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THREE PAST MIDNIGHT:A note on 'The Library Policeman'On the morning when this story started to happen, I was sitting at the breakfast table with my son Owen. My wife had already goneupstairs to shower and dress. Those two vital seven o'clock divisions had been made: the scrambled eggs and the newspaper. WillardScott, who visits our house five days out of every seven, was telling us about a lady in Nebraska who had just turned a hundred andfour, and I think Owen and I had one whole pair of eyes open between us. A typical weekday morning
chez
King, in other words.Owen tore himself away from the sports section just long enough to ask me if I'd be going by the mall that day - there was a book hewanted me to pick up for a school report. I can't remember what it was - it might have been
 Johnny Tremain
or
 April Morning,
Howard Fast's novel of the American Revolution - but it was one of those tomes you can never quite lay your hands on in a bookshop;it's always just out of print or just about to come back into print or some damned thing.I suggested that Owen try the local library, which is a very good one. I was sure they'd have it. He muttered some reply. I only caughttwo words of it, but, given my interests, those two words were more than enough to pique my interest. They were 'library police.'I put my half of the newspaper aside, used the MUTE button on the remote control to strangle Willard in the middle of his ecstaticreport on the Georgia Peach Festival, and asked Owen to kindly repeat himself.He was reluctant to do so, but I pressed him. Finally he told me that he didn't like to use the library because he worried about theLibrary Police. He knew there
were
no Library Police, he hastened to add, but it was one of those stories that burrowed down intoyour subconscious and just sort of lurked there. He had heard it from his Aunt Stephanie when he was seven or eight and much moregullible, and it had been lurking ever since.I, of course, was delighted, because I had been afraid of the Library Police myself as a kid - the faceless enforcers who would
actuallycome to your house
 if you didn't bring your overdue books back. That would be bad enough ... but what if you couldn't find the books in question whenthose strange lawmen turned up? What then? What would they do to you? What might they take to make up for the missing volumes?It had been years since I'd thought of the Library Police (although not since childhood; I can clearly remember discussing them withPeter Straub and his son, Ben, six or eight years ago), but now all those old questions, both dreadful and somehow enticing, recurred.I found myself musing on the Library Police over the next three or four days, and as I mused, I began to glimpse the outlines of thestory which follows. This is the way stories usually happen for me, but the musing period usually lasts a lot longer than it did in thiscase. When I began, the story was titled 'The Library Police,' and I had no clear idea of where I was going with it. I thought it wouldprobably be a funny story, sort of like the suburban nightmares the late Max Shulman used to bolt together. After all, the idea
was
funny, wasn't it? I mean, the Library Police! How absurd!What I realized, however, was something I knew already: the fears of childhood have a hideous persistence. Writing is an act of self-hypnosis, and in that state a kind of total emotional recall often takes place and terrors which should have been long dead start to walk and talk again.As I worked on this story, that began to happen to me. I knew, going in, that I had loved the library as a kid - why not? It was the onlyplace a relatively poor kid like me could get all the books he wanted - but as I continued to write, I became reacquainted with a deepertruth: I had also feared it. I feared becoming lost in the dark stacks, I feared being forgotten in a dark corner of the reading room andending up locked in for the night, I feared the old librarian with the blue hair and the cat's-eye glasses and the almost lipless mouthwho would pinch the backs of your hands with her long, pale fingers and hiss
'Shhhh!' 
if you forgot where you were and started to talk too loud. And yes, I feared the Library Police.What happened with a much longer work, a novel called
Christine,
began to happen here. About thirty pages in, the humor began togo out of the situation. And about fifty pages in, the whole story took a screaming left turn into the dark places I have travelled sooften and which I still know so little about. Eventually I found the guy I was looking for, and managed to raise my head enough tolook into his merciless silver eyes. I have tried to bring back a sketch of him for you, Constant Reader, but it may not be very good.My hands were trembling quite badly when I made it, you see.
CHAPTER 1
The Stand-In
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1
Everything, Sam Peebles decided later, was the fault of the goddamned acrobat. If the acrobat hadn't gotten drunk at exactly the wrongtime, Sam never would have ended up in such trouble.
 It is not bad enough,
he thought with a perhaps justifiable bitterness,
that life is like a narrow beam over an endless chasm, a beam wehave to walk blindfolded. It's bad, but not bad enough. Sometimes, we also get pushed.
 But that was later. First, before the Library Policeman, was the drunken acrobat.
2
In Junction City, the last Friday of every month was Speaker's Night at the local Rotarians' Hall. On the last Friday in March of 1990,the Rotarians were scheduled to hear - and to be entertained by - The Amazing Joe, an acrobat with Curry & Trembo's All-Star Circusand Travelling Carnival.The telephone on Sam Peebles's desk at Junction City Realty and Insurance rang at five past four on Thursday afternoon. Sam pickedit up. It was always Sam who picked it up - either Sam in person or Sam on the answering machine, because he was Junction CityRealty and Insurance's owner and sole employee. He was not a rich man, but he was a reasonably happy one. He liked to tell peoplethat his first Mercedes was still quite a distance in the future, but he had a Ford which was almost new and owned his own home onKelton Avenue. 'Also, the business keeps me in beer and skittles,' he liked to add ... although in truth, he hadn't drunk much beer sincecollege and wasn't exactly sure what skittles were. He thought they might be pretzels.'Junction City Realty and In - ''Sam, this is Craig. The acrobat broke his neck.'
