Salem’s Lot (21 page)

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered three fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.
Wallace Stevens

This column has
A hole. Can you see
The Queen of the Dead?
George Seferis

BEN (III)

1

The kicking must have been going on for a long time, because it seemed to echo far down the avenues of sleep as he slowly struggled up to wakefulness. It was dark outside, but when he turned to grasp the clock and bring it to his face, he knocked it onto the floor. He felt disoriented and frightened.

‘Who is it?’ he called out.

‘It’s Eva, Mr Mears. There’s a phone call for you.’

He got up, pulled on his pants, and opened the door bare-chested. Eva Miller was in a white terry-cloth robe, and her face was full of the slow vulnerability of a person still two-fifths asleep. They looked at each other nakedly, and he was thinking:
Who’s sick? Who’s died?

‘Long-distance?’

‘No, it’s Matthew Burke.’

The knowledge did not relieve him as it should have done. ‘What time is it?’

‘Just after four. Mr Burke sounds very-upset.

Ben went downstairs and picked the phone up. ‘This is Ben, Matt.’

Matt was breathing rapidly into the phone, the sound of his respiration coming in harsh little blurts. ‘Can you come, Ben? Right now?’

‘Yes, all right. What’s the matter? Are you sick?’

‘Not on the phone. Just come.’

‘Ten minutes.’

‘Ben?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you got a crucifix? A St Christopher’s medallion? Anything like that?’

‘Hell no. I’m- was-a Baptist.’

‘All right. Come fast.’

Ben hung up and went back upstairs quickly. Eva was standing with one hand on the newel post, her face filled with worry and indecision-on one hand wanting to know, on the other, not wanting to mix in the tenant’s business.

‘Is Mr Burke sick, Mr Mears?’

‘He says not. He just asked me… say, you aren’t Catholic?’

‘My husband was.’

‘Do you have a crucifix or a rosary or a St Christopher’s medallion?’

‘Well… my husband’s crucifix is in the bedroom… I could… ’

‘Yes, would you?’

She went up the hall, her furry slippers scuffing at the faded strip of carpet. Ben went into his room, pulled on yesterday’s shirt, and slipped his bare feet into a pair of loafers. When he came out again, Eva was standing by his door, holding the crucifix. It caught the light and threw back dim silver.

‘Thank you,’ he said, taking it.

‘Did Mr Burke ask you for this?’

‘Yes, he did.’

She was frowning, more awake now. ‘He’s not Catholic. I don’t believe he goes to church.’

‘He didn’t explain to me.’

‘Oh.’ She nodded in a charade of understanding and gave him the crucifix. ‘Please be careful of it. It has great value for me.’

‘I understand that. I will.’

‘I hope Mr Burke is all right. He’s a fine man.’

He went downstairs and out onto the porch. He could not hold the crucifix and dig for his car keys at the same time, and instead of simply transferring it from his right hand to his left, he slipped it over his neck. The silver slipped comfortably against his shirt, and getting into the car he was hardly aware that he felt comforted.

2

Every window on the lower floor of Matt’s house was lit up, and when Ben’s headlights splashed across the front as he turned into the driveway, Matt opened the door and waited for him.

He came up the walk ready for almost anything, but Matt’s face was still a shock. It was deadly pale, and the mouth was trembling. His eyes were wide, and they didn’t seem to blink.

‘Let’s go in the kitchen,’ he said.

Ben came in, and as he stepped inside, the half light caught the cross lying against his chest.

‘You brought one.’

‘It belongs to Eva Miller. What’s the matter?’

Matt repeated: ‘In the kitchen.’ As they passed the stairs leading to the second floor, he glanced upward and seemed to flinch away at the same time.

The kitchen table where they had eaten spaghetti was bare now except for three items, two of them peculiar: a cup of coffee, an old-fashioned clasp Bible, and a.38 revolver.

‘Now, what’s up, Matt? You look awful.’

‘And maybe I dreamed the whole thing, but thank God you’re here.’ He had picked up the revolver and was turning it over restively in his hands.

‘Tell me. And stop playing with that thing. Is it loaded?’ Matt put the pistol down and ran a hand through his hair. ‘Yes, it’s loaded. Although I don’t think it would do any good… unless I used it on myself.’ He laughed, a jagged, unhealthy sound like grinding glass.

‘Stop that.’

The harshness in his voice broke the queer, fixed look in his eyes. He shook his head, not like a man propounding a negative, but the way some animals will shake themselves coming out of cold water.

‘There’s a dead man upstairs,’ he said.

‘Who?’

‘Mike Ryerson. He works for the town. He’s a grounds keeper.’

‘Are you sure he’s dead?’

