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    Four Past Midnight
    Four Past Midnight
    Four Past Midnight
    Ebook1,091 pages20 hours

    Four Past Midnight

    By Stephen King

    3.5/5

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    • Fear

    • Friendship

    • Fear & Anxiety

    • Supernatural

    • Time Travel

    • Reluctant Hero

    • Haunted Protagonist

    • Time Loop

    • Fear of the Unknown

    • Haunted Object

    • Langoliers

    • Library Policeman

    • Chosen One

    • Call to Adventure

    • Power of Belief

    • Mystery

    • Suspense

    • Small-Town Life

    • Family Relationships

    • Supernatural Occurrences

    About this ebook

    Includes the story “The Sun Dog”—set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine

    The Bram Stoker Prize-winner for Best Fiction Collection—four chilling novellas from Stephen King that will “grab you and not let go” (The Washington Post).

    With the success of the Hulu series 11/22/63 starring James Franco and the highly anticipated The Dark Tower movie release, Stephen King's brand is stronger than ever. This collection, nominated for a Locus Award, is guaranteed to keep readers awake long after bedtime, and features an introduction and prefatory notes to each novella by the author. “Stephen King is a master storyteller, and you will never forget these stories,” raves the Seattle Times about Four Past Midnight.

    One Past Midnight: “The Langoliers” takes a red-eye flight from LA to Boston into a most unfriendly sky. Only eleven passengers survive, but landing in an eerily empty world makes them wish they hadn’t. Something’s waiting for them, you see.

    Two Past Midnight: “Secret Window, Secret Garden” enters the suddenly strange life of writer Mort Rainey, recently divorced, depressed, and alone on the shore of Tashmore Lake. Alone, that is, until a figure named John Shooter arrives, pointing an accusing finger.

    Three Past Midnight: “The Library Policeman” is set in Junction City, Iowa, an unlikely place for evil to be hiding. But for small businessman Sam Peebles, who thinks he may be losing his mind, another enemy is hiding there as well—the truth. If he can find it in time, he might stand a chance.

    Four Past Midnight: “The Sun Dog,” a menacing black dog, appears in every Polaroid picture that fifteen-year-old Kevin Delevan takes with his new camera, beckoning him to the supernatural. Old Pop Merrill, Castle Rock’s sharpest trader, aims to exploit The Sun Dog for profit, but this creature that shouldn’t exist at all, is a very dangerous investment.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherScribner
    Release dateJan 1, 2016
    ISBN9781501141218
    Author

    Stephen King

    Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes Never Flinch (May 2025), the short story collection You Like It Darker (a New York Times Book Review top ten horror book of 2024), Holly (a New York Times Notable Book of 2023), Fairy Tale, Billy Summers, If It Bleeds, The Institute, Elevation, The Outsider, Sleeping Beauties (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy: End of Watch, Finders Keepers, and Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel and a television series streaming on Peacock). His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. His epic works The Dark Tower, It, Pet Sematary, Doctor Sleep, and Firestarter are the basis for major motion pictures, with It now the highest-grossing horror film of all time. He is the recipient of the 2020 Audio Publishers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King. 

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    Reviews for Four Past Midnight

    3.5/5

    1,705 ratings42 reviews

    What our readers think

    Readers find this title amazing and fantastic. The short stories in this book are wonderful, except for the first one which is a little long. Stephen King is praised as the best storyteller ever. Some readers mention that certain stories are obvious but still entertaining. Overall, this collection of novellas is highly recommended for horror fans.

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Four terrific yarns by the master of horror (and other weird stuff!)
    • 4/5
      The first story in this collection (The Longliers) has always stuck in mind.
    • 4/5
      Four short stories that will keep you turning the pages.
    • 3/5
      Four stories, too short to be novels and too long to be short stories, packed together in one volume. Four stories of inconsistent quality. The Langoliers has a very interesting premise, strong and well-developed characters (I'm thinking of you, Mr. Toomey) for the length of the story and is well-executed. Secret Window Secret Garden starts off intriguing, but turns predictable soon enough. Still well worth the read though. The Library Policeman once again starts off strong, showing all the signs of being a classic King ghost story. And then it veers off into 'what did he snort?!?' territory. I could see what it could have been and I was terribly disappointed by the road it took. The Sun Dog follows the same pattern. I'm guessing King wanted to tie into the Hounds of Tindalos in an effort to modernize Lovecraftian horror, but again it falls flat on its back as the shadow of what could have been eclipses the actual story.
    • 3/5
      I liked The Langoliers, but I just couldn't get into Secret Windows.
    • 2/5
      I took this with me when I went to Turkey. It was my misfortune that the Langoliers would be about a plane journey! I left it to read the book once I got there. I think the Langoliers would be my favourite story out of them. I did enjoy Secret Window, Secret Garden but I'd seen the film before I read it and I think that maybe took the guessing and suspense out of it - but the extra twist was intriguing! I didn't like The Library Policeman. I'm naturally squeamish about such things and to be honest, I just didn't get it. I didn't quite understand the whole point of it, lots of things weren't explained. My not understanding might be a flaw on my part, but I didn't understand what was implied by the "Who is your library policeman?" question nor did I follow the answer. And the tool he planned on using for the defeat of such a monster...was a bit, laughable?I enjoyed The Sun Dog, the suspense was built up quite well. Although, throughout the book there was a little voice saying, "We're supposed to be scared of that?" it wasn't so blatant that it made the rest of the text sound exaggerated. I liked Kevin as a character and the part where Pop is under a sort of spell is a clever idea.I also like the fact that Stephen King writes things the way they are in real life, which is odd as I usually like my books to be glamourised versions of life. I thought it was funny that he'd expressed the thought I'd had a lot - that you never read about people going to the toilet! And he also writes about characters knowing something with certainty, "Kevin knew he wouldn't tell him the answer," and then goes on to contradict that certainty, "But he did tell," which is what happens to us in life. We think we know for definite what's going to happen and then we're contradicted. I also enjoyed the little prefaces to each story. Throughout those I found myself really respecting Stephen King, which I hadn't expected as I always found it difficult to overlook his odd punctuation and grammar. A lot of that was still present, his continual habit of splitting up a sentence just to fit something in brackets on a line of its own, but I found his grammar was a lot better to read than it was in Carrie. or maybe I'm just used to it.I enjoyed this collection. It's just a shame The Library Policeman wasn't my cup of tea at all.
    • 4/5
      I think I like King's short stories/novellas better than his full-length novels (except for The Stand).
    • 5/5
      Three of the four nouvellas herein have been made into movies, and "The Library Policeman" should be, although the script will probably have to include more plot in it.
    • 4/5
      I didn't think that horror was my thing, but I can now see why everyone raves about Stephen King. He's simply a wonderful writer: you care about the characters he creates, they're so completely believable that the supernatural aspects of his stories become equally so. Each of the four stories in this volume are long enough to be books in themselves and I enjoyed all of them very much. I think 'The Langoliers' is the one that will stay with me longest - the idea of waking up to an almost empty aeroplane is so wonderfully chilling.
    • 5/5
      I especially loved the Library Policeman, and listened to this story while I was in library school.
    • 4/5
      The Langoliers is definitely the strongest story in this collection. Both creative and imaginative - it rides that edge of plausibility that allows it to creep inside your mind and stay with you after you have finished the story. The other 3 short stories are just alright. Some don't quite make the mark and all seem to be a bit dated.
    • 3/5
      Two pretty bad short stories and two mediocre ones - the way I decide which ones are which depend on the day, except that The Langoliers is pretty terrible no matter what. (No one's afraid of bouncy balls with teeth, Stephen King, I'm sorry.) The Sun Dog is genuinely creepy although it rambles too much to be effective; The Library Policeman has creepy bits and then also bits that just don't make much sense; Secret Garden, Secret Window is solid except for the weird ending which kind of takes the wind out of the sails of the earlier parts that actually worked.
    • 2/5
      Not the best collection of Stephen King stories, in fact one of the weaker ones.
    • 3/5
      This book is really a collection of 4 novellas, each one about 180 pages long--so it's not a typical 'short story collection'. :)

      1 of 4 stories (novellas) down: Secret Window. It was good. I saw the movie before I read it, which is not typically the way to do it. However, I feel that having seen the movie, I was REALLY interested to see how King developed Mort's character. And, it was a definite plus having Johnny's face in my head while I created the pictures in my mind...Only 600 more pages of the book to go!

