyn out of her own life these days, and, sensing this, Helen brought her over frequently. Ed never complained. There were men, he knew, who wouldnt have cared to have the missus running to the old folks down the street every time the baby did some new and entrancing thing, especially when the grannyfigure in the picture was ill. Ralph had an idea that Ed wouldnt be able to tell someone to go to hell without suffering a sleepless night in consequence, but You fucking whoremaster! Move your sour shitcaked ass, you hear me? Buttfucker! Cuntrammer! But it sure sounded like Ed. Even from two or three hundred yards away, it certainly sounded like him. Now the driver of the Datsun was revving his engine like a kid in a musclecar waiting for the light to turn green. Clouds of exhaust smoke farted up from the tailpipe. As soon as the gate had retracted enough to allow the Datsun passage, the car leaped forward, squirting through the gap with its engine roaring, and when it did, Ralph got a clear look at the driver. He was close enough now for there to be no doubt it was Ed, all right. The Datsun bounced along the short unpaved stretch of lane between the gate and the Harris Street Extension. A horn blared suddenly, and Ralph saw a blue Ford Ranger, heading west on the Extension, swerve to avoid the oncoming Datsun. The driver of the pickup saw the danger too late, and Ed apparently never saw it at all (it was only later that Ralph came to consider Ed might have rammed the Ranger on purpose). There was a brief scream of tires followed by the hollow bang of the Datsuns fender driving into the Fords sidewall. The pickup was driven halfway across the yellow line. The Datsuns hood crumpled, came unlatched, and popped up a little; headlight glass tinkled into the street. A moment later both vehicles were dead in the middle of the road, tangled together like some weird sculpture. Ralph stood where he was for the time being, watching as oil spread beneath the Datsuns front end. He had seen several road accidents in his almostseventy years, most of them minor, one or two serious, and he was always stunned by how quickly they happened and how little drama there was. It wasnt like in the movies, where the camera could slow things down, or on a videotape, where you could watch the car go off the cliff again and again if you so chose; there was usually just a series of converging blurs, followed by that quick and toneless combination of sounds the cry of the tires, the hollow bang of metal crimping metal, the tinkle of glass. Then, voil  tout finis. There was even a kind of protocol for this sort of thing How One Should Behave When Involved in a LowSpeed Collision. Of course there was, Ralph mused. There were probably a dozen twobit collisions in Derry every day, and maybe twice that number in the wintertime, when there was snow and the roads got slippery. You got out, you met your opposite number at the point where the two vehicles had come together (and where, quite often, they were still entwined), you looked, you shook your heads. Sometimes  often, actually  this phase of the encounter was marked with angry words fault was assigned (often rashly), driving skills impugned, legal action threatened. Ralph supposed what the drivers were really trying to say without coming right out and saying it was, Listen, fool, you scared the living hell out of me! The final step in this unhappy little dance was the Exchange of the Sacred Insurance Screeds, and it was at this point that the drivers usually began to get control of their galloping emotions . . . always assuming that no one had been hurt, as appeared to be the case here. Sometimes the drivers involved even finished up by shaking hands. Ralph prepared to watch all this from his vantage point less than a hundred and fifty yards away, but as soon as the drivers door of the Datsun opened he understood that things were going to go differently here  that the accident was maybe not over but still happening. It certainly did not seem that anyone was going to shake at the end of these festivities. The door did not swing open; it flew open. Ed Deepneau leaped out, then simply stood stockstill beside his car, his slim shoulders squared against a background of deepening clouds. He was wearing faded jeans and a teeshirt, and Ralph realized he had never seen Ed in a shirt that didnt button up the front. And there was something around his neck a long white something. A scarf? It looked like a scarf, but why would anyone be wearing a scarf on a day as hot as this one had been? Ed stood beside his wounded car for a moment, seeming to look in every direction but the right one. The fierce little pokes of his narrow head reminded Ralph of the way roosters studied their barnyard turf, looking for invaders and interlopers. Something about that similarity made Ralph feel uneasy. He had never seen Ed look that way before, and he supposed that was part of it, but it wasnt all of it. The truth of the matter was simply this he had never seen anyone look exactly like that. Thunder rumbled in the west, louder now. And closer. The man getting out of the Ranger would have made two of Ed Deepneau, possibly three. His vast, deep belly hung over the rolled waistband of his green chino workpants; there were sweatstains the size of dinnerplates under the arms of his openthroated white shirt. He tipped back the bill of the West Side Gardeners gimmecap he was wearing to get a better look at the man who had broadsided him. His heavyjowled face was dead pale except for bright patches of color like rouge high on his cheekbones, and Ralph thought Theres a man whos a prime candidate for a heart attack. If I was closer I bet Id be able to see the creases in his earlobes. Hey! the heavyset guy yelled at Ed. The voice coming out of that broad chest and deep gut was absurdly thin, almost reedy. Whered you get your license? Fuckin Sears n Roebuck? Eds wandering, jabbing head swung immediately toward the sound of the big mans voice  seemed almost to home in, like a jet guided by radar  and Ralph got his first good look at Eds eyes. He felt a bolt of alarm light up in his chest and suddenly began to run toward the accident. Ed, meanwhile, had started toward the man in the sweatsoaked white shirt and gimmecap. He was walking in a stifflegged, highshouldered strut that was nothing at all like his usual easygoing amble. Ed! Ralph shouted, but the freshening breeze  cold now with the promise of rain  seemed to snatch the words away before they could even get out of his mouth. Certainly Ed never turned. Ralph made himself run faster, the ache in his legs and the throbbing in the small of his back forgotten. It was murder he had seen in Ed Deepneaus wide, unblinking eyes. He had absolutely no previous experience upon which to base such an assessment, but he didnt think you could mistake such a naked glare; it was the look fighting cocks must wear when they launch themselves at each other, spurs up and slashing. Ed! Hey, Ed, hold up! Its Ralph! Not so much as a glance around, although Ralph was now so close that Ed must have heard, wind or no wind. Certainly the heavyset man glanced around, and Ralph could see both fear and uncertainty in his look. Then Heavyset turned back to Ed and raised his hands placatingly. Look, he said. We can talk That was as far as he got. Ed took another quick step forward, reached up with one slim hand  it was very white in the rapidly darkening day  and slapped Heavyset across his far from inconsiderable jowls. The sound was like the report of a kids air rifle. How many have you killed? Ed asked. Heavyset pressed back against the side of his pickup, his mouth open, his eyes wide. Eds queer, stiff strut never faltered. He walked into the other man and stood belly to belly with him, seemingly oblivious of the fact that the pickups driver was four inches taller and outweighed him by a hundred pounds or more. Ed reached up and slapped him again. Come on! Fess up, brave boy  how many have you killed? His voice rose to a shriek that was lost in the coming storms first really authoritative clap of thunder. Heavyset pushed him away  a gesture not of aggression but of simple fright  and Ed went reeling backward against the crumpled nose of his Datsun. He bounced back at once, fists clenched, gathering himself to leap at Heavyset, who was cringing against the side of his truck with his gimmecap now askew and his shirt untucked in the back and at the sides. A memory flashed across Ralphs mind  a Three Stooges short hed seen years ago, Larry, Curly, and Moe playing painters without a clue  and he felt a sudden surge of sympathy for Heavyset, who looked absurd as well as scared to death. Ed Deepneau did not look absurd. With his yankedback lips and wide, unblinking eyes, Ed looked more like a fighting cock than ever. I know what youve been doing, he whispered to Heavyset. What kind of comedy did you think this was? Did you think you and your butcher friends could get away with it forev At that moment Ralph arrived, puffing and gasping like an old carthorse, and put an arm around Eds shoulders. The heat beneath the thin teeshirt was unnerving; it was like putting an arm around an oven, and when Ed turned to look at him, Ralph had the momentary (but unforgettable) impression that that was exactly what he was looking into. He had never seen such utter, unreasoning fury in a pair of human eyes; had never even suspected such fury might exist. Ralphs immediate impulse was to recoil, but he suppressed it and stood firm. He had an idea that if he pulled back, Ed would fall on him like a rogue dog, biting and clawing. It was absurd, of course; Ed was a research chemist, Ed was a member of the Book of the Month Club (the kind who took the twentypound histories of the Crimean War they always seemed to offer as alternates to the main selection), Ed was Helens husband and Natalies dad. Hell, Ed was a friend. . . . except this wasnt