'I got down into the foyer, where she'd put up that sign you saw, Sam - the one that just said SILENCE! - and then I caught hold of myself. If she led Willy back to the Children's Room and saw I was gone, she'd know I'd seen. She'd chase me, and she'd catch me, too. I didn't even think she'd have to try hard. I kept rememberin that day in the corn, and how she'd run rings all around me and never even worked up a sweat.
'So I turned around and walked back to my seat in the Children's Room instead. It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, but somehow I managed to do it. My ass wasn't on the chair two seconds before I heard them coming. And of course Willy was all happy and smilin and full of beans, and so was she. Ardelia looked ready to go three fast rounds with Carmen Basilio and whip him solid.
' "All Good Babies lift your heads up!" she called, and clapped her hands. They all raised their heads and looked at her. "Willy feels lots better, and he wants me to finish the story. Don't you, Willy?"
' "Yes, ma'am," Willy said. She kissed him and he ran back to his seat. She went on with the story. I sat there and listened. And when that Story Hour was done, I started drinkin. And from then until the end, I never really stopped.'
6
'How did it end?' Sam asked. 'What do you know about that?'
'Not as much as I would have known if I hadn't been so dog-drunk all the time, but more than I wish I knew. That last part of it, I'm not even sure how long it was. About four months, I think, but it might have been six, or even eight. By then I wasn't even noticin the seasons much. When a drunk like me really starts to slide, Sam, the only weather he notices is inside of a bottle. I know two things, though, and they are really the only two things that matter. Somebody did start to catch onto her, that was one thing. And it was time for her to go back to sleep. To change. That was the other.
'I remember one night at her house - she never came to mine, not once, she said to me, "I'm getting sleepy, Dave. All the time now I'm sleepy. Soon it will be time for a long rest. When that time comes, I want you to sleep with me. I've grown fond of you, you see."
'I was drunk, of course, but what she said still gave me a chill. I thought I knew what she was talkin about, but when I asked her, she only laughed.
' "No, not that," she said, and gave me a scornful, amused kind of look. "I'm talking about sleep, not death. But you'll need to feed with me."
'That sobered me up in a hurry. She didn't think I knew what she was talkin about, but I did. I'd seen.
'After that, she began to ask me questions about the kids. About which ones I didn't like, which ones I thought were sneaky, which ones were too loud, which ones were the brattiest. "They're Bad Babies, and they don't deserve to live," she'd say. "They're rude, they're destructive, they bring their books back with pencil marks in them and ripped pages. Which ones do you think deserve to die, Davey?"
'That was when I knew I had to get away from her, and if killin myself was the only way, I'd have to take that way out. Something was happenin to her, you see. Her hair was gettin dull, and her skin, which had always been perfect, started to show up with blemishes. And there was something else - I could see that thing, that thing her mouth turned into - all the time, just under the surface of her skin. But it was starting to look all wrinkled and dewlapped, and there were strings like cobwebs on it.
'One night while we were in bed she saw me lookin at her hair and said, "You see the change in me, don't you, Davey?" She patted my face. "It's all right; it's perfectly natural. It's always this way when I'm getting ready to go to sleep again. I will have to do it soon, and if you mean to come with me, you will have to take one of the children soon. Or two. Or three. The more the merrier!" She laughed in the crazy way she had, and when she looked back at me, her eyes had gone red again. "In any case, I don't mean to leave you behind. All else aside, it wouldn't be safe. You know that, don't you?"
'I said I did.
' "So if you don't want to die, Davey, it has to be soon. Very soon. And if you've made up your mind not to, you should tell me now. We can end our time together pleasantly and painlessly, tonight."
'She leaned over me and I could smell her breath. It was like spoiled dogfood, and I couldn't believe I'd ever kissed the mouth that smell was coming out of, sober or drunk. But there was some part of me - some little part - that must have still wanted to live, because I told her I did want to come with her, but I needed a little more time to get ready. To prepare my mind.
' "To drink, you mean," she said. "You ought to get down on your knees and thank your miserable, unlucky stars for me, Dave Duncan. If not for me, you'd be dead in the gutter in a year, or even less. With me, you can live almost forever.
'Her mouth stretched out for just a second, stretched out until it touched my cheek. And somehow I managed to keep from screaming.'
Dave looked at them with his deep, haunted eyes. Then he smiled. Sam Peebles never forgot the eldritch quality of that smile; it haunted his dreams ever after.
'But that's all right,' he said. 'Somewhere, down deep inside of me, I have been screaming ever since.'
7
'I'd like to say that in the end I broke her hold over me, but that'd be a lie. It was just happenstance - or what Program people call a higher power. You have to understand that by 1960, I was entirely cut off from the rest of the town. Remember me tellin you that once I was a member of the Rotary Club, Sam? Well, by February of '60, those boys wouldn't have hired me to clean the urinals in their john. As far as Junction City was concerned, I was just another Bad Baby livin the life of a bum. People I'd known all my life would cross the street to get out of my way when they saw me comin. I had the constitution of a brass eagle in those days, but the booze was rustin me out just the same, and what the booze wasn't takin, Ardelia Lortz was.
'I wondered more'n once if she wouldn't turn to me for what she needed, but she never did. Maybe I was no good to her that way ... but I don't really think that was it. I don't think she loved me - I don't think Ardelia could love anybody -but think she was lonely. I think she's lived, if you can call what she does living, a very long time, and that she's had . . .'
Dave trailed off. His crooked fingers drummed restlessly on his knees and his eyes sought the grain elevator on the horizon again, as if for comfort.
'Companions seems like the word that comes closest to fittin. I think she's had companions for some of her long life, but I don't think she'd had one for a very long time when she came to Junction City. Don't ask what she said to make me feel that way, because I don't remember. It's lost, like so much of the rest. But I'm pretty sure it's true. And she had me tapped for the job. I'm pretty sure I would have gone with her, too, if she hadn't been found out.'
'Who found her out, Dave?' Naomi asked, leaning forward. 'Who?'
'Deputy Sheriff John Power. In those days, the Homestead County sheriff was Norman Beeman, and Norm's the best argument I know for why sheriffs should be appointed rather than elected. The voters gave him the job when he got back to Junction City in '45 with a suitcase full of medals he'd won when Patton's army was drivin into Germany. He was a hell of a scrapper, no one could take that away from him, but as county sheriff he wasn't worth a fart in a windstorm. What he had was the biggest, whitest smile you ever saw, and a load of bullshit two mules wide. And he was a Republican, of course. That's always been the most important thing in Homestead County.