‘I am in my guts, even though I haven’t looked in on him. I haven’t dared. Because, in another way, he may not be dead at all.’

‘Matt, you’re not talking good sense.’

‘Don’t you think I know that? I’m talking nonsense and I’m thinking madness. But there was no one to call but you. In all of ‘salem’s Lot, you’re the only person that might… might…’ He shook his head and began again. ‘We talked about Danny Glick.’

‘Yes.’

‘And how he might have died of pernicious anemia… what our grandfathers would have called "just wasting away."‘

‘Yes.’

‘Mike buried him. And Mike found Win Purinton’s dog impaled on the Harmony Hill Cemetery gates. I met Mike Ryerson in Dell’s last night, and-’

3

‘-and I couldn’t go in,’ he finished. Couldn’t. I sat on my bed for nearly four hours. Then I crept downstairs like a thief and called you. What do you think?’

Ben had taken the crucifix off; now he poked at the glimmering heap of fine-link chain with a reflective finger. It was almost five o’clock and the eastern sky was rose with dawn. The fluorescent bar overhead had gone pallid.

‘I think we’d better go up to your guest room and look. That’s all, I think, right now.’

‘The whole thing seems like a madman’s nightmare now, with the light coming in the window.’ He laughed shakily. ‘I hope it is. I hope Mike is sleeping like a baby.’

‘Well, let’s go see.’

Matt firmed his lips with an effort. ‘Okay.’ He dropped his eyes to the table and then looked at Ben questioningly.

‘Sure,’ Ben said, and slipped the crucifix over Matt’s neck.

‘It actually does make me feel better.’ He laughed self-consciously. ‘Do you suppose they’ll let me wear it when they cart me off to Augusta?’

Ben said, ‘Do you want the gun?’

‘No, I guess not. I’d stick it in the top of my pants and blow my balls off.’

They went upstairs, Ben in the lead. There was a short hall at the top, running both ways. At one end, the door to Matt’s bedroom stood open, a pale sheaf of lamplight spilling out onto the orange runner.

‘Down at the other end,’ Matt said

Ben walked down the hall and stood in front of the guest room door. He did not believe the monstrosity Matt had implied, but nonetheless he found himself engulfed by a wave of the blackest fright he had ever known.

You open the door and he’s hanging from the beam, the face swelled and puffed and black, and then the eyes open and they’re bulging in the sockets but they’re SEEING you and they’re glad you came -

The memory rose up in -almost total sensory reference, and for the moment of its totality he was paralyzed. He could even smell the plaster and the wild odor of nesting animals. It seemed to him that the plain varnished wood door of Matt Burke’s guest room stood between him and all the secrets of hell.

Then he twisted the knob and pushed the door inward. Matt was at his shoulder, and he was holding Eva’s crucifix tightly.

The guest room window faced directly east, and the top arc of the sun had just cleared the horizon. The first pellucid rays shone directly through the window, isolating a few golden motes as it fell in a shaft to the white linen sheet that was pulled up to Mike Ryerson’s chest.

Ben looked at Matt and nodded. ‘He’s all right,’ he whispered. ‘Sleeping.’

Matt said tonelessly, ‘The window’s open. It was closed and locked. I made sure of it.’

Ben’s eyes centered on the upper hem of the flawlessly laundered sheet that covered Mike. There was a single small drop of blood on it, dried to maroon.

‘I don’t think he’s breathing,’ Matt said.

Ben took two steps forward and then stopped. ‘Mike? Mike Ryerson. Wake up, Mike!’

No response. Mike’s lashes lay cleanly against his cheeks. His hair was tousled loosely across his brow, and Ben thought that in the first delicate light he was more than handsome; he was as beautiful as the profile, of a Greek statue. Light color bloomed in his cheeks, and his body held none of the deathly pallor Matt had mentioned-only healthy skin tones.

‘Of course he’s breathing,’ he said a trifle impatiently. ‘Just fast asleep. Mike-’ He stretched out a hand and shook Ryerson slightly. Mike’s left arm, which had been crossed loosely on his chest, fell limply over the side of the bed and the knuckles rapped on the floor, like a request for entry.

Matt stepped forward and picked up the limp arm. He pressed his index finger over the wrist. ‘No pulse.’

He started to drop it, remembered the grisly knocking noise the knuckles had made, and put the arm across Ryerson’s chest. It started to fall anyway, and he put it back more firmly with a grimace.

Ben couldn’t believe it. He was sleeping, had to be. The good color, the obvious suppleness of the muscles, the lips half parted as if to draw breath… unreality washed over him. He placed his wrist against Ryerson’s shoulder and found the skin cool.

He moistened his finger and held it in front of those half-open lips. Nothing. Not a feather of breath.