that Ed, and Ralph knew it. Instead of pulling back, Ralph leaned forward, grasped Eds shoulders (so hot under the teeshirt, so incredibly, throbbingly hot), and moved his face until it blocked Heavyset from Eds creepy fixed gaze. Ed, quit it! Ralph said. He used the loud but steadily firm voice he assumed one used with people who were having hysterics. Youre all right! Just quit it! For a moment Eds fixed gaze didnt waver, and then his eyes moved over Ralphs face. It wasnt much, but Ralph felt a small surge of relief just the same. Whats the matter with him? Heavyset asked from behind Ralph. He crazy, do you think? Hes fine, Im sure, Ralph said, although he was sure of no such thing. He spoke out of the corner of his mouth, and didnt take his eyes from Ed. He didnt dare take his eyes from Ed  that contact felt like the only hold he had over the man, and tenuous at best. Just shaken up from the crash. He needs a few seconds to calm d Ask him what hes got under that tarp! Ed yelled suddenly, and pointed over Ralphs shoulder. Lightning flashed, and for a moment the pitted scars of Eds adolescent acne were thrown into sharp relief, like some strange organic treasure map. Thunder rolled. Hey, hey, Susan Day! he chanted in a high, childlike voice that made Ralphs forearms break out in goosebumps. How many kids did you kill today? He aint shook up, Heavyset said. Hes crazy. And when the cops get here, Im gonna see he gets tooken in. Ralph glanced around and saw a blue tarpaulin stretched across the bed of the pickup. It had been tied down with bright yellow hanks of rope. Round shapes bulked beneath it. Ralph? a timid voice asked. He glanced to his left and saw Dorrance Marstellar  at ninetysomething easily the oldest of the Harris Avenue Old Crocks  standing just beyond Heavysets pickup truck. There was a paperback book in his waxy, liverspotted hands, and Dorrance was bending it anxiously back and forth, giving the spine a real workout. Ralph supposed it was a book of poetry, which was all he had ever seen old Dorrance read. Or maybe he didnt really read at all; maybe he just liked to hold the books and look at the artfully stacked words. Ralph, whats wrong? Whats happening? More lightning flashed overhead, a purplewhite snarl of electricity. Dorrance looked up at it as if unsure of where he was, who he was, or what he was seeing. Ralph groaned inside. Dorrance  he began, and then Ed lunged beneath him, like some wild animal which has only lain quiet to regain its strength. Ralph staggered, then pushed Ed back against the crumpled hood of his Datsun. He felt panicky  unsure of what to do next or how to do it. There were too many things going on at once. He could feel the muscles in Eds arms humming fiercely just below his grip; it was almost as if the man had somehow swallowed a bolt of the lightning now loose in the sky. Ralph? Dorrance asked in that same calm but worried voice. I wouldnt touch him anymore, if I were you. I cant see your hands. Oh, good. Another lunatic to deal with. Just what he needed. Ralph glanced down at his hands, then looked at the old man. What are you talking about, Dorrance? Your hands, Dorrance said patiently. I cant see your This is no place for you, Dor  why dont you get lost? The old man brightened a little at that. Yes! he said in the tone of one who has just stumbled over a great truth. Thats just what I oughtta do! He began to back up, and when the thunder cracked again, he cringed and put his book on top of his head. Ralph was able to read the bright red letters of the title Buckdancers Choice. Its what you ought to do, too, Ralph. You dont want to mess in with longtime business. Its a good way to get hurt. What are you But before Ralph could finish, Dorrance turned his back and went lumbering off in the direction of the picnic area with his fringe of white hair  as gossamer as the hair on a new babys head  rippling in the breeze of the oncoming storm. One problem solved, but Ralphs relief was shortlived. Ed had been temporarily distracted by Dorrance, but now he was looking daggers at Heavyset again. Cuntlicker! he spat. Fucked your mother and licked her cunt! Heavysets enormous brow drew down. What? Eds eyes shifted back to Ralph, whom he now seemed to recognize. Ask him whats under that tarp! he cried. Better yet, get the murdering cocksucker to show you! Ralph looked at the heavyset man. What have you got under there? Whats it to you? Heavyset asked, perhaps trying to sound truculent. He sampled the look in Ed Deepneaus eyes and took two more sidling steps away. Nothing to me, something to him, Ralph said, lifting his chin in Eds direction. Just help me cool him out, okay? You know him? Murderer! Ed repeated, and this time he lunged hard enough under Ralphs hands to drive him back a step. Yet something was happening, wasnt it? Ralph thought the scary, vacant look was seeping out of Eds eyes. There seemed to be a little more Ed in there than there had been before . . . or perhaps that was only wishful thinking. Murderer, baby murderer! Jesus, what a loony tune, Heavyset said, but he went to the rear of the truckbed, yanked one of the ropes free, and peeled back a corner of the tarpaulin. Beneath it were four pressboard barrels, each marked WEEDGO. Organic fertilizer, Heavyset said, his eyes flicking from Ed to Ralph and then back to Ed again. He touched the bill of his West Side Gardeners cap. I spent the day workin on a set of new flowerbeds outside the Derry Psych Wing . . . where you could stand a short vacation, friend. Fertilizer? Ed asked. It was himself he seemed to be speaking to. His left hand rose slowly to his temple and began to rub there. Fertilizer? He sounded like a man questioning some simple yet staggering scientific development. Fertilizer, Heavyset agreed. He glanced back at Ralph and said, This guy is sick in the head. You know it? Hes confused, thats all, Ralph answered uneasily. He leaned over the side of the truck and rapped a barreltop. Then he turned back to Ed.


Barrels of fertilizer, he said. Okay? No response. Eds right hand rose and began to rub at his other temple. He looked like a man sinking into a terrible migraine. Okay? Ralph repeated gently. Ed closed his eyes for a moment, and when they opened again, Ralph observed a sheen in them he thought was probably tears. Eds tongue slipped out and dabbed delicately first at one corner of his mouth and then the other. He took the end of his silk scarf and wiped his forehead, and as he did, Ralph saw there were Chinese figures embroidered on it in red, just above the fringe. I guess maybe  he began, and then broke off. His eyes widened again in that look Ralph didnt like. Babies! he rasped. You hear me? Babies! Ralph shoved him back against his car for the third or fourth time  hed lost count. What are you talking about, Ed? An idea suddenly occurred to him. Is it Natalie? Are you worried about Natalie? A small, crafty smile touched Eds lips. He looked past Ralph at the heavyset man. Fertilizer, huh? Well, if thats all it is, you wont mind opening one of them, will you? Heavyset looked at Ralph uneasily. Man needs a doctor, he said. Maybe he does. But he was calming down, I thought . . . could you open one of those barrels? It might make him feel better. Yeah, sure, what the heck. In for a penny, in for a pound. There was another flash of lightning, another heavy blast of thunder  one that seemed to go rolling all the way across the sky this time  and a cold spackle of rain struck the back of Ralphs sweaty neck. He glanced to his left and saw Dorrance Marstellar standing at the entrance to the picnic area, book in hand, watching the three of them anxiously. Its gonna rain a pretty bitch, looks like, Heavyset said, and I cant let this stuff get wet. It starts a chemical reaction. So look fast. He felt around between one of the barrels and the sidewall of his truck for a moment, then came up with a crowbar. I must be as nutty as he is, doin this, he said to Ralph. I mean, I was just goin along home, mindin my business. He hit me. Go on, Ralph said. Itll only take a second. Yeah, Heavyset replied sourly, turning and setting the flat end of the crowbar under the lid of the nearest barrel, but the memories will last a lifetime. Another thunderclap rocked the day just then, and Heavyset did not hear what Ed Deepneau said next. Ralph did, however, and it chilled the pit of his stomach. Those barrels are full of dead babies, Ed said. Youll see. Heavyset popped the lid on the end barrel, and such was the conviction in Eds voice that Ralph almost expected to see tangles of arms and legs and bundles of small hairless heads. Instead, he saw a mixture of fine blue crystals and brown stuff. The smell which rose from the barrel was rich and peaty, with a thin chemical undertone. See? Satisfied? Heavyset asked, speaking directly to Ed again. I aint Ray Joubert or that guy Dahmer after all. How bout that! The look of confusion was back on Eds face, and when the thunder cracked overhead again, he cringed a little. He leaned over, reached a hand toward the barrel, then looked a question at Heavyset. The big man nodded to him, almost sympathetically, Ralph thought. Sure, touch it, fine by me. But if it rains while youre holdin a fistful, youll dance like John Travolta. It burns. Ed reached into the barrel, grabbed some of the mix, and let it run through his fingers. He shot Ralph a perplexed look (there was an element of embarrassment in that look as well, Ralph thought), and then sank his arm into the barrel all the way to the elbow. Hey! Heavyset cried, startled. That aint a box of Cracker Jack! For a moment the crafty grin resurfaced on Eds face  a look that said I know a trick worth two of that  and then it subsided into puzzlement again as he found nothing further down but more fertilizer. When he drew his arm out of the barrel, it was dusty and aromatic with the mix. Another flash of lightning exploded above the