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| “ | I don't want them to laugh, Davey; I want them to cry. | „ |
| ~ Ardelia Lortz expressing her sadism to Dave Duncan. |
| “ | You can't! You can't hurt me! You're afraid of me! Besides, you liked it! YOU LIKED it! YOU DIRTY LITTLE BOY, YOU LIKED IT! | „ |
| ~ Ardelia mentally abusing Sam Peebles by reminding him of his rape. |
| “ | According to the poll, last summer's favorite movie among the children was A Nightmare on Elm Street, Part 5. Their favorite rock group is called Guns N' Roses - the runner-up was something named Ozzy Osbourne, who, I understand, has a reputation for biting the heads off live animals during his concerts. Their favorite novel was a paperback original called Swan Song. It's a horror novel by a man named Robert McCammon. We can't keep it in stock, Sam. They read each new copy to rags in weeks. I had a copy put in Vinabind, but of course it was stolen. By one of the bad children. Runner-up was a horror novel about incest and infanticide called Flowers in the Attic. That one was the champ for five years running. Several of them even mentioned Peyton Place! I myself have never seen any of the Nighmare on Elm Street movies. I have never heard an Ozzy Osbourne record and have no desire to do so, nor to read a novel by Robert McCammon, Stephen King, or V. C. Andrews. Do you see what I'm getting at, Sam? | „ |
| ~ Ardelia hypocritical rant towards Sam. |
Ardelia Lortz, also known as The Library Policeman and briefly as Naomi Sarah Higgins, is the titular main antagonist of Stephen King's novella The Library Policeman, a part of Four Past Midnight anthology.
She is a sadistic, human-possessing demon targeting mosty children under her care, while working as a librarian. Travelling through the world for years, she eventually came to Junction City, where she killed two children and emotionally scarred numerous others. She eventually starts hunting the story's main protagonist Sam Peebles.
Biography[]
The creature currently known as Ardelia Lortz is unknown; however, it killed and possessed the real Ardelia Lortz in the past, and came to Junction City, USA in 1960s. Quickly becoming popular among the townsfolk, Ardelia started working at a local library under Mr. Lavin. She also seduced a young man named Dave Duncan. Soon, Ardelia started to emotionally abuse children under her care with scary fairy tales and brutal posters painted by Dave. After Lavin expressed disgust with this, she murdered him and took over his position as a head librarian, continuing to abuse children.
Some time has passed and Ardelia decided to kill some children and go into hybernation with Dave. She murdered Patsy Harrigan and Tom Gibson and told Dave to kill Tansy Power. However, Dave alarmed Tansy's father, deputy John Power, who came into the library to stop her. Ardelia killed him and went into hybernation, leaving Dave broken and traumatized.
Thirty years later, Ardelia appeared again to Sam Peebles, who came into the library in search of books that would improve his speech at the Rotary Club. Ardelia gave them to him, but the books were accidentally destroyed, enabling Ardelia to go after Sam - she wanted to possess him and use him as her new host. She even came into his house a The Library Policeman - the man who raped Sam when he was a child.
However, Sam decided to stop Ardelia with Dave and a his friend, Naomi Sarah Higgins. They attacked her at a library and fought with her. Ardelia killed Dave, but her body was destroyed by Sam. However, she managed to possess Naomi, altough not fully at first. Several day later, Sam found out about this and managed to defeat Ardelia - now in a form of lump of flesh - by putting her on a railroad tracks, where she was run over by a train, finally killing her.
Legacy[]
| “ | A lot of the kids who used to come to Ardelia's Story Hours are in AA around these parts, Sarah - make of it what you will. | „ |
| ~ Dave revealing the influence of Ardelia on children. |
Ardelia's abuse towards children greatly influenced the town. Dave Duncan, Willy Klemmart and Tansy Ryan (nee Power) all developed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and became alcoholics. Even after 30 years, Ardelia's actions in Junction City were still a subject of taboo and shame.
Appearance[]
| “ | She had the biggest eyes you've ever seen. I guess most people would have called them gray, but when she looked right at you, hard, you would have sworn they were silver. And she looked at me hard that day after church. She was wearin some kind of perfume that I never smelled before and ain't never smelled since. Lavender, I think. I can't think how to describe it, but I know it always made me think of little white flowers that only bloom after the sun has gone down. And I was smitten. Right there and then. | „ |
| ~ Dave Duncan describing Ardelia's appearance. |
In her youth, Ardelia was a beautiful, pale woman with ash-blonde hair. She had big, silver eyes.
In her old librarian persona, Ardelia is described as "a plump, white-haired woman of about fifty-five [...]. Her white hair fell around her pleasant, unlined face in neat beauty-shop curls."
| “ | It had blonde hair and blue eyes, but any resemblance to humanity ceased there. Its illusions were gone. The creature was a fat, naked thing with arms and legs that appeared to end in jointed claws. A sac of flesh hung below its neck like a deflated goiter. Thin white fibers stormed around its body. There was something horridly beetlelike about it, and Sam was suddenly screaming inside - silent, atavistic screams which seemed to radiate out along his bones. | „ |
In her true form Ardelia was a fat insectoid creature with long proboscis which she used to drink children's fear in a form of tears.