He and Matt looked at each other.

‘The marks on the neck?’ Matt asked.

Ben took Ryerson’s jaw in: his hands and turned it gently until the exposed cheek lay against the pillow. The movement dislodged the left arm, and the knuckles rapped the floor again.

There were no marks on Mike Ryerson’s neck.

4

They were at the kitchen table again. It was 5:35 A.M. They could hear the lowing of the Griffen cows as they were let into their east pasturage down the hill and beyond the belt of shrubbery and underbrush that screened Taggart Stream from view.

‘According to folklore, the marks disappear,’ Matt said suddenly. ‘When the victim dies, the marks disappear.’

‘I know that,’ Ben said. He remembered it both from Stoker’s
Dracula
and from the Hammer films starring Christopher Lee.

‘We have to put an ash stake through his heart.’

‘You better think again,’ Ben said, and sipped his coffee. That would be damned hard to explain to a coroner’s jury. You’d go to jail for desecrating a corpse at the very least. More likely to the funny farm.’

‘Do you think I’m crazy?’ Matt asked quietly.

With no discernible hesitation, Ben said, ‘No.’

‘Do you believe me about the marks?’

‘I don’t know. I guess I have to. Why would you lie to me? I can’t see any gain for you in a lie. I suppose you’d lie if you had killed him.’

‘Perhaps I did, then,’ Matt said, watching him.

‘There are three things going against it. First, what’s your motive? Pardon me, Matt, but you’re just too old for the classic ones like jealousy and money to fit very well. Second, what was your method? If it was poison, he must have gone very easily. He certainly looks peaceful enough. And that eliminates most of the common poisons right there.’

‘What’s your third reason?’

‘No murderer in his right mind would invent a story like yours to cover up murder. It would be insane.’

‘We keep coming back to my mental health,’ Matt said. He sighed. ‘I knew we would.’

‘I don’t think you’re crazy,’ Ben said, accenting the first word slightly. ‘You seem rational enough.’

‘But you’re not a doctor, are you?’ Matt asked. ‘And crazy people are sometimes able to counterfeit sanity remarkably well.’

Ben agreed. ‘So where does that put us?’

‘Back to square one.’

‘No. Neither one of us can afford that, because there’s a dead man upstairs and pretty soon he’s going to have to be explained. The constable is going to want to know what happened, and so is the medical examiner, and so is the county sheriff. Matt, could it be that Mike Ryerson was just sick with some virus all week and happened to drop dead in your house?’

For the first time since they had come back down, Matt showed signs of agitation. ‘Ben, I told you what he said! I saw the marks on his neck! And I heard him invite someone into my house! Then I heard… God, I heard that laugh!’ His eyes had taken on that peculiar blank look again.

‘All right,’ Ben said. He got up and went to the window,’ trying to set his thoughts in order. They didn’t go well. As he had told Susan, things seemed to have a way of getting out of hand.

He was looking toward the Marsten House.

‘Matt, do you know what’s going to happen to you if you even let out a whisper of what you’ve told me?’ Matt didn’t answer.

‘People are going to start tapping their foreheads behind your back when you go by in the street. Little kids are going to get out their Halloween wax teeth when they see you coming and jump out and yell
Boo!
when you walk by their hedge. Somebody will invent a rhyme like
One, two, three, four, I’m gonna suck your blood some more
. The high school kids will pick it up and you’ll hear it in the halls when you pass. Your colleagues will begin looking at you strangely. There’s apt to be anonymous phone calls from people purporting to be Danny Glick or Mike Ryerson. They’ll turn your life into a nightmare. They’ll hound you out of town in six months.’

‘They wouldn’t. They know me.’

Ben turned from the window. ‘Who do they know? A funny old duck who lives alone out on Taggart Stream Road. Just the fact that you’re not married is apt to make them believe you’ve got a screw loose anyway. And what backup can I give you? I saw the body but nothing else. Even if I had, they would just say I was an outsider. They would even get around to telling each other we were a couple of queers and, this was the way we got our kicks.’

Matt was looking at him with slowly dawning horror.

‘One word, Matt. That’s all it will take to finish you in salem’s Lot.’

‘So there’s nothing to be done.’

‘Yes, there is. You have a certain theory about who-or what-killed Mike Ryerson. The theory is relatively simple to prove or disprove, I think. I’m in a hell of a fix. I can’t believe you’re crazy, but I can’t believe that Danny Glick came back from the dead and sucked Mike Ryerson’s blood for a whole week before killing him, either. But I’m going to put the idea to the test. And you’ve got to help.’

‘How?’