airport. The thunder which followed was almost deafening. Get that off your skin before it rains, Im warning you, Heavyset said. He reached through the Rangers open passenger window and produced a McDonalds takeout sack. He rummaged in it, came out with a couple of napkins, and handed them to Ed, who began to wipe the fertilizer dust from his forearm like a man in a dream. While he did this, Heavyset replaced the lid on the barrel, tamping it into place with one large, freckled fist and taking quick glances up at the darkening sky. When Ed touched the shoulder of his white shirt, the man stiffened and pulled away, looking at Ed warily. I think I owe you an apology, Ed said, and to Ralph his voice sounded completely clear and sane for the first time. Youre damn tooting, Heavyset said, but he sounded relieved. He stretched the plasticcoated tarpaulin back into place and tied it in a series of quick, efficient gestures. Watching him, Ralph was struck by what a sly thief time was. Once he could have tied that same sheetbend with that same dextrous ease. Today he could still tie it, but it would take him at least two minutes and maybe three of his best cursewords. Heavyset patted the tarp and then turned to them, folding his arms across the substantial expanse of his chest. Did you see the accident? he asked Ralph. No, Ralph said at once. He had no idea why he was lying, but the decision to do it was instantaneous. I was watching the plane land. The United. To his complete surprise, the flushed patches on Heavysets cheeks began to spread. You were watching it, too! Ralph thought suddenly. And not just watching it land, either, or you wouldnt be blushing like that . . . you were watching it taxi! This thought was followed by a complete revelation Heavyset thought the accident had been his fault, or that the cop or cops who showed up to investigate might read it that way. He had been watching the plane and hadnt seen Eds reckless charge through the service gate and out to the Extension. Look, Im really sorry, Ed was saying earnestly, but he actually looked more than sorry; he looked dismayed. Ralph suddenly found himself wondering how much he trusted that expression, and if he really had even the slightest idea of (Hey, hey, Susan Day) what had just happened here . . . and who the hell was Susan Day, anyhow? I bumped my head on the steering wheel, Ed was saying,and I guess it . . . you know, it rattled my cage pretty good. Yeah, I guess it did, Heavyset said. He scratched his head, looked up at the dark and convoluted sky, then looked back at Ed again. Want to make you a deal, friend. Oh? What deal is that? Lets just exchange names and phone numbers instead of going through all that insurance shit. Then you go your way and I go mine. Ed looked uncertainly at Ralph, who shrugged, and then back at the man in the West Side Gardeners cap. If we get into it with the cops, Heavyset went on, Im in for a ration of shit. First thing theyre going to find out when they call it in is I had an Operating Under the Influence last winter, and Im drivin on a provisional license. Theyre apt to make problems for me even though I was on the main drag and had the rightofway. See what I mean? Yes, Ed said,I guess so, but the accident was entirely my fault. I was going much too fast The accident part is maybe not so important, Heavyset said, then looked mistrustfully around at an approaching panel truck that was pulling over onto the shoulder. He looked back at Ed again and spoke with some urgency. You lost some oil, but its stopped leakin now. I bet you could drive her home . . . if you live here in town. You live here in town? Yes, Ed said. And Id stand you good on repairs, up to fifty bucks or so. Another revelation struck Ralph; it was the only thing he could think of to explain the mans sudden change from truculence to something close to wheedling. An OUI last winter? Yes, probably. But Ralph had never heard of such a thing as a provisional license, and thought it was almost certainly bullshit. Old Mr West Side Gardeners had been driving without a license. What complicated the situation was this Ed was telling the truth  the accident had been entirely his fault. If we just drive away and call it good, Heavyset was going on, I dont have to explain all over again about my OUI and you dont have to explain why you jumped out of your car and started slapping me and yelling about how I had a truckload of dead bodies. Did I actually say that? Ed asked, sounding bewildered. You know you did, Heavyset told him grimly. A voice with a wispy FrenchCanadian accent asked, Everyting okay here, fellers? Nobody urt? . . . Eyyy, Ralph! Dat you? The truck which had pulled over had Derry Dry Cleaners printed on the side, and Ralph recognized the driver as one of the Vachon brothers from Old Cape. Probably Trigger, the youngest. Thats me, Ralph said, and without knowing or asking himself why  he was operating purely on instinct at this point  he went to Trigger, put an arm around his shoulders, and led him back in the direction of the laundry truck. Dem guys okay? Fine, fine, Ralph said. He glanced back and saw that Ed and Heavyset were standing by the truckbed with their heads together. Another cold spatter of rain fell, drumming on the blue tarpaulin like impatient fingers. A little fenderbender, thats all. Theyre working it out. Beauty, beauty, Trigger Vachon said complacently. Howdat pretty little wife of yours, Ralph? Ralph twitched, suddenly feeling like a man who remembers at lunch that he has forgotten to turn off the stove before leaving for work. Jesus! he said, and looked at his watch, hoping for fivefifteen, fivethirty at the latest. Instead he saw it was ten minutes of six. Already twenty minutes past the time Carolyn expected him to bring her a bowl of soup and half a sandwich. She would be worried. In fact, with the lightning and the thunder booming through the empty apartment, she might be downright scared. And if it did rain, she would not be able to close the windows; she had almost no strength left in her hands. Ralph? Trigger asked. Whats wrong? Nothing, he said. Its just that I got walking and lost all track of time. Then this accident happened, and . . . could you give me a ride home, Trig? Ill pay you. No need to pay nuttin, Trigger said. Its on my way. Hop in, Ralph. You tink dose guys gonna be all right? Aint gonna take after each udder or nuttin? No, Ralph said. I dont think so. Just one second. Sure. Ralph walked over to Ed. Are you okay with this? Are you getting it worked out? Yes, Ed replied. Were going to settle it privately. Why not? A little broken glass is all it really comes down to. He sounded completely like his old self now, and the big man in the white shirt was looking at him with something that was almost respect. Ralph still felt perplexed and uneasy about what had happened here, but he decided he was going to let it go. He liked Ed Deepneau a lot, but Ed was not his business this July; Carolyn was. Carolyn and the thing which had started ticking in the walls of their bedroom  and inside her  late at night. Great, he told Ed. Im headed home. I make Carolyn her supper these days, and Im running way late. He started to turn away. The heavyset man stopped him with an outstretched hand. John Tandy, he said. He shook it. Ralph Roberts. Pleased to meet you. Tandy smiled. Under the circumstances, I kinda doubt that . . . but Im real glad you showed up when you did. For a few seconds there I really thought him and me was gonna tango. So did I, Ralph thought but didnt say. He looked at Ed, his troubled eye taking in the unfamiliar teeshirt clinging to Eds stalkthin midriff and the white silk scarf with the Chinesered figures embroidered on it. He didnt entirely like the look in Eds eyes when they met his; Ed was perhaps not all the way back after all. Sure youre okay? Ralph asked him. He wanted to go, wanted to get back to Carolyn, and yet he was somehow reluctant. The feeling that this situation was about nine miles from right persisted. Yes, fine, Ed said quickly, and gave him a big smile which did not reach his dark green eyes. They studied Ralph carefully, as if asking how much he had seen . . . and how much (hey hey Susan Day) he would remember later on. 3 The interior of Trigger Vachons truck smelled of clean, freshly pressed clothes, an aroma which for some reason always reminded Ralph of fresh bread. There was no passenger seat, so he stood with one hand wrapped around the doorhandle and the other gripping the edge of a Dandux laundry basket. Man, dat look like some strange goon back dere, Trigger said, glancing into his outside mirror. You dont know the half of it, Ralph replied. I know the guy drivin the riceburner  Deepneau, his name is. He got a pretty little wife, send stuff out sometime. Seem like a nice fella, mos usually. He sure wasnt himself today, Ralph said. Had a bug up his ass, did he? Had a whole damn antfarm up there, I think. Trigger laughed hard at that, pounding the worn black plastic of the big steering wheel. Whole damn antfarm! Beauty! Beauty! Im savin dat one, me! Trigger wiped his streaming eyes with a handkerchief almost the size of a tablecloth. Look to me like Mr Deepneau come out dat airport service gate, him. Thats right, he did. You need a pass to use dat way, Trigger said. How Mr D get a pass, you tink? Ralph thought it over, frowning, then shook his head. I dont know. It never even occurred to me. Ill have to ask him next time I see him. You do dat, Trigger said. And ask him how dem ants doin. This stimulated a fresh throe of laughter, which in turn occasioned more flourishes of the comicopera handkerchief. As they turned off the Extension and onto Harris Avenue proper, the storm finally broke. There was no hail, but the rain came in an extravagant summer flood, so heavy at first that Trigger had to slow the panel truck to a crawl. Wow! he said respectfully. Dis remine me of the big