      Story #2 (technically #3 in the book...). The Library Policeman. The most interesting thing in it so far is that King mentions (and I've read this somewhere else from King) that children are drawn to scary stories. In this story, one character is shocked by the 'scary' posters in the children's section of the library. But, when you think about it, most of our children's stories are WORSE (Hansel and Gretel=Children being abandoned, almost shoved into an oven). I like this point, it somehow validates for me that by the time I was in 10th grade, I'd read several King books. :) It was difficult getting into the story, but once I was in (might have been halfway through), I was wanting to read, read, read!

      The Langoliers
      This is the first book in the collection, and I can see why. Unlike the Library Policeman, I was hooked right away, and I wanted to read. (And, probably, if I wasn't in love w/ Johnny Depp, I wouldn't have been AS interested in Secret Window) This story was great...but I'm not sure I like the ending much.
    • 2/5
      No way is this collection going to live up to Different Seasons. Other than that exception, I think the novella is King's weakest form. He's better at either huge doorstopper novels or short stories. This collection is pretty weak and addresses many themes he covers a lot better in his novels. I find The Langoliers to be campy enough to be fun, but "Secret Window, Secret Garden" and "The Library Policeman" are just filler, in my opinion.
    • 4/5
      I wish I could have given this book higher marks. It was a good story with lots of twist. Very detailed like all of Stephen Kings works. It just didn't captivate me or keep me interested like I was hoping it would. I would have given this a 3.5 star rating if I had the option.
    • 4/5
      I've read this book many many moons ago. Back in the days when I only read Dutch books and the moment King's translated books were available in the shops I would buy them. (So now I have a very nice SK collection but will never re-read them because once you have read his books in English you don't want to read them in Dutch anymore) I think I have read most of his books at least 2 to 3 times but I think not this book cause otherwise I would have remembered the 4 stories more clearly. The one I do remember is the first one The Langoliers. So I have decided to re-read this book of his so I can properly review this.
    • 4/5
      Four novellas that scared the crap outta me. I knew the library policeman was real...
    • 5/5
      Fannn-tastic!!! I can’t seem to put this thing down
    • 5/5
      Great short stories. I've read every book Stephen King has written, with the exception of his newest, "The Institute". This is one of the best of his short stories in my opinion. The first story was a little long, and not one of my favorite, but all the other stories in here are absolutely wonderful. I am never, ever disappointed in SK. He is the best storyteller ever.
    • 5/5
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    • 5/5
      absolutely love this collection of novellas. I read sun dog at least 5 months prior and i didn't particularly like that story so I didn't read it again. The other three stories are straight fire in my humble opinion. Highly recommend if you're looking for engrossingly entertaining horror look no further. #DeadAss
    • 5/5
      Classic Stephen King. Each creepy in their own way.
    • 4/5
      A wonderful collection of four short stories (novella sized) from the master of horror. The stories are "The Langoliers" - one of my all time favourite King shorts, "Secret Window, Secret Garden", "The Library Policeman" and "The Sun Dog".A must read for fans of King.
    • 5/5
      The Langoliers is better as a book; I would like to see it re-made with better effects. Secret Window, Secret Garden was obvious but still entertaining. The Library Policeman was a good surprise... SPOILER: Very strong childhood memory scenes. You've gotta be pretty thick-skinned to get through this one. I came close to putting it down. The Sun Dog was also obvious, yet well-written. Very much worth reading.
    • 5/5
      Four novellas by Stephen King: The Langoliers; Secret Window, Secret Garden; The Library Policeman; and The Sun Dog, which I rated as 4* or 4.5* each. I liked The Langoliers best and The Sun Dog least, but at 4*, still very good. Vintage Stephen King, looking at different fears - fear of flying, fear of past transgressions catching up with you, fear of forgotten childhood abuse remembered, and fear of the supernatural.
    • 5/5
      A m a z I n g g g g
    • 5/5
      I especially loved the Langoliers story.
    • 4/5
      I knew I had read this compilation of novellas, but it had been many years. I specifically wanted to re-read The Library Police, since I now work in a public library. It was hilarious and scary all at once! (Hilarious to me, maybe not to the typical reader... things about the workings of a library were very old-school and struck me as funny. But they were likely accurate, too--times have changed, for example, and we don't require SILENCE in the library!)
      The other stories were great, as well. I really enjoyed The Langoliers more than I did the first time around.
      Listening to these stories, read aloud, was very pleasing! (Even Secret Window, Secret Garden, which was read by James Woods--I didn't much care for his reading voice at first, but I pushed through and came to enjoy it.)
    • 2/5
      Dull and boring

    Book preview

    Four Past Midnight - Stephen King

    STRAIGHT UP MIDNIGHT

    AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE

    Well, look at this—we’re all here. We made it back again. I hope you’re half as happy to be here as I am. Just saying that reminds me of a story, and since telling stories is what I do for a living (and to keep myself sane), I’ll pass this one along.

    Earlier this year—I’m writing this in late July of 1989—I was crashed out in front of the TV, watching the Boston Red Sox play the Milwaukee Brewers. Robin Yount of the Brewers stepped to the plate, and the Boston commentators began marvelling at the fact that Yount was still in his early thirties. Sometimes it seems that Robin helped Abner Doubleday lay down the first set of foul lines, Ned Martin said as Yount stepped into the box to face Roger Clemens.

    Yep, Joe Castiglione agreed. He came to the Brewers right out of high school, I think—he’s been playing for them since 1974.

    I sat up so fast I nearly spilled a can of Pepsi-Cola all over myself. Wait a minute! I was thinking. Wait just a goddam minute! I published my first book in 1974! That wasn’t so long ago! What’s this shit about helping Abner Doubleday put down the first set of foul lines?

    Then it occurred to me that the perception of how time passes—a subject which comes up again and again in the stories which follow—is a highly individual thing. It’s true that the publication of Carrie in the spring of 1974 (it was published, in fact, just two days before baseball season began and a teenager named Robin Yount played his first game for the Milwaukee Brewers) doesn’t seem like a long time ago to me subjectively—just a quick glance back over the shoulder, in fact—but there are other ways to count the years, and some of them suggest that fifteen years can be a long time, indeed.

    In 1974 Gerald Ford was President and the Shah was still running the show in Iran. John Lennon was alive, and so was Elvis Presley. Donny Osmond was singing with his brothers and sisters in a high, piping voice. Home video cassette recorders had been invented but could be purchased in only a few test markets. Insiders predicted that when they became widely available, Sony’s Beta-format machines would quickly stomp the rival format, known as VHS, into the ground. The idea that people might soon be renting popular movies as they had once rented popular novels at lending libraries was still over the horizon. Gasoline prices had risen to unthinkable highs: forty-eight cents a gallon for regular, fifty-five cents for unleaded.

