KING, Stephen - Insomnia

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Insomnia

by Stephen King

Synopsis:

Insomnia.zip Insomnia by Stephen King Ralph Roberts has been having

trouble sleeping lately. As his insomnia progresses, strange things

begin to happen to him. BBut, after all, Ralph lives in Derry and as

King devotees well know, strange things have a way of happening in

Derry.

Also by Stephen King

Novels

Carrie

Christine

The Dark Tower II

Salem's Lot

Pet Cemetery

The Drawing of The Shining

Cycle of the Werewolf

The Stand

The Talisman

The Dark Tower III

The Dead Zone (with Peter Straub)

The Waste Lands

Firestarter

The Dark Half

Cujo

Eyes Of the Dragon

Needful Things

Misery

Gerald's Game

The Dark Tower

The Gunslinger

The Tommy-knockers

Screenplays

Night Shift

Creepshow

Different Seasons

Cat's Eye

Skeleton Crew

Silver Bullet

Past Midnight

Maximum Overdrive

Nightmares

Pet Cemetery

Dreamscapes

Golden Years

Nonfiction

Sleepwalker

Danse

Macabre

The Stand

published in 1994 by Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA

Inc.

illustrations copyright David Johnson, 1994

NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and

incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used

fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

events, Or locales is entirely coincidental.

Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint excerpts from

the following copyrighted works: "White Rabbit," lyrics and-music by

International copyright "The Cemetery Nights by Stephen Dobyns.

Dejecta Clark, C rnel Conrad Music, a division of Arc Music 'The Lord of

the Rigs by J. R. R. Tolkien. Col b Christopher R. Tolkien, Jshri R.

R. Toll y . permission of Houghton Mifflin Co. and Ho "You Baby,"

words and music by P. F. Sloan and Steve Publishing, a Division of MCA

permission. "Lantern" by Michael McDermott. 9 1993 UEsNidl lackwood

Music, Inc and Wanted Man Music. All rights Wanted Man Music controlled

International copyright secured. Used by permission.

Library of Congress Catalog and publishing data:

King, Stephen Insomnia / Stephen King.

ISBN 0-670-85503-0

1. Title.

PS3561.483156 1994

813'.54-dc2O 94 784

Insomnia

Prologue

Winding the Deathwatch

(1)

Old age is an island, surrounded by death. -Juan Mentalvo "On Beauty" Ne

one-least of all Dr. Litchfield-came right out and told Ralph Roberts

that his wife was going to die, but there came a time when Ralph

understood without needing to be told. The months between March and

June were a jangling, screaming time inside his head-a time of

conferences with doctors, of evening runs to the hospital with Carolyn,

of trips to other hospitals in other states for special tests (Ralph

spent much of his travel time an these trips thanking God for Carolyn's

Blue Cross/Major Medical cocoverage), of personal research in the Derry

Public Library, at first Imaking for answers the specialists might have

overlooked, later on just looking for hope and grasping at straws.

Those four months were like being dragged drunk through some malign

carnival where the people on the rides were really screaming, the people

lost in the mirror maze were really lost, and the denizens of Freak

Alley looked at you with false smiles on their lips and terror in their

eyes. Ralph began to see these things by the middle of May, and as June

set in, he began to understand that the pitchmen along the medical

midway had only quack remedies to sell, and the cheery quickstep of the

calliope could no longer quite hide the fact that the tune spilling out

of the loudspeakers was "The Funeral March." It was a carnival, all

right; the carnival of lost souls.