storm back in 85, when haffa downtown fell inna damn Canal! Member dat, Ralph? Yes, Ralph said. Lets hope it doesnt happen again. Nah, Trigger said, grinning and peering past his extravagantly flapping windshield wipers, dey got the drainage system all fixed up now. Beauty! The combination of the cold rain and the warm cab caused the bottom half of the windshield to steam up. Without thinking, Ralph reached out a finger and drew a figure in the steam Whats dat? Trigger asked. I dont really know. Looks Chinese, doesnt it? It was on the scarf Ed Deepneau was wearing. Look a little familiar to me, Trigger said, glancing at it again. Then he snorted and flapped a hand. Listen to me, wouldja? Ony ting I can say in Chinese is moogoogaipan! Ralph smiled, but didnt seem to have a laugh in him. It was Carolyn. Now that he had remembered her, he couldnt stop thinking about her  couldnt stop imagining the windows open, and the curtains streaming like Edward Gorey ghost arms as the rain poured in. You still live in dat twostorey across from the Red Apple? Yes. Trigger pulled in to the curb, the wheels of the truck spraying up big fans of water. The rain was still pouring down in sheets. Lightning raced across the sky; thunder cracked. You better stay right here wit me for a little bit, Trigger said. She let up in a minute or two. Ill be all right. Ralph didnt think anything could keep him in the truck a second longer, not even handcuffs. Thanks, Trig. Wait a sec! Let me give you a piece of plastic  you can puddit over your head like a rainhat! No, thats okay, no problem, thanks, Ill just There seemed to be no way of finishing whatever it was he was trying to say, and now what he felt was close to panic. He shoved the trucks passenger door back on its track and jumped out, landing ankledeep in the cold water racing down the gutter. He gave Trigger a final wave without looking back, then hurried up the walk to the house he and Carolyn shared with Bill McGovern, feeling in his pocket for his latchkey as he went. When he reached the porch steps he saw he wouldnt need it  the door was standing ajar. Bill, who lived downstairs, often forgot to lock it, and Ralph would rather think it had been him than think that Carolyn had wandered out to look for him and been caught in the storm. That was a possibility Ralph did not even want to consider. He hurried into the shadowy foyer, wincing as thunder banged deafeningly overhead, and crossed to the foot of the stairs. He paused there a moment, hand on the newel post of the banister, listening to rainwater drip from his soaked pants and shirt onto the hardwood floor. Then he started up, wanting to run but no longer able to find the next gear up from a fast walk. His heart was beating hard and fast in his chest, his soaked sneakers were clammy anchors dragging at his feet, and for some reason he kept seeing the way Ed Deepneaus head had moved when he got out of his Datsun  those stiff, quick jabs that made him look like a rooster spoiling for a fight. The third riser creaked loudly, as it always did, and the sound provoked hurried footsteps from above. They were no relief because they werent Carolyns, he knew that at once, and when Bill McGovern leaned over the rail, his face pale and worried beneath his Panama hat, Ralph wasnt really surprised. All the way back from the Extension he had felt that something was wrong, hadnt he? Yes. But under the circumstances, that hardly qualified as precognition. When things reached a certain degree of wrongness, he was discovering, they could no longer be redeemed or turned around; they just kept going wronger and wronger. He supposed that on some level or other hed always known that. What he had never suspected was how long that wrong road could be. Ralph! Bill called down. Thank God! Carolyns having . . . well, I guess its some sort of seizure. I just dialed 911, asked them to send an ambulance. Ralph discovered he could run up the rest of the stairs, after all. 4 She was lying half in and half out of the kitchen with her hair in her face. Ralph thought there was something particularly horrible about that; it looked sloppy, and if there was one thing Carolyn refused to be, it was sloppy. He knelt beside her and brushed the hair away from her eyes and forehead. The skin beneath his fingers felt as chilly as his feet inside his soaked sneakers. I wanted to put her on the couch, but shes too heavy for me, Bill said nervously. He had taken off his Panama and was fiddling nervously with the band. My back, you know I know, Bill, its okay, Ralph said. He slid his arms under Carolyn and picked her up. She did not feel heavy to him at all, but light  almost as light as a milkweed pod which is ready to burst open and disgorge its filaments into the wind. Thank God you were here. I almost wasnt, Bill replied, following Ralph into the living room and still fiddling with his hat. He made Ralph think of old Dorrance Marstellar with his book of poems. I wouldnt touch him anymore, if I were you, old Dorrance had said. I cant see your hands. I was on my way out when I heard a hell of a thud . . . it must have been her falling . . . Bill looked around the stormdarkened living room, his face somehow distraught and avid at the same time, his eyes seeming to search for something that wasnt there. Then they brightened. The door! he said. Ill bet its still open! Itll be raining in! Ill be right back, Ralph. He hurried out. Ralph barely noticed; the day had taken on the surreal aspects of a nightmare. The ticking was the worst. He could hear it in the walls, so loud now that even the thunder could not blot it out. He put Carolyn on the couch and knelt beside her. Her respiration was fast and shallow, and her breath was terrible. Ralph did not turn away from it, however. Hang in there, sweetheart, he said. He picked up one of her hands  it was almost as clammy as her brow had been  and kissed it gently. You just hang in there. Its fine, everythings fine. But it wasnt fine, the ticking sound meant that nothing was fine. It wasnt in the walls, either  it had never been in the walls, but only in his wife. In Carolyn. It was in his dear one, she was slipping away from him, and what would he ever do without her? You just hang on, he said. Hang on, you hear me? He kissed her hand again, and held it against his cheek, and when he heard the warble of the approaching ambulance, he began to cry. 5 She came around in the ambulance as it sped across Derry (the sun was already out again, the wet streets steaming), and at first she talked such gibberish that Ralph was sure she had suffered a stroke. Then, just as she began to clear up and speak coherently, a second convulsion struck, and it took both Ralph and one of the paramedics who had answered the call to hold her down. It wasnt Dr Litchfield who came to see Ralph in the thirdfloor waiting room early that evening but Dr Jamal, the neurologist. Jamal talked to him in a low, soothing voice, telling him that Carolyn was now stabilized, that they were going to keep her overnight, just to be safe, but that she would be able to go home in the morning. There were going to be some new medications  drugs that were expensive, yes, but also quite wonderful. We must not be losing the hope, Mr Roberts, Dr Jamal said. No, Ralph said, I suppose not. Will there be more of these, Dr Jamal? Dr Jamal smiled. He spoke in a quiet voice that was rendered somehow even more comforting by his soft Indian accent. And although Dr Jamal did not come right out and tell him that Carolyn was going to die, he came as close as anyone ever did during that long year in which she battled to stay alive. The new medications, Jamal said, would probably prevent any further seizures, but things had reached a stage where all predictions had to be taken with the grains of salt. The tumor was spreading in spite of everything they had tried, unfortunately. The motorcontrol problems may show up next, Dr Jamal said in his comforting voice. And I am seeing some deterioration in the eyesight, I am afraid. Can I spend the night with her? Ralph asked quietly. Shell sleep better if I do. He paused, then added So will I. Of gorse! Dr Jamal said, brightening. That is a fine idea! Yes, Ralph said heavily. I think so, too. 6 So he sat beside his sleeping wife, and he listened to the ticking that was not in the walls, and he thought Some day soon  maybe this fall, maybe this winter  I will be back in this room with her. It had the feel not of speculation but of prophecy, and he leaned over and put his head on the white sheet that covered his wifes breast. He didnt want to cry again, but did a little anyway. That ticking. So loud and so steady. Id like to get hold of whats making that sound, he thought. Id stamp it until it was so many pieces scattered across the floor. With God as my witness I would. He fell asleep in his chair a little after midnight, and when he woke the next morning the air was cooler than it had been in weeks, and Carolyn was wide awake, coherent, and brighteyed. She seemed, in fact, hardly to be sick at all. Ralph took her home and began the notinconsiderable job of making her last months as comfortable as possible. It was a long while before he thought of Ed Deepneau again; even after he began to see the bruises on Helen Deepneaus face, it was a long time before he thought of Ed again. As that summer became fall, and as that fall darkened down toward Carolyns final winter, Ralphs thoughts were occupied more and more by the deathwatch, which seemed to tick louder and louder even as it slowed down. But he had no trouble sleeping. That came later. PART 1 LITTLE BALD DOCTORS There is a gulf fixed between those who can sleep and those who cannot. It is one of the great divisions of the human race. Iris Murdoch Nuns and Soldiers CHAPTER ONE 1 About a month after the death of his wife, Ralph Roberts began to suffer from insomnia for the first time in his life. The problem