    The first white hairs had yet to make their appearance on my head and in my beard. My daughter, now a college sophomore, was four. My older son, who is now taller than I am, plays the blues harp, and sports luxuriant shoulder-length Sammy Hagar locks, had just been promoted to training pants. And my younger son, who now pitches and plays first base for a championship Little League team, would not be born for another three years.

    Time has this funny, plastic quality, and everything that goes around comes around. When you get on the bus, you think it won’t be taking you far—across town, maybe, no further than that—and all at once, holy shit! You’re halfway across the next continent. Do you find the metaphor a trifle naive? So do I, and the hell of it is just this: it doesn’t matter. The essential conundrum of time is so perfect that even such jejune observations as the one I have just made retain an odd, plangent resonance.

    One thing hasn’t changed during those years—the major reason, I suppose, why it sometimes seems to me (and probably to Robin Yount as well) that no time has passed at all. I’m still doing the same thing: writing stories. And it is still a great deal more than what I know; it is still what I love. Oh, don’t get me wrong—I love my wife and I love my children, but it’s still a pleasure to find these peculiar side roads, to go down them, to see who lives there, to see what they’re doing and who they’re doing it to and maybe even why. I still love the strangeness of it, and those gorgeous moments when the pictures come clear and the events begin to make a pattern. There is always a tail to the tale. The beast is quick and I sometimes miss my grip, but when I do get it, I hang on tight . . . and it feels fine.

    When this book is published, in 1990, I will have been sixteen years in the business of make-believe. Halfway through those years, long after I had become, by some process I still do not fully understand, America’s literary boogeyman, I published a book called Different Seasons. It was a collection of four previously unpublished novellas, three of which were not horror stories. The publisher accepted this book in good heart but, I think, with some mental reservations as well. I know I had some. As it turned out, neither of us had to worry. Sometimes a writer will publish a book which is just naturally lucky, and Different Seasons was that way for me.

    One of the stories, The Body, became a movie (Stand By Me) which enjoyed a successful run . . . the first really successful film to be made from a work of mine since Carrie (a movie which came out back when Abner Doubleday and you-know-who were laying down those foul lines). Rob Reiner, who made Stand By Me, is one of the bravest, smartest filmmakers I have ever met, and I’m proud of my association with him. I am also amused to note that the company Mr. Reiner formed following the success of Stand By Me is Castle Rock Productions . . . a name with which many of my longtime readers will be familiar.

    The critics, by and large, also liked Different Seasons. Almost all of them would napalm one particular novella, but since each of them picked a different story to scorch, I felt I could disregard them all with impunity . . . and I did. Such behavior is not always possible; when most of the reviews of Christine suggested it was a really dreadful piece of work, I came to the reluctant decision that it probably wasn’t as good as I had hoped (that, however, did not stop me from cashing the royalty checks). I know writers who claim not to read their notices, or not to be hurt by the bad ones if they do, and I actually believe two of these individuals. I’m one of the other kind—I obsess over the possibility of bad reviews and brood over them when they come. But they don’t get me down for long; I just kill a few children and old ladies, and then I’m right as a trivet again.

    Most important, the readers liked Different Seasons. I don’t remember a single correspondent from that time who scolded me for writing something that wasn’t horror. Most readers, in fact, wanted to tell me that one of the stories roused their emotions in some way, made them think, made them feel, and those letters are the real payback for the days (and there are a lot of them) when the words come hard and inspiration seems thin or even nonexistent. God bless and keep Constant Reader; the mouth can speak, but there is no tale unless there is a sympathetic ear to listen.

    1982, that was. The year the Milwaukee Brewers won their only American League pennant, led by—yes, you got it—Robin Yount. Yount hit .331 that year, bashed twenty-nine home runs, and was named the American League’s Most Valuable Player.

    It was a good year for both us old geezers.

    Different Seasons was not a planned book; it just happened. The four long stories in it came out at odd intervals over a period of five years, stories which were too long to be published as short stories and just a little too short to be books on their own. Like pitching a no-hitter or batting for the cycle (getting a single, double, triple, and home run all in the same ball game), it was not so much a feat as a kind of statistical oddity. I took great pleasure in its success and acceptance, but I also felt a clear sense of regret when the manuscript was finally turned in to The Viking Press. I knew it was good; I also knew that I’d probably never publish another book exactly like it in my life.

    If you’re expecting me to say Well, I was wrong, I must disappoint you. The book you are holding is quite different from the earlier book. Different Seasons consisted of three mainstream stories and one tale of the supernatural; all four of the tales in this book are tales of horror. They are, by and large, a little longer than the stories in Different Seasons, and they were written for the most part during the two years when I was supposedly retired. Perhaps they are different because they came from a mind which found itself turning, at least temporarily, to darker subjects.

    Time, for instance, and the corrosive effects it can have on the human heart. The past, and the shadows it throws upon the present—shadows where unpleasant things sometimes grow and even more unpleasant things hide . . . and grow fat.

    Yet not all of my concerns have changed, and most of my convictions have only grown stronger. I still believe in the resilience of the human heart and the essential validity of love; I still believe that connections between people can be made and that the spirits which inhabit us sometimes touch. I still believe that the cost of those connections is horribly, outrageously high . . . and I still believe that the value received far outweighs the price which must be paid. I still believe, I suppose, in the coming of the White and in finding a place to make a stand . . . and defending that place to the death. They are old-fashioned concerns and beliefs, but I would be a liar if I did not admit I still own them. And that they still own me.

    I still love a good story, too. I love hearing one, and I love telling one. You may or may not know (or care) that I was paid a great deal of money to publish this book and the two which will follow it, but if you do know or care, you should also know that I wasn’t paid a cent for writing the stories in the book. Like anything else that happens on its own, the act of writing is beyond currency. Money is great stuff to have, but when it comes to the act of creation, the best thing is not to think of money too much. It constipates the whole process.

    The way I tell my stories has also changed a little, I suppose (I hope I’ve gotten better at it, but of course that is something each reader should and will judge for himself ), but that is only to be expected. When the Brewers won the pennant in 1982, Robin Yount was playing shortstop. Now he’s in center field. I suppose that means he’s slowed down a little . . . but he still catches almost everything that’s hit in his direction.

    That will do for me. That will do just fine.

    Because a great many readers seem curious about where stories come from, or wonder if they fit into a wider scheme the writer may be pursuing, I have prefaced each of these with a little note about how it came to be written. You may be amused by these notes, but you needn’t read them if you don’t want to; this is not a school assignment, thank God, and there will be no pop quiz later.

    Let me close by saying again how good it is to be here, alive and well and talking to you once more . . . and how good it is to know that you are still there, alive and well and waiting to go to some other place—a place where, perhaps, the walls have eyes and the trees have ears and something really unpleasant is trying to find its way out of the attic and downstairs, to where the people are. That thing still interests me . . . but I think these days that the people who may or may not be listening for it interest me more.

    Before I go, I ought to tell you how that baseball game turned out. The Brewers ended up beating the Red Sox. Clemens struck Robin Yount out on Yount’s first at-bat . . . but the second time up, Yount (who helped Abner Doubleday lay out the first foul lines, according to Ned Martin) banged a double high off the Green Monster in left field and drove home two runs.

    Robin isn’t done playing the game just yet, I guess.

    Me, either.

    Bangor, Maine

    July, 1989

    THE LANGOLIERS

    THIS IS FOR JOE, ANOTHER WHITE-KNUCKLE FLIER.