Ralph continued to deny these terrible images-and the even more terrible

idea lurking behind them-all through the early summer of 1992, but as

June gave way to July, this finally became impossible. The worst

midsummer heatwave since 1971 rolled over central Maine, and Derry

simmered in a bath of hazy sun, humidity, and daily temperatures in the

mid-nineties. The city-hardly a bustling metropolis at the best of

times-fell into a complete Stupor, and it was in this hot silence that

Ralph Roberts first heard the ticking of the deathwatch and understood

that in the passage from June's cool damp greens to the baked stillness

of July, Carolyn's slim chances had become no - chances at all. She was

going to die. Not this summer, probably-the doctors claimed to have

quite a few tricks up their sleeves yet, and Ralph was sure they did-but

this fall or this winter. His longtime companion, the only woman he had

ever loved, was going to die. He tried to deny the idea, scolding

himself for being a morbid old fool, but in the gasping silences of

those long hot days, Ralph heard that ticking everywhere-it even seemed

to be in the walls.

Yet it was loudest from within Carolyn herself, and when she turned her

calm white face toward him-perhaps to ask him to turn on the radio so

she could listen while she shelled some beans for their supper, or to

ask him if he would go across to the Red Apple and get her an ice cream

on a stick-he would see that she heard it, too. He would see it in her

dark eyes, at first only when she was straight, but later even when her

eyes were hazed by the pain medication she took.

By then the ticking had grown very loud, and when Ralph lay in bed

beside her on those hot summer nights when even a single sheet seemed to

weigh ten pounds and he believed every dog in Derry was barking at the

moon, he listened to it, to the deathwatch ticking inside Carolyn, and

it seemed to him that his heart would break with sorrow and terror.

How much would she be required to suffer before the end came? How much

would he be required to suffer? And how could he possibly live without

her-?

It was during this strange, fraught period that Ralph began to go for

increasingly long walks through the hot summer afternoons and slow,

twilit evenings, returning on many occasions too exhausted to eat. He

kept expecting Carolyn to scold him for these outings, to say Why don't

you stop it, You stupid old man? You'll kill yourself if you keep

walking in this heat! But she never did, and he gradually realized she

didn't even know. That he went out, yes-she knew that. But not all the

miles he went, or that when he came home he was often trembling with

exhaustion and near sunstroke. Once upon a time it had seemed to Ralph

she saw everything, even a change of half an inch in where he parted his

hair. Ne more; the tumor in her brain had stolen her powers of

observation, as it would soon steal her life.

So he walked, relishing the heat in spite of the way it sometimes made

his head swim and his ears ring, relishing it mostly because of the way

it made his ears ring; sometimes there were whole hours when they rang

so loudly and his head pounded so fiercely that he couldn't hear the

tick of Carolyn's deathwatch.

He walked over much of Derry that hot July, a narrow-shouldered old man

with thinning white hair and big hands that still looked capable of hard

work. He walked from Witcham Street to the Barrens, from Kansas Street

to Neibolt Street, from Main Street to the Kissing Bridge, but his feet

took him most frequently west along Harris Avenue, where the still

beautiful and much beloved Carolvil Roberts was now spending her last

year in a haze of headaches.

Avenue Extension and Derry County A' morphine, to the airport. He would

walk out the Extension-which was treeless and completely exposed to the

pitiless sun-until he felt his legs threatening to cave in beneath him,

and then double back.

He often paused to catch his second wind in a shady picnic area close to

the airport's service entrance. At night this place was a teenage

drinking and makeout spot, alive with the sounds of rap coming from

boombox radios, but during the days it was the more-or-less exclusive

domain of a group Ralph's friend Bill McGovern called the Harris Avenue

Old Crocks. The Old Crocks gathered to play chess, to play gin, or just

to shoot the shit. Ralph had known many of them for years (had, in

fact, gone to grammar school with Stan Eberty), and was comfortable with

them . . . as long as they didn't get too nosy. Most didn't. They

were old-school Yankees, for the most part, raised to believe that what

a man doesn't choose to talk about is no,one's business but his own.

it was on one of these walks that he first became aware that something

had gone very wrong with Ed Deepneau, his neighbor from up the street.

Ralph had walked much farther from the Harris Avenue Extension than

usual that day, possibly because thunderheads had blotted out the sun

and a cool, if still spmradic, breeze had begun to blow. He had fallen

into a kind of trance, not thinking of anything, not watching anything

but the dusty toes of his sneakers, when the four-forty-five United

Airlines flight from Boston swooped low overhead, startling him back to)

where he was with the teeth-rattling whine of its jet engines.