was mild to begin with, but it grew steadily worse. Six months after the first interruptions in his heretofore unremarkable sleep cycle, Ralph had reached a state of misery he could hardly credit, let alone accept. Toward the end of the summer of 1993 he began to wonder what it would be like to spend his remaining years on earth in a stareyeyed daze of wakefulness. Of course it wouldnt come to that, he told himself, it never does. But was that true? He didnt really know, that was the devil of it, and the books on the subject Mike Hanlon steered him to down at the Derry Public Library werent much help. There were several on sleep disorders, but they seemed to contradict one another. Some called insomnia a symptom, others called it a disease, and at least one called it a myth. The problem went further than that, however; so far as Ralph could tell from the books, no one seemed exactly sure what sleep itself was, how it worked, or what it did. He knew he should quit playing amateur researcher and go to the doctor, but he found that surprisingly hard to do. He supposed he still bore Dr Litchfield a grudge. It was Litchfield, after all, who had originally diagnosed Carolyns brain tumor as tension headaches (except Ralph had an idea that Litchfield, a lifelong bachelor, might actually have believed that Carolyn was suffering from nothing but a moderate case of the vapors), and Litchfield who had made himself as scarce as medically possible once Carolyn was diagnosed. Ralph was positive that if he had asked the man about that pointblank, Litchfield would have said he had handed the case off to Jamal, the specialist . . . all quite proper and aboveboard. Yes. Except Ralph had made it his business to get a good look into Litchfields eyes on the few occasions he had seen him between Carolyns first convulsions last July and her death this March, and Ralph thought that what hed seen in those eyes was a mixture of unease and guilt. It was the look of a man trying very hard to forget he has fucked up. Ralph believed the only reason he could still look at Litchfield without wanting to knock his block off was that Dr Jamal had told him that an earlier diagnosis probably would have made no difference; by the time Carolyns headaches started, the tumor was already well entrenched, and no doubt sending out little bursts of bad cells to other areas of the brain like malignant CARE packages. In late April Dr Jamal had left to establish a practice in southern Connecticut, and Ralph missed him. He thought that he could have talked about his sleeplessness to Dr Jamal, and he had an idea that Jamal would have listened in a way Litchfield wouldnt . . . or couldnt. By late summer Ralph had read enough about insomnia to know that the type with which he was afflicted, while not rare, was a lot less common than the usual slowsleep insomnia. People unaffected by insomnia are usually in firststage sleep seven to twenty minutes after turning in. Slowsleepers, on the other hand, sometimes take as long as three hours to slip below the surface, and while normal sleepers begin to ramp down into thirdstage sleep (what some of the old books called theta sleep, Ralph had discovered) fortyfive minutes or so after drifting off, slowsleepers usually took an additional hour or two to get down there . . . and on many nights they did not get all the way down at all. They awoke unrefreshed, sometimes with unfocused memories of unpleasant, tangled dreams, more often with the mistaken impression that they had been awake all night. Following Carolyns death, Ralph began to suffer from premature waking. He continued to go to bed most nights following the conclusion of the eleven oclock news, and he continued to pop off to sleep almost at once, but instead of waking promptly at sixfiftyfive, five minutes before the clockradio alarm buzzed, he began to wake at six. At first he dismissed this as no more than the price of living with a slightly enlarged prostate and a seventyyearold set of kidneys, but he never seemed to have to go that badly when he woke up, and he found it impossible to get back to sleep even after hed emptied what had accumulated. He simply lay in the bed hed shared with Carolyn for so many years, waiting for it to be five of seven (quarter till, anyway) so he could get up. Eventually he gave up even trying to drop off again; he simply lay there with his longfingered, slightly swollen hands laced together on his chest and stared up at the shadowy ceiling with eyes that felt as big as doorknobs. Sometimes he thought of Dr Jamal down there in Westport, talking in his soft and comforting Indian accent, building up his little piece of the American dream. Sometimes he thought of places he and Carolyn had gone in the old days, and the one he kept coming back to was a hot afternoon at Sand Beach in Bar Harbor, the two of them sitting at a picnic table in their bathing suits, sitting under a big bright umbrella, eating sweet fried clams and drinking Bud from longneck bottles as they watched the sailboats scudding across the darkblue ocean. When had that been? 1964? 1967? Did it matter? Probably not. The alterations in his sleep schedule wouldnt have mattered, either, if they had ended there; Ralph would have adapted to the changes not just with ease but with gratitude. All the books he hunted through that summer seemed to confirm one bit of folk wisdom hed heard all his life  people slept less as they got older. If losing an hour or so a night was the only fee he had to pay for the dubious pleasure of being seventy years young, he would pay it gladly, and consider himself well off. But it didnt end there. By the first week of May, Ralph was waking up to birdsong at 515 a.m. He tried earplugs for a few nights, although he doubted from the outset that they would work. It wasnt the newly returned birds that were waking him up, nor the occasional deliverytruck backfire out on Harris Avenue. He had always been the sort of guy who could sleep in the middle of a brass marching band, and he didnt think that had changed. What had changed was inside his head. There was a switch in there, something was turning it on a little earlier every day, and Ralph hadnt the slightest idea of how to keep it from happening. By June he was popping out of sleep like Jack out of his box at 430 a.m., 445 at the latest. And by the middle of July  not quite as hot as July of 92, but bad enough, thanks very much  he was snapping to at around four oclock. It was during those long hot nights, taking up too little of the bed where he and Carolyn had made love on so many hot nights (and cold ones), that he began to consider what a hell his life would become if sleep departed entirely. In daylight he was still able to scoff at the notion, but he was discovering certain dismal truths about F. Scott Fitzgeralds dark night of the soul, and the grandprize winner was this at 415 a.m., anything seems possible. Anything. During the days he was able to go on telling himself that he was simply experiencing a readjustment of his sleepcycle, that his body was responding in perfectly normal fashion to a number of big changes in his life, retirement and the loss of his wife being the two biggest. He sometimes used the word loneliness when he thought about his new life, but he shied away from The Dreaded DWord, stuffing it back into the deep closet of his subconscious whenever it happened to glimmer for a moment in his thoughts. Loneliness was okay. Depression most certainly was not. Maybe you need to get more exercise, he thought. Do some walking, like you used to last summer. After all, youve been leading a pretty sedentary life  get up, eat toast, read a book, watch some TV, get a sandwich across the street in the Red Apple for lunch, potter around in the garden a little, maybe go to the library or visit with Helen and the baby if they happen to be out, eat supper, maybe sit on the porch and visit with McGovern or Lois Chasse for a while.


Then what? Read a little more, watch a little more TV, wash up, go to bed. Sedentary. Boring. No wonder you wake up early. Except that was crap. His life sounded sedentary, yes, no doubt, but it really wasnt. The garden was a good example. What he did out there was never going to win him any prizes, but it was a hell of a long way from pottering around. Most afternoons he weeded until sweat made a dark treeshape down the back of his shirt and spread damp circles at his armpits, and he was often trembling with exhaustion by the time he let himself go back inside. Punishment probably would have been closer to the mark than pottering, but punishment for what? Waking up before dawn? Ralph didnt know and didnt care. Working in the garden filled up a large piece of the afternoon, it took his mind off things he didnt really care to think of, and that was enough to justify the aching muscles and the occasional flights of black spots in front of his eyes. He began his extended visits to the garden shortly after the Fourth of July and continued all through August, long after the early crops had been harvested and the later ones had been hopelessly stunted by the lack of rain. You ought to quit that, Bill McGovern told him one night as they sat on the porch, drinking lemonade. This was in midAugust, and Ralph had begun to wake up around threethirty each morning. Its got to be hazardous to your health. Worse, you look like a lunatic. Maybe I am a lunatic, Ralph responded shortly, and either his tone or the look in his eyes must have been convincing, because McGovern changed the subject. 