    ONE PAST MIDNIGHT

    A NOTE ON THE LANGOLIERS

    Stories come at different times and places for me—in the car, in the shower, while walking, even while standing around at parties. On a couple of occasions, stories have come to me in dreams. But it’s very rare for me to write one as soon as the idea comes, and I don’t keep an idea notebook. Not writing ideas down is an exercise in self-preservation. I get a lot of them, but only a small percentage are any good, so I tuck them all into a kind of mental file. The bad ones eventually self-destruct in there, like the tape from Control at the beginning of every Mission: Impossible episode. The good ones don’t do that. Every now and then, when I open the file drawer to peek at what’s left inside, this small handful of ideas looks up at me, each with its own bright central image.

    With The Langoliers, that image was of a woman pressing her hand over a crack in the wall of a commercial jetliner.

    It did no good to tell myself I knew very little about commercial aircraft; I did exactly that, but the image was there every time I opened the file cabinet to dump in another idea, nevertheless. It got so I could even smell that woman’s perfume (it was L’Envoi), see her green eyes, and hear her rapid, frightened breathing.

    One night, while I was lying in bed, on the edge of sleep, I realized this woman was a ghost.

    I remember sitting up, swinging my feet out onto the floor, and turning on the light. I sat that way for a little while, not thinking about much of anything . . . at least on top. Underneath, however, the guy who really runs this job for me was busy clearing his work-space and getting ready to start up all his machines again. The next day, I—or he—began writing this story. It took about a month, and it came the most easily of all the stories in this book, layering itself sweetly and naturally as it went along. Once in awhile both stories and babies arrive in the world almost without labor pains, and this story was like that. Because it had an apocalyptic feel similar to an earlier novella of mine called The Mist, I headed each chapter in the same old-fashioned, rococo way. I came out of this one feeling almost as good about it as I did going in . . . a rare occurrence.

    I’m a lazy researcher, but I tried very hard to do my homework this time. Three pilots—Michael Russo, Frank Soares, and Douglas Damon—helped me to get my facts straight and keep them straight. They were real sports, once I promised not to break anything.

    Have I gotten everything right? I doubt it. Not even the great Daniel Defoe did that; in Robinson Crusoe, our hero strips naked, swims out to the ship he has recently escaped . . . and then fills up his pockets with items he will need to stay alive on his desert island. And then there is the novel (title and author will be mercifully omitted here) about the New York subway system where the writer apparently mistook the motormen’s cubicles for public toilets.

    My standard caveat goes like this: for what I got right, thank Messrs. Russo, Soares, and Damon. For what I got wrong, blame me. Nor is the statement one of hollow politeness. Factual mistakes usually result from a failure to ask the right question and not from erroneous information. I have taken a liberty or two with the airplane you will shortly be entering; these liberties are small, and seemed necessary to the course of the tale.

    Well, that’s enough from me; step aboard.

    Let’s fly the unfriendly skies.

    CHAPTER ONE

    BAD NEWS FOR CAPTAIN ENGLE. THE LITTLE BLIND GIRL. THE LADY’S SCENT. THE DALTON GANG ARRIVES IN TOMBSTONE. THE STRANGE PLIGHT OF FLIGHT 29.

    1

    Brian Engle rolled the American Pride L1011 to a stop at Gate 22 and flicked off the FASTEN SEATBELT light at exactly 10:14 P.M. He let a long sigh hiss through his teeth and unfastened his shoulder harness.

    He could not remember the last time he had been so relieved—and so tired—at the end of a flight. He had a nasty, pounding headache, and his plans for the evening were firmly set. No drink in the pilots’ lounge, no dinner, not even a bath when he got back to Westwood. He intended to fall into bed and sleep for fourteen hours.

    American Pride’s Flight 7—Flagship Service from Tokyo to Los Angeles—had been delayed first by strong headwinds and then by typical congestion at LAX . . . which was, Engle thought, arguably America’s worst airport, if you left out Logan in Boston. To make matters worse, a pressurization problem had developed during the latter part of the flight. Minor at first, it had gradually worsened until it was scary. It had almost gotten to the point where a blowout and explosive decompression could have occurred . . . and had mercifully grown no worse. Sometimes such problems suddenly and mysteriously stabilized themselves, and that was what had happened this time. The passengers now disembarking just behind the control cabin had not the slightest idea how close they had come to being people pâté on tonight’s flight from Tokyo, but Brian knew . . . and it had given him a whammer of a headache.

    This bitch goes right into diagnostic from here, he told his co-pilot. They know it’s coming and what the problem is, right?

    The co-pilot nodded. They don’t like it, but they know.

    I don’t give a shit what they like and what they don’t like, Danny. We came close tonight.

    Danny Keene nodded. He knew they had.

    Brian sighed and rubbed a hand up and down the back of his neck. His head ached like a bad tooth. Maybe I’m getting too old for this business.

    That was, of course, the sort of thing anyone said about his job from time to time, particularly at the end of a bad shift, and Brian knew damned well he wasn’t too old for the job—at forty-three, he was just entering prime time for airline pilots. Nevertheless, tonight he almost believed it. God, he was tired.

    There was a knock at the compartment door; Steve Searles, the navigator, turned in his seat and opened it without standing up. A man in a green American Pride blazer was standing there. He looked like a gate agent, but Brian knew he wasn’t. It was John (or maybe it was James) Deegan, Deputy Chief of Operations for American Pride at LAX.

    Captain Engle?

    Yes? An internal set of defenses went up, and his headache flared. His first thought, born not of logic but of strain and weariness, was that they were going to try and pin responsibility for the leaky aircraft on him. Paranoid, of course, but he was in a paranoid frame of mind.

    I’m afraid I have some bad news for you, Captain.

    Is this about the leak? Brian’s voice was too sharp, and a few of the disembarking passengers glanced around, but it was too late to do anything about that now.

    Deegan was shaking his head. It’s your wife, Captain Engle.

    For a moment Brian didn’t have the foggiest notion what the man was talking about and could only sit there, gaping at him and feeling exquisitely stupid. Then the penny dropped. He meant Anne, of course.

    She’s my ex-wife. We were divorced eighteen months ago. What about her?

    There’s been an accident, Deegan said. Perhaps you’d better come up to the office.

    Brian looked at him curiously. After the last three long, tense hours, all of this seemed strangely unreal. He resisted an urge to tell Deegan that if this was some sort of Candid Camera bullshit, he could go fuck himself. But of course it wasn’t. Airlines brass weren’t into pranks and games, especially at the expense of pilots who had just come very close to having nasty midair mishaps.

    What about Anne? Brian heard himself asking again, this time in a softer voice. He was aware that his co-pilot was looking at him with cautious sympathy. Is she all right?

    Deegan looked down at his shiny shoes and Brian knew that the news was very bad indeed, that Anne was a lot more than not all right. Knew, but found it impossible to believe. Anne was only thirty-four, healthy, and careful in her habits. He had also thought on more than one occasion that she was the only completely sane driver in the city of Boston . . . perhaps in the whole state of Massachusetts.

    Now he heard himself asking something else, and it was really like that—as if some stranger had stepped into his brain and was using his mouth as a loudspeaker. Is she dead?

    John or James Deegan looked around, as if for support, but there was only a single flight attendant standing by the hatch, wishing the deplaning passengers a pleasant evening in Los Angeles and glancing anxiously toward the cockpit every now and then, probably worried about the same thing that had crossed Brian’s mind—that the crew was for some reason to be blamed for the slow leak which had made the last few hours of the flight such a nightmare. Deegan was on his own. He looked at Brian again and nodded. Yes—I’m afraid she is. Would you come with me, Captain Engle?