He watched it cross above the old GS&WM railroad tracks and the Cyclone

fence that marked the edge of the airport, watched it settle toward the

runway, marked the blue puffs of smoke as its wheels touched down. Then

he glanced at his watch, saw how late it was getting, and looked up with

wide eyes at the orange roof of the Howard Johnson's just up the road.

He had been in a trance, all right; he had walked more than five miles

without the slightest sense of time passing.

Carolyn's time, a voice deep inside his head muttered.

Yes, yes; Carolyn's time. She would be back in the apartment, counting

the minutes until she could have another Darvon Complex, and he was out

on the far side of the airport ... halfway to Newport, in fact, Ralph

looked up at the sky and for the first time really saw the bruise-purple

thunderheads which were stacking up over the airport.

They did not mean rain, not for sure, not yet, but if it did rain, he

was almost surely going to be caught in it; there was nowhere to shelter

between here and the little picnic area back by Runway 3, and there was

nothing there but a ratty little gazebo that always smelled faintly of

beer.

He took another look at the orange roof, then reached into his right

hand pocket and felt the little sheaf of bills held by the sliver

money-clip Carolyn had given him for his sixty-fifth. There was nothing

to prevent him walking up to Hojo's and calling a cab ...

except maybe for the thought of how the driver might look at him.

Stupid old man, the eyes in the rear-view mirror might say.

Stupid old man, walked a lot further than you shoulda on a hot day. If

you'd been swimming, you woulda drownded.

Paranoid, Ralph, the voice in his head told him, and now its clucky,

slightly Patronizing tone reminded him of Bill McGovern.

Well, maybe it was and maybe it wasn't. Either way, he thought he would

chance the rain and walk back.

What if it doesn't just rain ? Last summer it hailed so hard that one

time in August it broke windows all over the east side.

"Let it hail, then," he said. "I don't bruise that easy."

Ralph began to walk slowly back toward town along the shoulder of the

Extension, his old high-tops raising small, parched puffs of dust as he

went. He could hear the first rumbles of thunder in the west, where the

clouds were stacking up. The sun, although blotted out, was refusing to

quit without a fight; it edged the thunderheads with bands of brilliant

gold and shone through occasional rifts in the clouds like the

fragmented beam of some huge movie-projector. Ralph found himself

feeling glad he had decided to walk , in spite of the ache in his legs

and the steady nagging pain in the small of his back.

One thing, at least, he thought. I'll sleep tonight. I'll sleep like a

damn rock.

The verge of the airport-acres of dead brown grass with the rusty

railroad tracks sunk in them like the remains of some old wreckwas now

on his left. Far in the distance beyond the Cyclone fence he could see

the United 747, now the size of a child's toy plane, taxiing toward the

small terminal which United and Delta shared.

Ralph's gaze was caught by another vehicle, this one a car, leaving the

General Aviation terminal, which stood at this end of the airport.

It was heading across the tarmac toward the small service entrance which

gave on the Harris Avenue Extension. Ralph had watched a lot of

vehicles come and go through that entrance just lately; it was only

seventy yards or so from the picnic area where the Harris Avenue Old

Crocks gathered. As the car approached the gate, Ralph recognized it as

Ed and Helen Deepneau's Datsun . . . and it was really moving.

Ralph stopped on the shoulder, unaware that his hands had curled into

anxious fists as the small brown car bore down on the closed gate.

You needed a key-card to open the gate from the outside; from the inside

an electric-eye beam did the 'Oh. But the beam was set close to the

gate, very close, and at the speed the Datsun was going ...

At the last moment (or so it seemed to Ralph), the small brown car

scrunched to a stop, the tires sending up puffs of blue smoke that made

Ralph think of the 747 touching down, and the gate began to trundle

slowly open on its track. Ralph's fisted hands relaxed.