2 He did begin walking again  nothing like the Marathons of 92, but he managed two miles a day if it wasnt raining. His usual route took him down the perversely named UpMile Hill, to the Derry Public Library, and then on to Back Pages, a used bookstore and newsstand on the corner of Witcham and Main. Back Pages stood next to a jumbled junkatorium called Secondhand Rose, Secondhand Clothes, and as he passed this store one day during the August of his discontent, Ralph saw a new poster among the announcements of outdated bean suppers and ancient church socials, placed so it covered roughly half of a yellowing PAT BUCHANAN FOR PRESIDENT placard. The woman in the two photographs at the top of the poster was a pretty blonde in her late thirties or early forties, but the style of the photos  unsmiling full face on the left, unsmiling profile on the right, plain white background in both  was unsettling enough to stop Ralph in his tracks. The photos made the woman look as if she belonged on a post office wall or in a TV docudrama . . . and that, the posters printed matter made clear, was no accident. The photos were what stopped him, but it was the womans name that held him. WANTED FOR MURDER SUSAN EDWINA DAY was printed across the top in big black letters. And below the simulated mugshots, in red STAY OUT OF OUR CITY! There was a small line of print at the very bottom of the poster. Ralphs close vision had deteriorated quite a bit since Carolyns death  gone to hell in a handbasket might actually have been a more accurate way of putting it  and he had to lean forward until his brow was pressed against the dirty show window of Secondhand Rose, Secondhand Clothes before he could decipher it Paid for by the Maine LifeWatch Committee Far down in his mind a voice whispered Hey, hey, Susan Day! How many kids did you kill today? Susan Day, Ralph recalled, was a political activist from either New York or Washington, the sort of fastspeaking woman who regularly drove taxidrivers, barbers, and hardhat construction workers into foaming frenzies. Why that particular little jangle of doggerel had come into his mind, however, he couldnt say; it was tagged to some memory that wouldnt quite come. Maybe his tired old brains were just crossreferencing that sixties Vietnam protest chant, the one which had gone Hey, hey, LBJ! How many kids did you kill today? No, thats not it, he thought. Close, but no cigar. It was Just before his mind could cough up Ed Deepneaus name and face, a voice spoke from almost beside him. Earth to Ralph, earth to Ralph, come in, Ralphiebaby! Roused out of his thoughts, Ralph turned toward the voice. He was both shocked and amused to find he had almost been asleep on his feet. Christ, he thought, you never know how important sleep is until you miss a little. Then all the floors start to tilt and all the corners on things start to round off. It was Hamilton Davenport, the proprietor of Back Pages, who had spoken to him. He was stocking the library cart he kept in front of his shop with brightly jacketed paperbacks. His old corncob pipe  to Ralph it always looked like the stack of a model steamship  jutted from the corner of his mouth, sending little puffs of blue smoke into the hot, bright air. Winston Smith, his old gray tomcat, sat in the open doorway of the shop with his tail curled around his paws. He looked at Ralph with yelloweyed indifference, as if to say, You think you know old, my friend? Im here to testify you dont know dick about getting old. Sheesh, Ralph, Davenport said. I must have called your name at least three times. I guess I was woolgathering, Ralph said. He stepped past the library cart, leaned in the doorway (Winston Smith held his place with regal indifference), and grabbed the two papers he bought every day a Boston Globe and a USA Today. The Derry News came right to the house, courtesy of Pete the paperboy. Ralph sometimes told people that he was sure one of the three papers was comic relief, but he had never been able to make up his mind which one it was. I havent He broke off as Ed Deepneaus face came into his mind. It was Ed hed heard that nasty little chant from, last summer, out by the airport, and it really wasnt any wonder it had taken him a little while to retrieve the memory. Ed Deepneau was the last person in the world from whom youd expect to hear something like that. Ralphie? Davenport said. You just shut down on me. Ralph blinked. Oh, sorry. I havent been sleeping very well, thats what I started to say. Bummer . . . but there are worse problems. Just drink a glass of warm milk and listen to some quiet music half an hour before bed. Ralph had begun to discover this summer that everyone in America apparently had a pet remedy for insomnia, some bit of bedtime magic that had been handed down through the generations like the family Bible. Bachs good, also Beethoven, and William Ackerman aint bad. But the real trick  Davenport raised one finger impressively to emphasize this  is not to get up from your chair during that half hour. Not for anything. Dont answer the phone, dont wind up the dog and put out the alarmclock, dont decide to brush your teeth . . . nothing! Then, when you do go to bed . . . bam! Out like a light! What if youre sitting there in your favorite easychair and all at once you realize you have a call of nature? Ralph asked. These things can come on pretty suddenly when you get to be my age. Do it in your pants, Davenport said promptly, and burst out laughing. Ralph smiled, but it had a dutiful feel. His insomnia was rapidly losing whatever marginal humor value it might once have had. In your pants! Ham chortled. He slapped the library cart and wagged his head back and forth. Ralph happened to glance down at the cat. Winston Smith looked blandly back at him, and to Ralph his calm yellow gaze seemed to say, Yes, thats right, hes a fool, but hes my fool. Not bad, huh? Hamilton Davenport, master of the snappy comeback. Do it in your . . . He snorted laughter, shook his head, then took the two dollar bills Ralph was holding out. He slipped them into the pocket of his short red apron and came out with some change. That about right? You bet. Thanks, Ham. Uhhuh. And all joking aside, try the music. It really works. Mellows out your brainwaves, or something. I will. And the devil of it was, he probably would, as he had already tried Mrs Rapaports lemon and hot water recipe, and Shawna McClures advice on how to clear his mind by slowing his respiration and concentrating on the word cool (except when Shawna said it, the word came out cuhhhhooooooooooool). When you were trying to deal with a slow but relentless erosion of your good sleeptime, any folk remedy started to look good. Ralph began to turn away, then turned back. Whats with that poster next door? Ham Davenport wrinkled his nose. Dan Daltons place? I dont look in there at all, if I can help it. Screws up my appetite. Has he got something new and disgusting in the window? I guess its new  its not as yellow as the rest of them, and theres a notable lack of flydirt on it. Looks like a wanted poster, only its Susan Day in the photos. Susan Day on a  son of a bitch! He cast a dark and humorless look at the shop next door. What is she, President of the National Organization of Women, or something? ExPresident and cofounder of Sisters in Arms. Author of My Mothers Shadow and Lilies of the Valley  that ones a study of battered women and why so many of them refuse to blow the whistle on the men that batter them. She won a Pulitzer Prize for it. Susie Days one of the three or four most politically influential women in America right now, and she can really write as well as think. That clown knows Ive got one of her petitions sitting right by my cash register. What petitions? Were trying to get her up here to speak, Davenport said. You know the righttolifers tried to firebomb WomanCare last Christmas, right? Ralph cast his mind cautiously back into the black pit hed been living in at the end of 1992 and said, Well, I remember that the cops caught some guy in the hospitals longterm parking lot with a can of gasoline, but I didnt know That was Charlie Pickering. Hes a member of Daily Bread, one of the righttolife groups that keep the pickets marching out there, Davenport said. They put him up to it, too  take my word. This year theyre not bothering with gasoline, though; theyre going to try to get the City Council to change the zoning regulations and squeeze WomanCare right out of existence. They just might do it, too. You know Derry, Ralph  its not exactly a hotbed of liberalism. No, Ralph said with a wan smile. Its never been that. And WomanCare is an abortion clinic, isnt it? Davenport gave him an outofpatience look and jerked his head in the direction of Secondhand Rose. Thats what assholes like him call it, he said, only they like to use the word mill instead of clinic. They ignore all the other stuff WomanCare does. To Ralph, Davenport had begun to sound a little like the TV announcer who hawked runfree pantyhose during the Sunday afternoon movie. Theyre involved in family counselling, they deal with spouse and child abuse, and they run a shelter for abused women over by the Newport town line. They have a rape crisis center at the intown building by the hospital, and a twentyfourhour hotline for women whove been raped or beaten. In short, they stand for all the things that make Marlboro Men like Dalton shit bullets. But they do perform abortions, Ralph said. Thats what the pickets are about, right? There had been signcarrying demonstrators in front of the lowslung, unobtrusive brick building that housed WomanCare for years, it seemed to Ralph. They always looked too pale to him, too intense, too skinny or too fat, too utterly sure that God was on their side. The signs they carried said things like THE UNBORN HAVE RIGHTS, TOO and LIFE, WHAT A BEAUTIFUL CHOICE and that old standby, ABORTION IS MURDER! On several occasions women using the clinic  which was near Derry Home but not actually associated with it, Ralph thought  had been spat upon. Yeah, they perform abortions, Ham said. You got a problem with that? Ralph thought of all the years he and Carolyn had tried to have a baby  years that had produced nothing but several false alarms and a single messy fivemonths miscarriage  and shrugged. Suddenly the day