    2

    At quarter past midnight, Brian Engle was settling into seat 5A of American Pride’s Flight 29—Flagship Service from Los Angeles to Boston. In fifteen minutes or so, that flight known to transcontinental travelers as the red-eye would be airborne. He remembered thinking earlier that if LAX wasn’t the most dangerous commercial airport in America, then Logan was. Through the most unpleasant of coincidences, he would now have a chance to experience both places within an eight-hour span of time: into LAX as the pilot, into Logan as a deadheading passenger.

    His headache, now a good deal worse than it had been upon landing Flight 7, stepped up another notch.

    A fire, he thought. A goddamned fire. What happened to the smoke-detectors, for Christ’s sake? It was a brand-new building!

    It occurred to him that he had hardly thought about Anne at all for the last four or five months. During the first year of the divorce, she was all he had thought about, it seemed—what she was doing, what she was wearing, and, of course, who she was seeing. When the healing finally began, it had happened very fast . . . as if he had been injected with some spirit-reviving antibiotic. He had read enough about divorce to know what that reviving agent usually was: not an antibiotic but another woman. The rebound effect, in other words.

    There had been no other woman for Brian—at least not yet. A few dates and one cautious sexual encounter (he had come to believe that all sexual encounters outside of marriage in the Age of AIDS were cautious), but no other woman. He had simply . . . healed.

    Brian watched his fellow passengers come aboard. A young woman with blonde hair was walking with a little girl in dark glasses. The little girl’s hand was on the blonde’s elbow. The woman murmured to her charge, the girl looked immediately toward the sound of her voice, and Brian understood she was blind—it was something in the gesture of the head. Funny, he thought, how such small gestures could tell so much.

    Anne, he thought. Shouldn’t you be thinking about Anne?

    But his tired mind kept trying to slip away from the subject of Anne—Anne, who had been his wife, Anne, who was the only woman he had ever struck in anger, Anne who was now dead.

    He supposed he could go on a lecture tour; he would talk to groups of divorced men. Hell, divorced women as well, for that matter. His subject would be divorce and the art of forgetfulness.

    Shortly after the fourth anniversary is the optimum time for divorce, he would tell them. Take my case. I spent the following year in purgatory, wondering just how much of it was my fault and how much was hers, wondering how right or wrong it was to keep pushing her on the subject of kids—that was the big thing with us, nothing dramatic like drugs or adultery, just the old kids-versus-career thing—and then it was like there was an express elevator inside my head, and Anne was in it, and down it went.

    Yes. Down it had gone. And for the last several months, he hadn’t really thought of Anne at all . . . not even when the monthly alimony check was due. It was a very reasonable, very civilized amount; Anne had been making eighty thousand a year on her own before taxes. His lawyer paid it, and it was just another item on the monthly statement Brian got, a little two-thousand-dollar item tucked between the electricity bill and the mortgage payment on the condo.

    He watched a gangly teenaged boy with a violin case under his arm and a yarmulke on his head walk down the aisle. The boy looked both nervous and excited, his eyes full of the future. Brian envied him.

    There had been a lot of bitterness and anger between the two of them during the last year of the marriage, and finally, about four months before the end, it had happened: his hand had said go before his brain could say no. He didn’t like to remember that. She’d had too much to drink at a party, and she had really torn into him when they got home.

    Leave me alone about it, Brian. Just leave me alone. No more talk about kids. If you want a sperm-test, go to a doctor. My job is advertising, not baby-making. I’m so tired of all your macho bullshit—

    That was when he had slapped her, hard, across the mouth. The blow had clipped the last word off with brutal neatness. They had stood looking at each other in the apartment where she would later die, both of them more shocked and frightened than they would ever admit (except maybe now, sitting here in seat 5A and watching Flight 29’s passengers come on board, he was admitting it, finally admitting it to himself ). She had touched her mouth, which had started to bleed. She held out her fingers toward him.

    You hit me, she said. It was not anger in her voice but wonder. He had an idea it might have been the first time anyone had ever laid an angry hand upon any part of Anne Quinlan Engle’s body.

    Yes, he had said. You bet. And I’ll do it again if you don’t shut up. You’re not going to whip me with that tongue of yours anymore, sweetheart. You better put a padlock on it. I’m telling you for your own good. Those days are over. If you want something to kick around the house, buy a dog.

    The marriage had crutched along for another few months, but it had really ended in that moment when Brian’s palm made brisk contact with the side of Anne’s mouth. He had been provoked—God knew he had been provoked—but he still would have given a great deal to take that one wretched second back.

    As the last passengers began to trickle on board, he found himself also thinking, almost obsessively, about Anne’s perfume. He could recall its fragrance exactly, but not the name. What had it been? Lissome? Lithesome? Lithium, for God’s sake? It danced just beyond his grasp. It was maddening.

    I miss her, he thought dully. Now that she’s gone forever, I miss her. Isn’t that amazing?

    Lawnboy? Something stupid like that?

    Oh stop it, he told his weary mind. Put a cork in it.

    Okay, his mind agreed. No problem; I can quit. I can quit anytime I want. Was it maybe Lifebuoy? No—that’s soap. Sorry. Lovebite? Lovelorn?

    Brian snapped his seatbelt shut, leaned back, closed his eyes, and smelled a perfume he could not quite name.

    That was when the flight attendant spoke to him. Of course: Brian Engle had a theory that they were taught—in a highly secret post-graduate course, perhaps called Teasing the Geese—to wait until the passenger closed his or her eyes before offering some not-quite-essential service. And, of course, they were to wait until they were reasonably sure the passenger was asleep before waking him to ask if he would like a blanket or a pillow.

    Pardon me . . . she began, then stopped. Brian saw her eyes go from the epaulets on the shoulders of his black jacket to the hat, with its meaningless squiggle of scrambled eggs, on the empty seat beside him.

    She rethought herself and started again.

    Pardon me, Captain, would you like coffee or orange juice? Brian was faintly amused to see he had flustered her a little. She gestured toward the table at the front of the compartment, just below the small rectangular movie screen. There were two ice-buckets on the table. The slender green neck of a wine bottle poked out of each. Of course, I also have champagne.

    Engle considered

    (Love Boy that’s not it close but no cigar)

    the champagne, but only briefly. Nothing, thanks, he said. And no in-flight service. I think I’ll sleep all the way to Boston. How’s the weather look?

    Clouds at 20,000 feet from the Great Plains all the way to Boston, but no problem. We’ll be at thirty-six. Oh, and we’ve had reports of the aurora borealis over the Mojave Desert. You might want to stay awake for that.

    Brian raised his eyebrows. You’re kidding. The aurora borealis over California? And at this time of year?

    That’s what we’ve been told.

    Somebody’s been taking too many cheap drugs, Brian said, and she laughed. I think I’ll just snooze, thanks.

    Very good, Captain. She hesitated a moment longer. You’re the captain who just lost his wife, aren’t you?

    The headache pulsed and snarled, but he made himself smile. This woman—who was really no more than a girl—meant no harm. She was my ex-wife, but otherwise, yes. I am.

    I’m awfully sorry for your loss.

    Thank you.

    Have I flown with you before, sir?

    His smile reappeared briefly. I don’t think so. I’ve been on overseas for the past four years or so. And because it seemed somehow necessary, he offered his hand. Brian Engle.

    She took it. Melanie Trevor.

    Engle smiled at her again, then leaned back and closed his eyes once more. He let himself drift, but not sleep—the preflight announcements, followed by the take-off roll, would only wake him up again. There would be time enough to sleep when they were in the air.

