Insomnia by Stephen King Read Free Book Online

morning. ‘It’s got to be hazardous to your health. Worse, you look like a lunatic.’
    ‘Maybe I am a lunatic,’ Ralph responded shortly, and either his tone or the look in his eyes must have been convincing, because McGovern changed the subject.
    2
    He did begin walking again – nothing like the Marathons of ’92, but he managed two miles a day if it wasn’t raining. His usual route took him down the perversely named Up-Mile Hill, to the Derry Public Library, and then on to Back Pages, a used bookstore and newsstand on the corner of Witcham and Main.
    Back Pages stood next to a jumbled junkatorium called Secondhand Rose, Secondhand Clothes, and as he passed this store one day during the August of his discontent, Ralph saw a new poster among the announcements of outdated bean suppers and ancient church socials, placed so it covered roughly half of a yellowing PAT BUCHANAN FOR PRESIDENT placard.
    The woman in the two photographs at the top of the poster was a pretty blonde in her late thirties or early forties, but the style of the photos – unsmiling full face on the left, unsmiling profile on the right, plain white background in both – was unsettling enough to stop Ralph in his tracks. The photos made the woman look as if she belonged on a post office wall or in a TV docudrama . . . and that, the poster’s printed matter made clear, was no accident.
    The photos were what stopped him, but it was the woman’s name that held him.

    WANTED FOR MURDER
SUSAN EDWINA DAY

    was printed across the top in big black letters. And below the simulated mug-shots, in red:

    STAY OUT OF OUR CITY!

    There was a small line of print at the very bottom of the poster. Ralph’s close vision had deteriorated quite a bit since Carolyn’s death – gone to hell in a handbasket might actually have been a more accurate way of putting it – and he had to lean forward until his brow was pressed against the dirty show window of Secondhand Rose, Secondhand Clothes before he could decipher it:

    Paid for by the Maine LifeWatch Committee

    Far down in his mind a voice whispered: Hey, hey, Susan Day! How many kids did you kill today?
    Susan Day, Ralph recalled, was a political activist from either New York or Washington, the sort of fast-speaking woman who regularly drove taxi-drivers, barbers, and hardhat construction workers into foaming frenzies. Why that particular little jangle of doggerel had come into his mind, however, he couldn’t say; it was tagged to some memory that wouldn’t quite come. Maybe his tired old brains were just cross-referencing that sixties Vietnam protest chant, the one which had gone Hey, hey, LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?
    No, that’s not it, he thought. Close, but no cigar. It was —
    Just before his mind could cough up Ed Deepneau’s name and face, a voice spoke from almost beside him. ‘Earth to Ralph, earth to Ralph, come in, Ralphie-baby!’
    Roused out of his thoughts, Ralph turned toward the voice. He was both shocked and amused to find he had almost been asleep on his feet. Christ, he thought, you never know how important sleep is until you miss a little. Then all the floors start to tilt and all the corners on things start to round off .
    It was Hamilton Davenport, the proprietor of Back Pages, who had spoken to him. He was stocking the library cart he kept in front of his shop with brightly jacketed paperbacks. His old corncob pipe – to Ralph it always looked like the stack of a model steamship – jutted from the corner of his mouth, sending little puffs of blue smoke into the hot, bright air. Winston Smith, his old gray tomcat, sat in the open doorway of the shop with his tail curled around his paws. He looked at Ralph with yellow-eyed indifference, as if to say, You think you know old, my friend? I’m here to testify you don’t know dick about getting old .
    ‘Sheesh, Ralph,’ Davenport said. ‘I must have called your name at least three times.’
    ‘I guess I was