seemed too hot and his legs too tired. The thought of his return journey  the UpMile Hill leg of it in particular  hung in the back of his mind like something strung from a line of fishhooks. Christ, I dont know, he said. I just wish people didnt have to get so . . . so shrill. Davenport grunted, walked over to his neighbors display window, and peered at the bogus wanted poster. While he was looking at it, a tall, pallid man with a goatee  the absolute antithesis of the Marlboro Man, Ralph would have said  materialized from the gloomy depths of Secondhand Rose like a vaudeville spook that has gotten a bit mouldy around the edges. He saw what Davenport was looking at, and a tiny disdainful smile dimpled the corners of his mouth. Ralph thought it was the kind of smile that could cost a man a couple of teeth, or a broken nose. Especially on a doghot day like this one. Davenport pointed to the poster and shook his head violently. Daltons smile deepened. He flapped his hands at Davenport  Who gives a shit what you think? the gesture said  and then disappeared back into the depths of his store. Davenport returned to Ralph, bright spots of color burning in his cheeks. That mans picture should be next to the word prick in the dictionary, he said. Exactly what he thinks about you, I imagine, Ralph thought, but of course did not say. Davenport stood in front of the library cart full of paperbacks, hands stuffed into his pockets beneath his red change apron, brooding at the poster of (hey hey) Susan Day. Well, Ralph said, I suppose I better Davenport shook himself out of his brown study. Dont go yet, he said. Sign my petition first, will you? Put a little shine back on my morning. Ralph shifted his feet uncomfortably. I usually dont get involved in confrontational stuff like Come on, Ralph, Davenport said in a letsbereasonable voice. Were not talking confrontation here; were talking about making sure that the fruits and nuts like the ones who run Daily Bread  and political Neanderthals like Dalton  dont shut down a really useful womens resource center. Its not like Im asking you to endorse testing chemical warfare weapons on dolphins. No, Ralph said. I suppose not. Were hoping to send five thousand signatures to Susan Day by the first of September. Probably wont do any good  Derrys really not much more than a wide place in the road, and shes probably booked into the next century anyhow  but it cant hurt to try. Ralph thought about telling Ham that the only petition he wanted to sign was one asking the gods of sleep to give him back the three hours or so of good rest a night they had stolen away, but then he took another look at the mans face and decided against it. Carolyn would have signed his damned petition, he thought. She was no fan of abortion, but she was also no fan of men coming home after the bars close and mistaking their wives and kids for soccer balls. True enough, but that wouldnt have been her main reason for signing; she would have done it on the offchance that she might get to hear an authentic firebrand like Susan Day up close and in person. She would have done it out of the ingrained curiosity which had perhaps been her dominating characteristic  something so strong not even the brain tumor had been able to kill it. Two days before she died she had pulled the movie ticket hed been using as a bookmark out of the paperback novel hed left on her bedside table because she had wanted to know what hed been to see. It had been A Few Good Men, as a matter of fact, and he was both surprised and dismayed to discover how much it hurt to remember that. Even now it hurt like hell. Sure, he told Ham. Ill be happy to sign it. My man! Davenport exclaimed, and clapped him on the shoulder. The broody look was replaced by a grin, but Ralph didnt think the change much of an improvement. The grin was hard and not especially charming. Step into my den of iniquity! Ralph followed him into the tobaccosmelling shop, which did not seem particularly iniquitous at ninethirty in the morning. Winston Smith fled before them, pausing just once to look back with his ancient yellow eyes. Hes a fool and youre another, that parting stare might have said. Under the circumstances, it wasnt a conclusion Ralph felt much inclined to dispute. He tucked his newspapers under his arm, leaned over the ruled sheet on the counter beside the cash register, and signed the petition asking Susan Day to come to Derry and speak in defense of WomanCare. 3 He did better climbing UpMile Hill than he had expected, and crossed the Xshaped intersection of Witcham and Jackson thinking, There, that wasnt so bad, was He suddenly realized that his ears were ringing and his legs had begun to tremble beneath him. He stopped on the far side of Witcham and placed one hand against his shirt. He could feel his heart beating just beneath it, pumping away with a ragged fierceness that was scary. He heard a papery rustle and saw an advertising supplement slip out of the Boston Globe and go seesawing down into the gutter. He started to bend over and get it, then stopped. Not a good idea, Ralph  if you bend over, youre more than likely going to fall over. I suggest you leave that one for the sweeper. Yeah, okay, good idea, he muttered, and straightened up. Black dots surged across his vision like a surreal flock of crows, and for a moment Ralph was almost positive he was going to wind up lying on top of the ad supplement no matter what he did or didnt do. Ralph? You all right? He looked up cautiously and saw Lois Chasse, who lived on the other side of Harris Avenue and half a block down from the house he shared with Bill McGovern. She was sitting on one of the benches just outside Strawford Park, probably waiting for the Canal Street bus to come along and take her downtown. Sure, fine, he said, and made his legs move. He felt as if he were walking through syrup, but he thought he got over to the bench without looking too bad. He could not, however, suppress a grateful little gasp as he sat down next to her. Lois Chasse had large dark eyes  the kind that had been called Spanish eyes when Ralph was a kid  and he bet they had danced through the minds of dozens of boys during Loiss high school years. They were still her best feature, but Ralph didnt much care for the worry he saw in them now. It was . . . what? A little too neighborly for comfort was the first thought to occur to him, but he wasnt sure it was the right thought. Fine, Lois echoed. You betcha. He took his handkerchief from his back pocket, checked to make sure it was clean, and then wiped his brow with it. I hope you dont mind me saying it, Ralph, but you dont look fine. Ralph did mind her saying it, but didnt know how to say so. Youre pale, youre sweating, and youre a litterbug. Ralph looked at her, startled. Something fell out of your paper. I think it was an ad circular. Did it? You know perfectly well it did. Excuse me a second. She got up, crossed the sidewalk, bent (Ralph noticed that, while her hips were fairly broad, her legs were still admirably trim for a woman who had to be sixtyeight), and picked up the circular. She came back to the bench with it and sat down. There,she said. Now youre not a litterbug anymore. He smiled in spite of himself. Thank you. Dont mention it. I can use the Maxwell House coupon, also the Hamburger Helper and the Diet Coke. Ive gotten so fat since Mr Chasse died. Youre not fat, Lois. Thank you, Ralph, youre a perfect gentleman, but lets not change the subject. You had a dizzy spell, didnt you? In fact, you almost passed out. I was just catching my breath, he said stiffly, and turned to watch a bunch of kids playing scrub baseball just inside the park. They were going at it hard, laughing and grabassing around. Ralph envied the efficiency of their airconditioning systems. Catching your breath, were you? Yes. Just catching your breath. Lois, youre starting to sound like a broken record. Well, the broken records going to tell you something, okay? Youre nuts to be trying UpMile Hill in this heat. If you want to walk, why not go out the Extension, where its flat, like you used to? Because it makes me think of Carolyn, he said, not liking the stiff, almost rude way that sounded but unable to help it. Oh shit,she said, and touched his hand briefly. Sorry. Its okay. No, its not. I should have known better. But the way you looked just now, thats not okay, either. Youre not twenty anymore, Ralph. Not even forty. I dont mean youre not in good shape  anyone can see youre in great shape for a guy your age  but you ought to take better care of yourself. Carolyn would want you to take care of yourself. I know, he said, but Im really  all right, he meant to finish, and then he looked up from his hands, looked into her dark eyes again, and what he saw there made it impossible to finish for a moment. There was a weary sadness in her eyes . . . or was it loneliness? Maybe both. In any case, those were not the only things he saw in them. He also saw himself. Youre being silly, the eyes looking into his said. Maybe we both are. Youre seventy and a widower, Ralph. Im sixtyeight and a widow. How long are we going to sit on your porch in the evenings with Bill McGovern as the worlds oldest chaperone? Not too long, I hope, because neither of us is exactly fresh off the showroom lot. Ralph? Lois asked, suddenly concerned. Are you okay? Yes, he said, looking down at his hands again. Yes, sure. You had a look on your face like . . . well, I dont know. Ralph wondered if maybe the combination of the heat and the walk up UpMile Hill had scrambled his brains a little. Because this was Lois, after all, whom McGovern always referred to (with a small, satiric lift of his left eyebrow) as Our Lois. And okay, yes, she was still in good shape  trim legs, nice bust, and those remarkable eyes  and maybe he wouldnt mind taking her to bed, and maybe she wouldnt mind being taken. But what would there be after that? If