    Flight 29, like most red-eye flights, left promptly—Brian reflected that was high on their meager list of attractions. The plane was a 767, a little over half full. There were half a dozen other passengers in first class. None of them looked drunk or rowdy to Brian. That was good. Maybe he really would sleep all the way to Boston.

    He watched Melanie Trevor patiently as she pointed out the exit doors, demonstrated how to use the little gold cup if there was a pressure loss (a procedure Brian had been reviewing in his own mind, and with some urgency, not long ago), and how to inflate the life vest under the seat. When the plane was airborne, she came by his seat and asked him again if she could get him something to drink. Brian shook his head, thanked her, then pushed the button which caused his seat to recline. He closed his eyes and promptly fell asleep.

    He never saw Melanie Trevor again.

    3

    About three hours after Flight 29 took off, a little girl named Dinah Bellman woke up and asked her Aunt Vicky if she could have a drink of water.

    Aunt Vicky did not answer, so Dinah asked again. When there was still no answer, she reached over to touch her aunt’s shoulder, but she was already quite sure that her hand would touch nothing but the back of an empty seat, and that was what happened. Dr. Feldman had told her that children who were blind from birth often developed a high sensitivity—almost a kind of radar—to the presence or absence of people in their immediate area, but Dinah hadn’t really needed the information. She knew it was true. It didn’t always work, but it usually did . . . especially if the person in question was her Sighted Person.

    Well, she’s gone to the bathroom and she’ll be right back, Dinah thought, but she felt an odd, vague disquiet settle over her just the same. She hadn’t come awake all at once; it had been a slow process, like a diver kicking her way to the surface of a lake. If Aunt Vicky, who had the window seat, had brushed by her to get to the aisle in the last two or three minutes, Dinah should have felt her.

    So she went sooner, she told herself. Probably she had to Number Two—it’s really no big deal, Dinah. Or maybe she stopped to talk with somebody on her way back.

    Except Dinah couldn’t hear anyone talking in the big airplane’s main cabin; only the steady soft drone of the jet engines. Her feeling of disquiet grew.

    The voice of Miss Lee, her therapist (except Dinah always thought of her as her blind teacher), spoke up in her head: You mustn’t be afraid to be afraid, Dinah—all children are afraid from time to time, especially in situations that are new to them. That goes double for children who are blind. Believe me, I know. And Dinah did believe her, because, like Dinah herself, Miss Lee had been blind since birth. Don’t give up your fear . . . but don’t give in to it, either. Sit still and try to reason things out. You’ll be surprised how often it works.

    Especially in situations that are new to them.

    Well, that certainly fit; this was the first time Dinah had ever flown in anything, let alone coast to coast in a huge transcontinental jetliner.

    Try to reason it out.

    Well, she had awakened in a strange place to find her Sighted Person gone. Of course that was scary, even if you knew the absence was only temporary—after all, your Sighted Person couldn’t very well decide to pop off to the nearest Taco Bell because she had the munchies when she was shut up in an airplane flying at 37,000 feet. As for the strange silence in the cabin . . . well, this was the red-eye, after all. The other passengers were probably sleeping.

    All of them? the worried part of her mind asked doubtfully. ALL of them are sleeping? Can that be?

    Then the answer came to her: the movie. The ones who were awake were watching the in-flight movie. Of course.

    A sense of almost palpable relief swept over her. Aunt Vicky had told her the movie was Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally . . . , and said she planned to watch it herself . . . if she could stay awake, that was.

    Dinah ran her hand lightly over her aunt’s seat, feeling for her headphones, but they weren’t there. Her fingers touched a paperback book instead. One of the romance novels Aunt Vicky liked to read, no doubt—tales of the days when men were men and women weren’t, she called them.

    Dinah’s fingers went a little further and happened on something else—smooth, fine-grained leather. A moment later she felt a zipper, and a moment after that she felt the strap.

    It was Aunt Vicky’s purse.

    Dinah’s disquiet returned. The earphones weren’t on Aunt Vicky’s seat, but her purse was. All the traveller’s checks, except for a twenty tucked deep into Dinah’s own purse, were in there—Dinah knew, because she had heard Mom and Aunt Vicky discussing them before they left the house in Pasadena.

    Would Aunt Vicky go off to the bathroom and leave her purse on the seat? Would she do that when her travelling companion was not only ten, not only asleep, but blind ?

    Dinah didn’t think so.

    Don’t give up your fear . . . but don’t give in to it, either. Sit still and try to reason things out.

    But she didn’t like that empty seat, and she didn’t like the silence of the plane. It made perfect sense to her that most of the people would be asleep, and that the ones who were awake would be keeping as quiet as possible out of consideration for the rest, but she still didn’t like it. An animal, one with extremely sharp teeth and claws, awakened and started to snarl inside of her head. She knew the name of that animal; it was panic, and if she didn’t control it fast, she might do something which would embarrass both her and Aunt Vicky.

    When I can see, when the doctors in Boston fix my eyes, I won’t have to go through stupid stuff like this.

    This was undoubtedly true, but it was absolutely no help to her right now.

    Dinah suddenly remembered that, after they sat down, Aunt Vicky had taken her hand, folded all the fingers but the pointer under, and then guided that one finger to the side of her seat. The controls were there—only a few of them, simple, easy to remember. There were two little wheels you could use once you put on the headphones—one switched around to the different audio channels; the other controlled the volume. The small rectangular switch controlled the light over her seat. You won’t need that one, Aunt Vicky said with a smile in her voice. At least, not yet. The last one was a square button—when you pushed that one, a flight attendant came.

    Dinah’s finger touched this button now, and skated over its slightly convex surface.

    Do you really want to do this? she asked herself, and the answer came back at once. Yeah, I do.

    She pushed the button and heard the soft chime. Then she waited.

    No one came.

    There was only the soft, seemingly eternal whisper of the jet engines. No one spoke. No one laughed (Guess that movie isn’t as funny as Aunt Vicky thought it would be, Dinah thought). No one coughed. The seat beside her, Aunt Vicky’s seat, was still empty, and no flight attendant bent over her in a comforting little envelope of perfume and shampoo and faint smells of make-up to ask Dinah if she could get her something—a snack, or maybe that drink of water.

    Only the steady soft drone of the jet engines.

    The panic animal was yammering louder than ever. To combat it, Dinah concentrated on focussing that radar gadget, making it into a kind of invisible cane she could jab out from her seat here in the middle of the main cabin. She was good at that; at times, when she concentrated very hard, she almost believed she could see through the eyes of others. If she thought about it hard enough, wanted to hard enough. Once she had told Miss Lee about this feeling, and Miss Lee’s response had been uncharacteristically sharp. Sight-sharing is a frequent fantasy of the blind, she’d said. Particularly of blind children. Don’t ever make the mistake of relying on that feeling, Dinah, or you’re apt to find yourself in traction after falling down a flight of stairs or stepping in front of a car.

    So she had put aside her efforts to sight-share, as Miss Lee had called it, and on the few occasions when the sensation stole over her again—that she was seeing the world, shadowy, wavery, but there—through her mother’s eyes or Aunt Vicky’s eyes, she had tried to get rid of it . . . as a person who fears he is losing his mind will try to block out the murmur of phantom voices. But now she was afraid and so she felt for others, sensed for others, and did not find them.

    Now the terror was very large in her, the yammering of the panic animal very loud. She felt a cry building up in her throat and clamped her teeth against it. Because it would not come out as a cry, or a yell; if she let it out, it would exit her mouth as a fireball scream.

