Stephen King: Insomnia

Lois leaned closer to Ralph, caressing his cheeks with the palms of her hands, wanting to tell him that she had meant to come with him-she had meant to, yes, but in the end he had been too quick for her. In the end he had left her behind.

“Love you, sweetheart,” Ralph said. He reached up and copied her gesture with his own palm. He tried to raise his left hand as well, but it would only lie on the pavement and twitch.

Lois took his hand and kissed it, “Love you, too, Ralph. Always.

So much.”

“I had to do it. You see?”

“Yes.” She didn’t know if she did see, didn’t know if she would ever see… but she knew he was dying. “Yes, I see.”

He sighed harshly-that sweet acetone smell wafted up to her again-and smiled.

“Miz Chasse? Miz Roberts, I mean?” It was Pete, speaking in hitching gasps. “Is Mr. Roberts okay? Please say I didn’t hurt him!

“Stay away, Pete,” she said without turning around. “Ralph is fine.

He just tore his pants and shirt a little… didn’t you, Ralph?”

“Yes,” he said. “You bet. You’ll just have to hosswhip me for-” He broke off and looked to her left. No one was there, but Ralph ’led anyway. “Lachesis!” he said. smi He put out his trembling, blood-grimy right hand, and as Lois,

Helen, and Pete Sullivan watched, it rose and fell twice in the empty air. Ralph’s eyes moved again, this time to the right. Slowly, very slowly, he moved his hand in that direction. When he spoke this time, his voice had begun to fade. “Hi, Clotho. Now remember: this… doesn’t… hurt. Right?” Ralph appeared to listen, and then smiled. “Yep,” he whispered, “any way you can get her.” His hand rose and fell again in the air, then dropped back to his chest.

He looked up at Lois with his fading blue eyes. “Listen,” he said, speaking with great effort. Yet his eyes blazed, would not let hers go. “Every day I woke up next to you was like waking up young and seeing… everything new.” He tried to raise his hand to her cheek again, and could not. “Every day, Lois.”

“It was like that for me, tool Ralph-like waking up young.”

“Lois?”

“What.”

“The ticking,” he said. He swallowed and then said it again, enunciating the words with great effort. “The ticking.”

“What ticking?”

“Never mind, is stopped,” he said, and smiled brilliantly. Then Ralph stopped, too. Clotho and Lachesis stood watching Lois weep over the man who lay dead in the street. In one hand Clotho held his scissors; he raised the other to eye-level and looked at it wonderingly.

It glowed and blazed with Ralph’s aura. Clotho: [He’s here… in here… how wonderful!] Lachesis raised his own right hand. Like Clotho’s left, it looked as if someone had pulled a blue mitten over the normal green-gold aura which swaddled it.

Lachesis: [Yes. He was a wonderful man.] Clotho: [Shall we give him to her?] Lachesis: [Can we?] Clotho: [There’s one way to find out.] They approached Lois. Each placed the hand Ralph had shaken on one side of Lois’s face.

“Mommy!” Natalie Deepneau cried. In her agitation, she had reverted to the patois of her babyhood. “Who those wittle men? Why they touchin Roliss?”

“Shh, honey, Helen said, and buried Nat’s head against her breast again. There were no men, little or otherwise, near Lois Roberts; she was kneeling alone in the street next to the man who had saved her daughter’s life.

Lois looked up suddenly, her eyes wide and surprised, her grief forgotten as a gorgeous feeling of (light blue light) calmness and peace filled her. For a moment Harris Avenue was gone. She was in a dark place filled with the sweet smells of hay and cows, a dark place that was split by a hundred brilliant seams of light. She never forgot the fierce joy that leaped up in her at that moment, nor the sure sense that she was seeing a representation of a universe that Ralph wanted her to see, a universe where there was couldn’t she see it through “Can you ever forgive me?” Pete was sobbing. “Oh my God, can you ever forgive me?”

“Oh yes, I think so,” Lois said calmly.

She passed her hand down Ralph’s face, closing his eyes, and then held his head in her lap and waited for the police to come. To Lois, Ralph looked as if he had gone to sleep. And, she saw, the long white scar on his right forearm was gone, dazzling light behind the darkness the cracks?

September 10, 1990-November 10, 1993