Four Past Midnight (247-323)

Summary:

 A man named John Shooter shows up at Mort Rainey's doorstep. "You stole my story." he says. Mort, a writer, is confused about this accusation, Mort didn't even know what this guy in a black hat was talking about. Mort decided to close the door, and waited for the crazy man to leave. After a couple of minutes the man got into his car and left. Mort opens his door and sees that the man left a wad of paper with a rock on top of it, so the pages would not fly away. Mort takes the rock off and picks the stack of paper up. He sees that the front cover says "John Shooter - Secret Window, Secret Garden." He reads the first page and then realizes it's  almost an exact replica of his story "Sowing Season." the only difference was the title. The phone ring, it's his ex-wife, Amy, calling to make sure he was alright. Amy and Mort were divorced. After he gets off the phone with Amy he goes back to thinking what he's going to do about Shooter. He decides to take a walk. After a couple minutes of walking in the woods he sees John Shooter and his car, nervous, he approaches him. Shooter wants to know why Mort would steal a story from a man from all the way in Mississippi, and more importantly how. Mort decides to tell him that he wrote his story in 1980, whereas Shooter claimed to have written in 1983. Shooter wants proof, and Mort tells him that he has a magazine that has the story that was published in 1980 and that he would show Shooter. Shooter gives him three days to prove himself or everyone he loves will die. Mort isn't afraid of his threats and walks home and takes a nap. When he wakes up from his nap he sees his cat, Bump, killed with a screwdriver driven through his head. Shooter had killed Bump and left a note that said "You have 3 days." 

Quote: 

"As he spoke, the face of John Shooter floated into his consciousness with increasing clarity like the face of a spirit swimming up to the curved side of a medium's crystal ball." (King 303)

Reaction:

This quote is a simile, it describes the clarity like a face appearing in a crystal  ball. This shows how much Mort thought of  Shooter and how scared he was of him. Mort didn't know what to do about Shooter or who to tell. He was afraid of people dying around him, he did not want to be alone. It also shows that he could see Shooter in a very could clarity, like he could describe him very well to people, if he wanted to. Overall, this quote seems to show Morts fear of Shooter and the way he could always picture the way Shooter looked in his mind.