    I won’t scream, she told herself fiercely. I won’t scream and embarrass Aunt Vicky. I won’t scream and wake up all the ones who are asleep and scare all the ones who are awake and they’ll all come running and say look at the scared little girl, look at the scared little blind girl.

    But now that radar sense—that part of her which evaluated all sorts of vague sensory input and which sometimes did seem to see through the eyes of others (no matter what Miss Lee said)—was adding to her fear rather than alleviating it.

    Because that sense was telling her there was nobody within its circle of effectiveness.

    Nobody at all.

    4

    Brian Engle was having a very bad dream. In it, he was once again piloting Flight 7 from Tokyo to L.A., but this time the leak was much worse. There was a palpable feeling of doom in the cockpit; Steve Searles was weeping as he ate a Danish pastry.

    If you’re so upset, how come you’re eating? Brian asked. A shrill, teakettle whistling had begun to fill the cockpit—the sound of the pressure leak, he reckoned. This was silly, of course—leaks were almost always silent until the blowout occurred—but he supposed in dreams anything was possible.

    Because I love these things, and I’m never going to get to eat another one, Steve said, sobbing harder than ever.

    Then, suddenly, the shrill whistling sound stopped. A smiling, relieved flight attendant—it was, in fact, Melanie Trevor—appeared to tell him the leak had been found and plugged. Brian got up and followed her through the plane to the main cabin, where Anne Quinlan Engle, his ex-wife, was standing in a little alcove from which the seats had been removed. Written over the window beside her was the cryptic and somehow ominous phrase SHOOTING STARS ONLY. It was written in red, the color of danger.

    Anne was dressed in the dark-green uniform of an American Pride flight attendant, which was strange—she was an advertising executive with a Boston agency, and had always looked down her narrow, aristocratic nose at the stews with whom her husband flew. Her hand was pressed against a crack in the fuselage.

    See, darling? she said proudly. It’s all taken care of. It doesn’t even matter that you hit me. I have forgiven you.

    Don’t do that, Anne! he cried, but it was already too late. A fold appeared in the back of her hand, mimicking the shape of the crack in the fuselage. It grew deeper as the pressure differential sucked her hand relentlessly outward. Her middle finger went through first, then the ring finger, then the first finger and her pinky. There was a brisk popping sound, like a champagne cork being drawn by an overeager waiter, as her entire hand was pulled through the crack in the airplane.

    Yet Anne went on smiling.

    It’s L’Envoi, darling, she said as her arm began to disappear. Her hair was escaping the clip which held it back and blowing around her face in a misty cloud. It’s what I’ve always worn, don’t you remember?

    He did . . . now he did. But now it didn’t matter.

    Anne, come back! he screamed.

    She went on smiling as her arm was sucked slowly into the emptiness outside the plane. It doesn’t hurt at all, Brian—believe me.

    The sleeve of her green American Pride blazer began to flutter, and Brian saw that her flesh was being pulled out through the crack in a thickish white ooze. It looked like Elmer’s Glue.

    L’Envoi, remember? Anne asked as she was sucked out through the crack, and now Brian could hear it again—that sound which the poet James Dickey once called the vast beast-whistle of space. It grew steadily louder as the dream darkened, and at the same time it began to broaden. To become not the scream of wind but that of a human voice.

    Brian’s eyes snapped open. He was disoriented by the power of the dream for a moment, but only a moment—he was a professional in a high-risk, high-responsibility job, a job where one of the absolute prerequisites was fast reaction time. He was on Flight 29, not Flight 7, not Tokyo to Los Angeles but Los Angeles to Boston, where Anne was already dead—not the victim of a pressure leak but of a fire in her Atlantic Avenue condominium near the waterfront. But the sound was still there.

    It was a little girl, screaming shrilly.

    5

    Would somebody speak to me, please? Dinah Bellman asked in a low, clear voice. I’m sorry, but my aunt is gone and I’m blind.

    No one answered her. Forty rows and two partitions forward, Captain Brian Engle was dreaming that his navigator was weeping and eating a Danish pastry.

    There was only the continuing drone of the jet engines.

    The panic overshadowed her mind again, and Dinah did the only thing she could think of to stave it off: she unbuckled her seatbelt, stood up, and edged into the aisle.

    Hello? she asked in a louder voice. "Hello, anybody!"

    There was still no answer. Dinah began to cry. She held onto herself grimly, nonetheless, and began walking forward slowly along the portside aisle. Keep count, though, part of her mind warned frantically. Keep count of how many rows you pass, or you’ll get lost and never find your way back again.

    She stopped at the row of portside seats just ahead of the row in which she and Aunt Vicky had been sitting and bent, arms outstretched, fingers splayed. She was steeled to touch the sleeping face of the man sitting there. She knew there was a man here, because Aunt Vicky had spoken to him only a minute or so before the plane took off. When he spoke back to her, his voice had come from the seat directly in front of Dinah’s own. She knew that; marking the locations of voices was part of her life, an ordinary fact of existence like breathing. The sleeping man would jump when her outstretched fingers touched him, but Dinah was beyond caring.

    Except the seat was empty.

    Completely empty.

    Dinah straightened up again, her cheeks wet, her head pounding with fright. They couldn’t be in the bathroom together, could they? Of course not.

    Perhaps there were two bathrooms. In a plane this big there must be two bathrooms.

    Except that didn’t matter, either.

    Aunt Vicky wouldn’t have left her purse, no matter what. Dinah was sure of it.

    She began to walk slowly forward, stopping at each row of seats, reaching into the two closest her—first on the port side and then on the starboard.

    She felt another purse in one, what felt like a briefcase in another, a pen and a pad of paper in a third. In two others she felt headphones. She touched something sticky on an earpiece of the second set. She rubbed her fingers together, then grimaced and wiped them on the mat which covered the headrest of the seat. That had been earwax. She was sure of it. It had its own unmistakable, yucky texture.

    Dinah Bellman felt her slow way up the aisle, no longer taking pains to be gentle in her investigations. It didn’t matter. She poked no eye, pinched no cheek, pulled no hair.

    Every seat she investigated was empty.

    This can’t be, she thought wildly. It just can’t be! They were all around us when we got on! I heard them! I felt them! I smelled them! Where have they all gone?

    She didn’t know, but they were gone: she was becoming steadily more sure of that.

    At some point, while she slept, her aunt and everyone else on Flight 29 had disappeared.

    No! The rational part of her mind clamored in the voice of Miss Lee. No, that’s impossible, Dinah! If everyone’s gone, who is flying the plane?

    She began to move forward faster now, hands gripping the edges of the seats, her blind eyes wide open behind her dark glasses, the hem of her pink travelling dress fluttering. She had lost count, but in her greater distress over the continuing silence, this did not matter much to her.

    She stopped again, and reached her groping hands into the seat on her right. This time she touched hair . . . but its location was all wrong. The hair was on the seat—how could that be?

    Her hands closed around it . . . and lifted it. Realization, sudden and terrible, came to her.

    It’s hair, but the man it belongs to is gone. It’s a scalp. I’m holding a dead man’s scalp.

    That was when Dinah Bellman opened her mouth and began to give voice to the shrieks which pulled Brian Engle from his dream.

    6

    Albert Kaussner was belly up to the bar, drinking Branding Iron Whiskey. The Earp brothers, Wyatt and Virgil, were on his right, and Doc Holliday was on his left. He was just lifting his glass to offer a toast when a man with a peg leg ran-hopped into the Sergio Leone Saloon.

    It’s the Dalton Gang! he screamed. The Daltons have just rid into Dodge!