‘Call your doctor, Cody is his name? Then call Parkins Gillespie. Let the machinery take over. Tell your story just as though you I d never heard a thing in the night. You went into Dell’s and sat down with Mike. He said he’d been feeling sick since last Sunday. You invited him home with you. You went in to check him around three-thirty this morning, couldn’t wake him, and called me.’

‘That’s all?’

‘That’s it. When you speak to Cody, don’t even say he’s dead.’

‘Not dead-’

‘Christ, how do we know he
is
?’ Ben exploded. ‘You took his pulse and couldn’t find it; I tried to find his breath and couldn’t do it. If I thought someone was going to shove me into my grave on that basis, I’d damn well pack a lunch. Especially if I looked as lifelike as he does.’

‘That bothers you as much as it does me, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, it bothers me,’ Ben admitted. ‘He looks like a goddamn waxwork.’

‘All right,’ Matt said. ‘You’re talking sense… as much as anyone can in a business like this. I guess I sounded nuts, at that.’

Ben started to deprecate, but Matt waved it off. ‘But suppose… just hypothetically… that my first suspicion is right? Would you want even the remotest possibility in the back of your mind? The possibility that Mike might… come back?’

‘As I said, that theory is easy enough to prove or disprove. And it isn’t what bothers me about all this.’

‘What is?’

‘Just a minute. First things first. Proving or disproving it ought to be no more than an exercise in logic-ruling out possibilities. First possibility: Mike died of some disease a virus or something. How do you confirm that or rule it out?’

Matt shrugged. ‘Medical examination, I suppose.’

‘Exactly. And the same method to confirm or rule out foul play. If somebody poisoned him or shot him or got him to eat a piece of fudge with a bundle of wires in it-’

‘Murder has gone undetected before.’

‘Sure it has. But I’ll bet on the medical examiner.’

‘And if the medical examiner’s verdict is "unknown cause"?’

‘Then,’ Ben said deliberately, ‘we can visit the grave after the funeral and see if he rises. If he does-which I can’t conceive of-we’ll know. If he doesn’t, we’re faced with the thing that bothers me.’

‘The fact of my insanity,’ Matt said slowly. ‘Ben, I swear on my mother’s name that those marks were there, that I heard the window go up, that-’

‘I believe you,’ Ben said quietly.

Matt stopped. His expression was that of a man who has braced himself for a crash that never came.

‘You do?’ he said uncertainly.

‘To put it another way, I refuse to believe that you’re crazy or had a hallucination. I had an experience once… an experience that had to do with that damned house on the hill… that makes me extremely sympathetic to people whose stories seem utterly insane in light of rational knowledge. I’ll tell you about that, one day.’

‘Why not now?’

‘There’s no time. You have those calls to make. And I have one more question. Think about it carefully. Do you have any enemies?’

‘No one who qualifies for something like this.’

‘An ex-student, maybe? One with a grudge?’

Matt, who knew exactly to what extent he influenced the lives of his students, laughed politely.

‘Okay,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t like it. First that dog shows up on the cemetery gates. Then Ralphie Glick disappears, his brother dies, and Mike Ryerson. Maybe they all tie in somehow. But this… I can’t believe it.’

‘I better call Cody’s home,’ Matt said, getting up. ‘Parkins will be at home.’

‘Call in sick at school, too.’

‘Right.’ Matt laughed without force. ‘It will be my first sick day in three years. A real occasion.’

He went into the living room and began to make his calls, waiting at the end of each number sequence for the bell to prod sleepers awake. Cody’s wife apparently referred him to Cumberland Receiving, for he dialed another number, asked for Cody, and went into his story after a short wait.

He hung up and called into the kitchen: ‘Jimmy will be here in an hour.’

‘Good,’ Ben said. ‘I’m going upstairs.’

‘Don’t touch anything.’

‘No.’

By the time he reached the second-floor landing he could hear Matt on the phone to Parkins Gillespie, answering questions. The words melted into a background murmur as he went down the hall.

That feeling of half-remembered, half-imagined terror washed over him again as he contemplated the door to the guest room. In his mind’s eye he could see himself stepping forward, pushing it open. The room looks larger, seen from a child’s eye view. The body lies as they left it, left arm dangling to the floor, left cheek pressed against the pillow which still shows the fold lines from the linen closet. The eyes suddenly open, and they are filled with blank, animalistic triumph. The door slams shut. The left arm comes up, the hand hooked into a claw, and the lips twist into a vulpine smile that shows incisors grown wondrously long and sharp -

He stepped forward and pushed the door with tented fingers. The lower hinges squeaked slightly.

The body lay as they had left it, left arm fallen, left cheek pressed against the pillowcase -

‘Parkins is coming,’ Matt said from the hallway behind him, and Ben nearly screamed.