An arm emerged from the driver's-side window of the Datsun and began to

wave up and down, apparently haranguing the gate, urging it to hurry it

up. There was something so absurd about this that Ralph began to smile.

The smile died before it had exposed even a gleam of teeth, however. The

wind was still freshening from the west, where the thunderheads were,

and it carried the screaming voice of the Datsun's driver: "You son of a

bitch fucker.t You bastard Eat my cock Bur up HurrY up and lick shit,

you fucking asshole cuntlapper. Fuckling booger! Ratdick riingmeat

Suckhole."' "That can't be Ed Deepneau," Ralph murmured. He began to

walk again without realizing it. "Can't be."

Ed was a research chemist at the Hawking Laboratories research facility

in Fresh Harbor, one of the kindest, most civil young men galph had ever

met. Both he and Carolyn were very fond of Ed's wife, Helen, and their

new baby, Natalie, as well, A visit from Natalie was one of the few

things with the power to lift Carolyn out of her own life these days,

and, sensing this, Helen brought her over frequently.

Ed never complained. There were men, he knew, who wouldn't have cared

to have the missus running to the old folks down the street every time

the baby did some new and entrancing thing, especially when the

granny-figure in the picture was ill. Ralph had an idea that Ed

wouldn't be able to tell someone to go to hell without suffering a

sleepless night in consequence, but"You fuckting whoremaster! Move your

sour shit-caked ass, you hear me? Butt-fucker. Cunt-rammer.

But it sure sounded like Ed. Even from two or three hundred yards away,

it certainly sounded like him.

Now the driver of the Datsun was revving his engine like a kid in a

muscle-car waiting for the light to turn green. Clouds of exhaust smoke

farted up from the tailpipe. As soon as the gate had retracted enough

to allow the Datsun passage, the .

car leaped forward, squirting through the gap with its engine roaring,

and when it did, Ralph got a clear look at the driver. He was close

enough now for there to be no doubt: it was Ed, all right.

The Datsun bounced along the short unpaved stretch of lane between the

gate and the Harris Street Extension. A horn blared suddenly, and Ralph

saw a blue Ford Ranger, heading west on the Extension, swerve to avoid

the oncoming Datsun. The driver of the pickup saw the danger too late,

and Ed apparently never saw it at all (it was only later that Ralph came

to consider Ed might have rammed the Ranger on purpose).

There was a brief scream of tires followed by the hollow bang of the

Datsun's fender driving into the Ford's sidewall. The pickup was driven

halfway across the yellow line. The Datsun's hood crumpled, came

unlatched, and popped up a little; headlight glass tinkled into the

street. A moment later both vehicles were dead in the middle of the

road, tangled together like some weird sculpture.

Ralph stood where he was for the time being, watching as oil spread

beneath the Datsun's front end. He had seen several roadaccidents in

his almost-seventy years, most of them minor, one or two serious, and he

was always stunned by how quickly they happened and how little drama

there was. It wasn't like in the movies, where the camera could slow

things down, or on a video tape, where you could watch the car go off

the cliff again and again if you so chose; there was usually just a

series of converging blurs, followed by that quick and toneless

combination of sounds: the cry of the tires, the hollow bang of metal

crimping metal, the tinkle (of glass.

There was even a kind of protocol for this sort of thing: How Should

Behave When Involved in a Low-Speed Collision. Of course there was,

Ralph mused. There were probably a dozen two-bit collisions in Derry

every day, and maybe twice that number in the wintertime, when there was

snow and the roads got slippery. You got out, you met your opposite

number at the point where the two vehicles had come together (and where,

quite often, they were still entwined), you looked, you shook your

heads. Sometimes-often, actually-this phase of the encounter was marked

with angry words: fault was assigned (often rashly), driving skills

impugned, legal action threatened. Ralph supposed what the drivers were

really trying to say without coming right out and saying it was Listen,

fool, you scared the living hell out of me!