    Wyatt turned to face him calmly. His face was narrow, tanned, and handsome. He looked a great deal like Hugh O’Brian. This here is Tombstone, Muffin, he said. You got to get yore stinky ole shit together.

    Well, they’re ridin in, wherever we are! Muffin exclaimed. "And they look maaad, Wyatt! They look reeely reeely maaaaaaad !"

    As if to prove this, guns began to fire in the street outside—the heavy thunder of Army .44s (probably stolen) mixed in with the higher whipcrack explosions of Garand rifles.

    Don’t get your panties all up in a bunch, Muffy, Doc Holliday said, and tipped his hat back. Albert was not terribly surprised to see that Doc looked like Robert De Niro. He had always believed that if anyone was absolutely right to play the consumptive dentist, De Niro was the one.

    What do you say, boys? Virgil Earp asked, looking around. Virgil didn’t look like much of anyone.

    Let’s go, Wyatt said. I’ve had enough of these damned Clantons to last me a lifetime.

    It’s the Daltons, Wyatt, Albert said quietly.

    I don’t care if it’s John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd! Wyatt exclaimed. Are you with us or not, Ace?

    I’m with you, Albert Kaussner said, speaking in the soft but menacing tones of the born killer. He dropped one hand to the butt of his long-barrelled Buntline Special and put the other to his head for a moment to make sure his yarmulke was on solidly. It was.

    Okay, boys, Doc said. Let’s go cut some Dalton butt.

    They strode out together, four abreast through the batwing doors, just as the bell in the Tombstone Baptist Church began to toll high noon.

    The Daltons were coming down Main Street at a full gallop, shooting holes in plate-glass windows and false fronts. They turned the waterbarrel in front of Duke’s Mercantile and Reliable Gun Repair into a fountain.

    Ike Dalton was the first to see the four men standing in the dusty street, their frock coats pulled back to free the handles of their guns. Ike reined his horse in savagely and it rose on its rear legs, squealing, foam splattering in thick curds around the bit. Ike Dalton looked quite a bit like Rutger Hauer.

    Look what we have got here, he sneered. It is Wyatt Earp and his pansy brother, Virgil.

    Emmett Dalton (who looked like Donald Sutherland after a month of hard nights) pulled up beside Ike. And their faggot dentist friend, too, he snarled. Who else wants— Then he looked at Albert and paled. The thin sneer faltered on his lips.

    Paw Dalton pulled up beside his two sons. Paw bore a strong resemblance to Slim Pickens.

    Christ, Paw whispered. It’s Ace Kaussner!

    Now Frank James pulled his mount into line next to Paw. His face was the color of dirty parchment. What the hell, boys! Frank cried. I don’t mind hoorawin a town or two on a dull day, but nobody told me The Arizona Jew was gonna be here!

    Albert Ace Kaussner, known from Sedalia to Steamboat Springs as The Arizona Jew, took a step forward. His hand hovered over the butt of his Buntline. He spat a stream of tobacco to one side, never taking his chilly gray eyes from the hardcases mounted twenty feet in front of him.

    Go on and make your moves, boys, said The Arizona Jew. By my count, hell ain’t half full.

    The Dalton Gang slapped leather just as the clock in the tower of the Tombstone Baptist Church beat the last stroke of noon into the hot desert air. Ace went for his own gun, his draw as fast as blue blazes, and as he began to fan the hammer with the flat of his left hand, sending a spray of .45-caliber death into the Dalton Gang, a little girl standing outside The Longhorn Hotel began to scream.

    Somebody make that brat stop yowling, Ace thought. What’s the matter with her, anyway? I got this under control. They don’t call me the fastest Hebrew west of the Mississippi for nothing.

    But the scream went on, ripping across the air, darkening it as it came, and everything began to break up.

    For a moment Albert was nowhere at all—lost in a darkness through which fragments of his dream tumbled and spun in a whirlpool. The only constant was that terrible scream; it sounded like the shriek of an overloaded teakettle.

    He opened his eyes and looked around. He was in his seat toward the front of Flight 29’s main cabin. Coming up the aisle from the rear of the plane was a girl of about ten or twelve, wearing a pink dress and a pair of ditty-bop shades.

    What is she, a movie star or something? he thought, but he was badly frightened, all the same. It was a bad way to exit his favorite dream.

    Hey! he cried—but softly, so as not to wake the other passengers. Hey, kid! What’s the deal?

    The little girl whiplashed her head toward the sound of his voice. Her body turned a moment later, and she collided with one of the seats which ran down the center of the cabin in four-across rows. She struck it with her thighs, rebounded, and tumbled backward over the armrest of a portside seat. She fell into it with her legs up.

    Where is everybody? she was screaming. Help me! Help me!

    Hey, stewardess! Albert yelled, concerned, and unbuckled his seatbelt. He stood up, slipped out of his seat, turned toward the screaming little girl . . . and stopped. He was now facing fully toward the back of the plane, and what he saw froze him in place.

    The first thought to cross his mind was, I guess I don’t have to worry about waking up the other passengers, after all.

    To Albert it looked like the entire main cabin of the 767 was empty.

    7

    Brian Engle was almost to the partition separating Flight 29’s first-class and business-class sections when he realized that first class was now entirely empty. He stopped for just a moment, then got moving again. The others had left their seats to see what all the screaming was about, perhaps.

    Of course he knew this was not the case; he had been flying passengers long enough to know a good bit about their group psychology. When a passenger freaked out, few if any of the others ever moved. Most air travellers meekly surrendered their option to take individual action when they entered the bird, sat down, and buckled their seatbelts around them. Once those few simple things were accomplished, all problem-solving tasks became the crew’s responsibility. Airline personnel called them geese, but they were really sheep . . . an attitude most flight crews liked just fine. It made the nervous ones easier to handle.

    But, since it was the only thing that made even remote sense, Brian ignored what he knew and plunged on. The rags of his own dream were still wrapped around him, and a part of his mind was convinced that it was Anne who was screaming, that he would find her halfway down the main cabin with her hand plastered against a crack in the body of the airliner, a crack located beneath a sign which read SHOOTING STARS ONLY.

    There was only one passenger in the business section, an older man in a brown three-piece suit. His bald head gleamed mellowly in the glow thrown by his reading lamp. His arthritis-swollen hands were folded neatly over the buckle of his seatbelt. He was fast asleep and snoring loudly, ignoring the whole ruckus.

    Brian burst through into the main cabin and there his forward motion was finally checked by utter stunned disbelief. He saw a teenaged boy standing near a little girl who had fallen into a seat on the port side about a quarter of the way down the cabin. The boy was not looking at her, however; he was staring toward the rear of the plane, with his jaw hanging almost all the way to the round collar of his Hard Rock Cafe tee-shirt.

    Brian’s first reaction was about the same as Albert Kaussner’s: My God, the whole plane is empty!

    Then he saw a woman on the starboard side of the airplane stand up and walk into the aisle to see what was happening. She had the dazed, puffy look of someone who has just been jerked out of a sound sleep. Halfway down, in the center aisle, a young man in a crew-necked jersey was craning his neck toward the little girl and staring with flat, incurious eyes. Another man, this one about sixty, got up from a seat close to Brian and stood there indecisively. He was dressed in a red flannel shirt and he looked utterly bewildered. His hair was fluffed up around his head in untidy mad-scientist corkscrews.

    Who’s screaming? he asked Brian. Is the plane in trouble, mister? You don’t think we’re goin down, do you?

    The little girl stopped screaming. She struggled up from the seat she had fallen into, and then almost tumbled forward in the other direction.

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