Personality[]
| “ | Ardelia caught on with the home folks right away. These days, when the folks from that church talk about her - if they ever do - I bet they say things like "I knew from the very start there was somethin funny about that Lortz woman" or "I never trusted the look in that woman's eye," but let me tell you, that wasn't how it was. They buzzed around her - the women as well as the men - like bees around the first flower of spring. She got a job as Mr Lavin's assistant before she was in town a month, but she was teachin the little ones at the Sunday School out there in Proverbia two weeks before that. Just what she was teachin em I don't like to think - you can bet your bottom dollar it wasn't the Gospel According to Matthew - but she was teachin em. And everyone swore on how much the little ones loved her. They swore on it, too, but there was a look in their eyes when they said so ... a far-off look, like they wasn't really sure where they were, or even who they were. | „ |
| ~ Dave Duncan describing Ardelia's charisma and influence. |
Ardelia Lortz was a cruel, sadistic person, taking pleasure in psychologically abusing children and feeding on their fear. She was a sexual deviant - her relationship with Dave was characterized by an extreme amounts of sex and nymphomany - and Dave also compared her feeding on children to sexual abuse. During her fight with Sam Peebles, she showed her pragmatic side, taking form of the man who raped him as a child to torment and possess him.
Ardelia was good at hiding her homicidal tendencies; when she first appeared in Junction City, she immediately gained everyone's trust, quickly becoming one of the most estimated members of the community. She pretended to be pious and regularly attended church meetings.
In her old librarian's persona, she seemingly acted polite and kindly. However, when Sam criticized her posters, she quickly showed her arrogant and haughty attitude, which Sam described as her feeling as someone better than him.
Altough Dave mentions that Ardelia liked being around him because it didn't make her lonely, he made clear that she didn't love him and only view him as a toy, evidenced when she killed him.
Powers and abilities[]
| “ | All those old stories about vampires sinking their teeth into people's throats and drinkin their blood are wrong. Not by much, but in this business, close is not good enough. They drink, but not from the neck; they grow fat and healthy on what they take from their victims, but what they take isn't blood. Maybe the stuff they take is redder, bloodier, when the victims are grownups. Maybe she took it from Mr Lavin. I think she did. But it's not blood. It's fear. | „ |
| ~ Dave Duncan about Ardelia's abilities. |
- Shapeshifting: Ardelia was able of taking forms of different people, including a beautiful young woman, an older librarian and the man who raped Sam as a child.
- Fear-feeding: Ardelia's main ability was to feed on children's fear after inducing it in them. The fear took form of a liquid similar to tears coming from their eyes.
- Possession: Ardelia often changed bodies - her primary one was Ardelia Lortz, but she also possessed Naomi Sarah Higgins and tried to do the same thing to Sam.
- Spacial manipulation: Ardelia showed that she had the ability to cast illusions and transform space - the library to be specific, shifting from its look in the 1960s to its modern look.
Weaknessess[]
- Fine: Ardelia used the books Sam didn't return to the library as an excuse to haunt him. However, after he paid the fine, she lost most of the influence she had on him.
Symbolism and meaning[]
Like another Stephen King villain, It, Ardelia represents fear, trauma and child abuse. As she feeds on fear, she takes form of whatever a person is scared; confronting her and paying the fine (i.e. accepting the trauma and fighting it) weakens her. King said about her:
| “ | I found myself musing on the Library Police over the next three or four days, and as I mused, I began to glimpse the outlines of the story which follows. This is the way stories usually happen for me, but the musing period usually lasts a lot longer than it did in this case. When I began, the story was titled 'The Library Police,' and I had no clear idea of where I was going with it. I thought it would probably be a funny story, sort of like the suburban nightmares the late Max Shulman used to bolt together. After all, the idea was funny, wasn't it? I mean, the Library Police! How absurd! What I realized, however, was something I knew already: the fears of childhood have a hideous persistence. Writing is an act of self-hypnosis, and in that state a kind of total emotional recall often takes place and terrors which should have been long dead start to walk and talk again. As I worked on this story, that began to happen to me. I knew, going in, that I had loved the library as a kid - why not? It was the only place a relatively poor kid like me could get all the books he wanted - but as I continued to write, I became reacquainted with a deeper truth: I had also feared it. I feared becoming lost in the dark stacks, I feared being forgotten in a dark corner of the reading room and ending up locked in for the night, I feared the old librarian with the blue hair and the cat's-eye glasses and the almost lipless mouth who would pinch the backs of your hands with her long, pale fingers and hiss 'Shhhh!' if you forgot where you were and started to talk too loud. And yes, I feared the Library Police. | „ |
Ardelia's old library persona and her hypocritical rant at Sam about children's taste in entertainment is also a criticism of older conservatives and moral guardians, controlling passions of children and preventing them from experimenting with fiction.
Quotes[]
| “ | Silence! | „ |
| ~ Famous one word displayed in the library, showing Ardelia's stern side. |
| “ | Leave me alone! Leave me alone, you bastard! | „ |
| ~ Ardelia's last words to Sam. |
Victims[]
- The real Ardelia Lortz
- Mr. Lavin
- Patsy Harrigan
- Tom Gibson
- John Power
- Dave Duncan
Image gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Ardelia is similar in her characteristic to It from It and Perse from Duma Key: all three are female monsters targeting children and waking up after the same number of years. Ardelia and It are both shapeshifters whose true form is similar to an insect/arachnid.
- The key difference, however, is that Ardelia moves from town to town, while It and Perse stay in the same place (Derry and Duma Key, perspectively).
- Despite being not well-known, Ardelia is often considered one of the darkest villains Stephen King ever created, sometimes being compared with It and Randall Flagg.
- Stephen King came up with an idea for Ardelia after his son Owen reminded him of a concept of Library Police from his childhood - fantastic creatures that targeted people who didn't return books to the library on time. King started to wonder what would happen if the borrowed books were somehow lost or destroyed and what the Police do in that situation.
- King admitted that he himself was scared when he created the character of Ardelia. He said: "Eventually I found the guy I was looking for, and managed to raise my head enough to look into his merciless silver eyes. I have tried to bring back a sketch of him for you, Constant Reader, but it may not be very good. My hands were trembling quite badly when I made it, you see."