The final step in this unhappy little dance was The Exchange of the

Sacred Insurance Screeds, and it was at this point that the drivers

usually began to get control of their galloping emotions . . . always

assuming that no one had been hurt, as appeared to be the case here.

Sometimes the drivers involved even finished up by shaking hands.

Ralph prepared to watch all this from his vantage point less than a

hundred and fifty yards away, but as seen as the driver's door of the

Datsun opened he understood that things were going to go differently

here-that the accident was maybe not over but still happening. It

certainly did not seem that anyone was going to shake at the end of

these festivities.

The door did not swing open; it flew open. Ed Deepneau leaped out, then

simply stood stock-still beside his car, his slim shoulders squared

against a background of deepening clouds, He was wearing faded jeans and

a tee-shirt, and Ralph realized that before today he had never seen Ed

in a shirt that didn't button up the front. And there was something

around his neck: a long white something. A scarf? It looked like a

scarf, but why would anyone be wearing a scarf on a day as hot as this

one had been?

Ed stood beside his wounded car for a moment, seeming to look in every

direction but the right one. The fierce little pokes of his narrow head

reminded Ralph of the way roosters studied their barnyard turf, looking

for invaders and interlopers. Something about that similarity made

Ralph feel uneasy.

He had never seen Ed look like that before, and he supposed that was

part of it, but it wasn't all of way it. The truth of the matter was

simply this: he had never seen anyone look exactly like that.

Thunder rumbled in the west, louder now. And closer.

The man getting out of the Ranger would have made two of Ed Deepneau,

possibly three. His vast, deep belly hung over the rolled waistband of

his green chino workpants; there were sweatstains the size of

dinner-plates under the arms of his open-throated white shirt.

He tipped back the bill of the West Side Gardeners gimme-cap he was

wearing to get a better look at the man who had broadsided him.

His heavy-jowled face was dead pale except for bright patches of color

like rouge high on his cheekbones, and Ralph thought: There's a man

who's a prime candidate for a heart-attack. If I was closer I bet I'd

be able to see the creases in his earlobes.

"Hey!" the heavyset guy yelled at Ed. The voice coming out of that

broad chest and deep gut was absurdly thin, almost reedy.

"Where'd you get your license? Fuckin Sears n Roebuck?"

Ed's wandering, jabbing head swung immediately toward the sound of the

big man's voice-seemed almost to home in, like a jet guided by radar-and

Ralph got his first good look at Ed's eyes. He felt a bolt of alarm

light up in his chest and suddenly began to run toward the accident. Ed,

meanwhile, had started toward the man in the sweat-soaked white shirt

and gimme-cap. He was walking in a stiff-legged, high-shouldered strut

that was nothing at all like his usual easygoing amble.

"Ed!" 'Ralph shouted, but the freshening breeze-cold now with the

promise of rain-seemed to snatch the words away before they could even

get out of his mouth. Certainly Ed never turned.

Ralph made himself run faster, the ache in his legs and the throbbing in

the small of his back forgotten. It was murder he had seen in Ed

Deepneau's wide, unblinking eyes. He had absolutely no previous

experience upon which to base such an assessment, but he didn't think

you could mistake such a naked glare; it was the look fighting cocks

must wear when they launch themselves at each other, spurs up and

slashing. "Ed! Hey, Ed, hold up! it's Ralph!"

Not so much as a glance around, although Ralph was now so close that Ed

must have heard, wind or no wind. Certainly the heavyset man glanced

around, and Ralph could see both fear and uncertainty in his look. Then

Heavyset turned back to Ed and raised his hands placatingly.

"Look," he said. "We can talk-"

That was as far as he got. Ed took another quick step forward, reached

up with one slim hand-it was very white in the rapidly darkening day-and

slapped Heavyset across his far from inconsiderable jowls. The sound

was like the report of a kid's air rifle.

"How many have you killed?" Ed asked.

Heavyset pressed back against the side of his pickup, his mouth open,

his eyes wide. Ed's queer, stif strut never la tered. He walked into

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