she happened to see a ticketstub poking out of the book he was reading, would she pull it out, too curious about what movie hed been to see to think about how she was losing his place? Ralph thought not. Loiss eyes were remarkable, and he had found his own eyes wandering down the V of her blouse more than once as the three of them sat on the front porch, drinking iced tea in the cool of the evening, but he had an idea that your little head could get your big head in trouble even at seventy. Getting old was no excuse to get careless. He got to his feet, aware of Lois looking at him and making an extra effort not to stoop. Thanks for your concern, he said. Want to walk an old feller up the street? Thanks, but Im going downtown. Theyve got some beautiful rosecolored yarn in at The Sewing Circle, and Im thinking afghan. Meanwhile, Ill just wait for the bus and gloat over my coupons. Ralph grinned. You do that. He glanced over at the kids on the scrub ballfield. As he watched, a boy with an extravagant mop of red hair broke from third, threw himself down in a headfirst slide . . . and fetched up against one of the catchers shinguards with an audible thonk. Ralph winced, envisioning ambulances with flashing lights and screaming sirens, but the carrottop bounced to his feet laughing. Missed the tag, you hoser! he shouted. The hell I did! the catcher responded indignantly, but then he began to laugh, too. Ever wish you were that age again, Ralph? Lois asked. He thought it over. Sometimes, he said. Mostly it just looks too strenuous. Come on over tonight, Lois  sit with us awhile. I might just do that, she said, and Ralph started up Harris Avenue, feeling the weight of her remarkable eyes on him and trying hard to keep his back straight. He thought he managed fairly well, but it was hard work. He had never felt so tired in his life. CHAPTER TWO 1 Ralph made the appointment to see Dr Litchfield less than an hour after his conversation with Lois on the park bench; the receptionist with the cool, sexy voice told him she could fit him in next Tuesday morning at ten, if that was okay, and Ralph told her that was fine as paint. Then he hung up, went into the living room, sat in the wingchair that overlooked Harris Avenue, and thought about how Dr Litchfield had initially treated his wifes brain tumor with Tylenol3 and pamphlets explaining various relaxation techniques. From there he moved on to the look hed seen in Litchfields eyes after the magnetic resonance imaging tests had confirmed the CAT scans bad news . . . that look of guilt and unease. Across the street, a bunch of kids who would soon be back in school came out of the Red Apple armed with candy bars and Slurpies. As Ralph watched them mount their bikes and tear away into the bright eleven oclock heat, he thought what he always did when the memory of Dr Litchfields eyes surfaced that it was most likely a false memory. The thing is, old buddy, you wanted Litchfield to look uneasy . . . but even more than that, you wanted him to look guilty. Quite possibly true, quite possibly Carl Litchfield was a peach of a guy and a helluva doctor, but Ralph still found himself calling Litchfields office again half an hour later. He told the receptionist with the sexy voice that hed just rechecked his calendar and discovered next Tuesday at ten wasnt so fine after all. Hed made an appointment with the podiatrist for that day and forgotten all about it. My memorys not what it used to be, Ralph told her. The receptionist suggested next Thursday at two. Ralph countered by promising to call back. Liar, liar, pants on fire, he thought as he hung up the phone, walked slowly back to the wingchair, and lowered himself into it. Youre done with him, arent you? He supposed he was. Not that Dr Litchfield was apt to lose any sleep over it; if he thought about Ralph at all, it would be as one less old geezer to fart in his face during the prostate exam. All right, so what are you going to do about the insomnia, Ralph? Sit quiet for half an hour before bedtime and listen to classical music, he said out loud. Buy some Depends for those troublesome calls of nature. He startled himself by laughing at the image. The laughter had a hysterical edge he didnt much care for  it was damned creepy, as a matter of fact  but it was still a little while before he could make himself stop. Yet he supposed he would try Hamilton Davenports suggestion (although he would skip the diapers, thank you), as he had tried most of the folk remedies wellmeaning people had passed on to him. This made him think of his first bona fide folk remedy, and that raised another grin. It had been McGoverns idea. He had been sitting on the porch one evening when Ralph came back from the Red Apple with some noodles and spaghetti sauce, had taken one look at his upstairs neighbor and made a tsktsk sound, shaking his head dolefully. Whats that supposed to mean? Ralph asked, taking the seat next to him. A little farther down the street, a little girl in jeans and an oversized white teeshirt had been skipping rope and chanting in the growing gloom. It means youre looking folded, spindled, and mutilated, McGovern said. He used one thumb to tilt the Panama back on his head and looked more closely at Ralph. Still not sleeping? Still not sleeping, Ralph agreed. McGovern was quiet for a few seconds. When he spoke again, he did so in a tone of absolute  almost apocalyptic, in fact  finality. Whiskey is the answer, he said. I beg your pardon? To your insomnia, Ralph. I dont mean you should take a bath in it  theres no need of that. Just mix a tablespoon of honey with half a shot of whiskey and hook it down fifteen or twenty minutes before you hit the hay. You think? Ralph had asked hopefully. All I can say is it worked for me, and I had some real problems sleeping around the time I turned forty. Looking back on it, I guess that was my midlife crisis  six months of insomnia and a yearlong depression over my bald spot. Although the books hed been consulting all said that booze was a vastly overrated cure for sleeplessness  that it often made the problem worse instead of better, in fact  Ralph had tried it just the same. He had never been much of a drinker, so he began by adjusting McGoverns recommended halfshot dosage down to a quarter of a shot, but after a week of no relief he had upped the ante to a full shot . . . then to two. He woke up one morning at fourtwentytwo with a nasty little headache to accompany the dull brown taste of Early Times on the roof of his mouth, and realized he was suffering his first hangover in fifteen years. Lifes too short for this shit, he had announced to his empty apartment, and that had been the end of the great whiskey experiment. 2 Okay, Ralph thought now as he watched the desultory midmorning flow of customers in and out of the Red Apple across the street. Heres the situation McGovern says you look like shit, you almost fainted at Lois Chasses feet this morning, and you just cancelled the appointment you made with Ye Olde Family Physician. So what next? Just let it go? Accept the situation and let it go? The idea had a certain Oriental charm  fate, karma, and all that  but he was going to need more than charm to get him through the long hours of early morning. The books said there were people in the world, quite a lot of them, who managed very well on no more than three or four hours of sleep a night. There were even some who got along on only two. They were an extremely small minority, but they did exist. Ralph Roberts, however, was not among their number. How he looked wasnt very important to him  he had a feeling that his matineeidol days were well behind him  but how he felt was, and it was no longer just a matter of not feeling good; he felt horrible. The insomnia had begun to pervade every aspect of his life, the way the smell of frying garlic on the fifth floor will eventually pervade an entire apartment building. The color had started to drain out of things; the world had begun to take on the dull, grainy quality of a newspaper photograph. Simple decisions  whether to heat up a frozen dinner for his evening meal or grab a sandwich at the Red Apple and go up to the picnic area by Runway 3, for example  had become difficult, almost agonizing. In the last couple of weeks he had found himself coming back to the apartment from Daves Video Stop emptyhanded more and more often, not because there was nothing at Daves he wanted to watch but because there was too much  he couldnt decide if he wanted one of the Dirty Harry movies or a Billy Crystal comedy or maybe a few old Star Trek episodes. After a couple of these unsuccessful trips, he had plopped himself down in this very wingchair, almost crying with frustration . . . and, he supposed, fear. That creeping sensory numbness and the erosion of his decisionmaking capabilities were not the only problems he had come to associate with the insomnia; his shortterm memory had also begun to slip. It had been his practice to go to the movies at least once and sometimes twice a week ever since his retirement from the printshop where he had finished his working life as the bookkeeper and general supervisor. He had taken Carolyn until last year, when she had gotten too sick to enjoy going out anywhere. After her death he had mostly gone alone, although Helen Deepneau had accompanied him once or twice when Ed was home to mind the baby (Ed himself almost never went, claiming he got headaches at the movies). Ralph had gotten so used to calling the cinema centers answering machine to check showtimes that he had the number by heart. As the summer went on, however, he found himself having to look it up in the Yellow Pages more and more often  he could no longer be sure if the last four digits were 1317 or 1713. Its 1713, he said now. I know it is. But did he know it? Did he really? Call Litchfield back. Go on, Ralph  stop sifting through the wreckage. Do something constructive.