'What?' 
'You heard me!' Craig Jones cried in deeply aggrieved tones. 'The acrobat broke his fucking neck!''Oh,' Sam said. 'Gee.' He thought about this for a moment and then asked cautiously, 'Is he dead, Craig?''No, he's not dead, but he might as well be as far as we're concerned. He's in the hospital over in Cedar Rapids with his neck dipped inabout twenty pounds of plaster. Billy Bright just called me. He said the guy came on drunk as a skunk at the matinee this afternoon,tried to do a back-over flip, and landed outside the center ring on the nape of his neck. Billy said he could hear it way up in thebleachers, where he was sitting. He said it sounded like when you step in a puddle that just iced over.''Ouch!' Sam exclaimed, wincing.'I'm not surprised. After all - The Amazing Joe. What kind of name is that for a circus performer? I mean, The Amazing Randix, okay.The Amazing Tortellini, still not bad. But The Amazing Joe? It sounds like a prime example of brain damage in action to me.''Jesus, that's too bad.''Fucking shit on toast is what it is. It leaves us without a speaker tomorrow night, good buddy.'Sam began to wish he had left the office promptly at four. Craig would have been stuck with Sam the answering machine, and thatwould have given Sam the living being a little more time to think. He felt he would soon
need 
time to think. He also felt that CraigJones was not going to give him any.'Yes,' he said, 'I guess that's true enough.' He hoped he sounded philosophical but helpless. 'What a shame.''It sure is,' Craig said, and then dropped the dime. 'But I know you'll be happy to step in and fill the slot.'
'Me?
Craig, you've got to be kidding! I can't even do a somersault, let alone a back-over fl - '‘Thought you could talk about the importance of the independently owned business in small-town life,' Craig Jones pressed on
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relentlessly. 'If that doesn't do it for you, there's baseball. Lacking
that,
you could always drop your pants and wag your wing-wang atthe audience. Sam, I am not just the head of the Speaker's Committee - that would be bad enough. But since Kenny moved away andCarl quit coming, I
am
the Speaker's Committee. Now, you've got to help me. I
need 
a speaker tomorrow night. There are about fiveguys in the whole damn club I feel I can trust in a pinch, and you're one of them.''But - ''You're also the only one who hasn't filled in already in a situation like this, so you're elected, buddy-boy.''Frank Stephens pinch-hit for the guy from the trucking union last year when the grand jury indicted him for fraud and he couldn'tshow up. Sam - it's your turn in the barrel. You can't let me down, man. You
owe
me.''I run an
insurance
business!' Sam cried. 'When I'm not writing insurance, I sell farms! Mostly to banks! Most people find it
boring!
The ones who don't find it boring find it
disgusting!' 
 'None of that matters.' Craig was now moving in for the kill, marching over Sam's puny objections in grim hobnailed boots. 'They'll allbe drunk by the end of dinner and you know it. They won't remember a goddam word you said come Saturday morning, but in themeantime, I
need someone to stand up and talk for half an hour and you're elected!' 
 Sam continued to object a little longer, but Craig kept coming down on the imperatives, italicizing them mercilessly.
 Need. Gotta.Owe.
 'All right!' he said at last. 'All right, all right! Enough!''My man!' Craig exclaimed. His voice was suddenly full of sunshine and rainbows. 'Remember, it doesn't have to be any longer thanthirty minutes, plus maybe another ten for questions. If anybody
has
any questions. And you really
can
wag your wing-wang if youwant to. I doubt that anybody could actually
see
it, but - ''Craig,' Sam said, 'that's enough.''Oh!
Sorry!
Shet mah mouf!' Craig, perhaps lightheaded with relief, cackled.'Listen, why don't we terminate this discussion?' Sam reached for the roll of Turns he kept in his desk drawer. He suddenly felt hemight need quite a few Turns during the next twenty-eight hours or so. 'It looks as if I've got a speech to write.''You got it,' Craig said. 'Just remember - dinner at six, speech at seventhirty. As they used to say on
 Hawaii Five-0,
be there! Aloha!''Aloha, Craig,' Sam said, and hung up. He stared at the phone. He felt hot gas rising slowly up through his chest and into his throat. Heopened his mouth and uttered a sour burp - the product of a stomach which had been reasonably serene until five minutes ago.He ate the first of what would prove to be a great many Tums indeed.
3
Instead of going bowling that night as he had planned, Sam Peebles shut himself in his study at home with a yellow legal pad, threesharpened pencils, a package of Kent cigarettes, and a six-pack of Jolt. He unplugged the telephone from the wall, lit a cigarette, andstared at the yellow pad. After five minutes of staring, he wrote this on the top line of the top sheet:SMALL-TOWN BUSINESSES: THE LIFEBLOOD OF AMERICAHe said it out loud and liked the sound of it. Well ... maybe he didn't exactly
like
it, but he could
live
with it. He said it louder andliked it better.
 A little
better. It actually wasn't
that 
good; in fact, it probably sucked the big hairy one, but it beat the shit out of 'Communism: Threat or Menace.' And Craig was right - most of them would be too hung over on Saturday morning to remember whatthey'd heard on Friday night, anyway.Marginally encouraged, Sam began to write.'When I moved to Junction City from the more or less thriving metropolis of Ames in 1984
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