'Salem's Lot

3

Lawrence Crockett was sitting in his office on the morning of the twenty-second, pretending to read his Monday cor?respondence and keeping an eye on his secretary's jahoob?ies, when the telephone rang. He had been thinking about his business career in 'salem's Lot, about that small, twink?ling car in the Marsten House driveway, and about deals with the devil.

Even before the deal with Straker had been consum?mated (that's some word, all right, he thought, and his eyes crawled over the front of his secretary's blouse), Lawrence Crockett was, without doubt, the richest man in 'salem's Lot and one of the richest in Cumberland County, although there was nothing about his office or his person to indicate it. The office was old, dusty, and lighted by two fly-specked yellow globes. The desk was an ancient roll-top, littered with papers, pens, and correspondence. A gluepot stood on one side of it and on the other was a square glass paperweight that showed pictures of his family on its different faces. Poised perilously on top of a stack of ledgers was a glass fish bowl filled with matches, and a sign on the front said, 'For Our Matchless Friends.' Except for three fireproof steel filing cabinets and the secretary's desk in a small enclosure, the office was barren.

There were, however, pictures.

Snapshots and photos were everywhere - tacked, stapled, or taped to every available surface. Some were new Polaroid prints, others were colored Kodak shots taken a few years back, still more were curled and yellow?ing black-and-whites, some going back fifteen years. Beneath each was a typed caption: Fine Country Living! Six Rms. or Hilltop Location! Taggart Stream Road, $32, 000 - Cheap! or Fit for a Squire! Ten-Rm. Farmhouse, Burns Road. It looked like a dismal, fly-by-night operation and so it had been until 1957, when Larry Crockett, who was regarded by the better element in Jerusalem's Lot as only one step above shiftless, had decided that trailers were the wave of the future. In those dim dead days, most people thought of trailers as those cute silvery things you hooked on the back of your car when you wanted to go to Yellowstone National Park and take pictures of your wife and kids standing in front of Old Faithful. In those dim dead days, hardly anyone - even the trailer manufacturers themselves - foresaw a day when the cute silvery things would be replaced by campers, which hooked right over the bed of your Chevy pickup or which could come com?plete and motorized in themselves.

Larry, however, had not needed to know these things. A bushleague visionary at best, he had simply gone down to the town office (in those days he was not a selectman; in those days he couldn't have gotten elected dog catcher) and looked up the Jerusalem's Lot zoning laws. They were tremendously satisfactory. Peering between the lines, he could see thousands of dollars. The law said you could not maintain a public dumping ground, or have more than three junked cars in your yard unless you also had a junk yard permit, or have a chemical toilet - a fancy and not very accurate term for outhouse - unless it was approved by the Town Health Officer. And that was it.

Larry had mortgaged himself to the hilt, had borrowed more, and had bought three trailers. Not cute little silvery things but long, plush, thyroidal monsters with plastic wood paneling and Formica bathrooms. He bought one-?acre plots for each in the Bend, where land was cheap, had set them on cheap foundations, and had gone to work selling them. He had done so in three months, overcoming some initial resistance from people who were dubious about living in a home that resembled a Pullman car, and his profit had been close to ten thousand dollars. The wave of the future had arrived in 'salem's Lot, and Larry Crockett had been right up there shooting the curl.

On the day R. T. Straker had walked into his office, Crockett had been worth nearly two million dollars. He had done this as a result of land speculation in a great many neighboring towns (but not in the Lot; you don't shit where you eat was Lawrence Crockett's motto), based on the conviction that the mobile-home industry was going to grow like a mad bastard. It did, and my God how the money rolled in.

In 1965 Larry Crockett became the silent partner of a contractor named Romeo Poulin, who was building a supermarket plaza in Auburn. Poulin was a veteran corner-cutter, and with his on-the-job know-how and Larry's way with figures, they made $750,000 apiece and only had to report a third of that to Uncle. It was all extremely satisfactory, and if the supermarket roof had a bad case of the leaks, well, that was life.

In 1966-68 Larry bought controlling interests in three Maine mobile-home businesses, going through any number of fancy ownership shuffles to throw the tax people off. To Romeo Poulin he described this process as going into the tunnel of love with girl A, screwing girl B in the car behind you, and ending up holding hands with girl A on the other side. He ended up buying mobile homes from himself, and these incestuous businesses were so healthy they were almost frightening.

Deals with the devil, all right, Larry thought, shuffling his papers. When you deal with him, notes come due in brimstone.

The people who bought trailers were lower-middle-class blue- or white-collar workers, people who could not raise a down payment on a more conventional house, or older people looking for ways to stretch their social security. The idea of a brand-new six-room house was something to conjure with for these people. For the elderly, there was another advantage, something that others missed but Larry, always astute, had noticed: Trailers were all on one level and there were no stairs to climb.      

Financing was easy, too. A $500 down payment was usually enough to do business on. And in the bad old barracuda-financing days of the sixties, the fact that the other $9,500 was financed at 24 per cent rarely struck these house-hungry people as a pitfall.

And my God! how the money rolled in.

Crockett himself had changed very little, even after playing 'Let's Make a Deal' with the unsettling Mr Straker. No fag decorator came to redo his office. He still got by with the cheap electric fan instead of air conditioning. He wore the same shiny-seat suits or glaring sports jacket combinations. He smoked the same cheap cigars and still dropped by Dell's on Saturday night to have a few beers and shoot some bumper pool with the boys. He had kept his hand in home town real estate, which had home two fruits: First, it had gotten him elected selectman, and second, it wrote off nicely on his income tax return, be?cause each year's visible operation was one rung below the break-even point. Besides the Marsten House, he was and had been the selling agent for perhaps three dozen other decrepit manses in the area. There were some good deals of course. But Larry didn't push them. The money was, after all, rolling in.

Too much money, maybe. It was possible, he supposed, to outsmart yourself. To go into the tunnel of love with girl A, screw girl B, come out holding hands with girl A, only to have both of them beat the living shit out of you. Straker had said he would be in touch and that had been fourteen months ago. Now what if  -

That was when the telephone rang.

4

'Mr Crockett,' the familiar, accentless voice said.

'Straker, isn't it?'

'Indeed.'

'I was just thinkin' about you. Maybe I'm psychic.'

'How very amusing, Mr Crockett. I need a service, please.'

'I thought you might.'

'You will procure a truck, please. A big one. A rental truck, perhaps. Have it at the Portland docks tonight at seven sharp. Custom House Wharf. Two movers will be sufficient, I think.'

'Okay.' Larry drew a pad over by his right hand, and scrawled: H. Peters, R. Snow. Henry's U-Haul. 6 at latest. He did not stop to consider how imperative it seemed to follow Straker's orders to the letter.

'There are a dozen boxes to be picked up. All save one go to the shop. The other is an extremely valuable sideboard - a Hepplewhite. Your movers will know it by its size. It is to be taken to the house. You understand?'

'Yeah.'

'Have them put it down cellar. Your men can enter through the outside bulkhead below the kitchen windows. You understand?'

'Yeah. Now, this sideboard - '

'One other service, please. You will procure five stout Yale padlocks. You are familiar with the brand Yale?'

'Everybody is. What - '

'Your movers will lock the shop's back door when they leave. At the house, they will leave the keys to all five locks on the basement table. When they leave the house, they will padlock the bulkhead door, the front and back doors, and the shed-garage. You understand?'

'Yeah.'

'Thank you, Mr Crockett. Follow all directions ex?plicitly. Good-by.'

'Now, wait just a minute - '

Dead line.

5

It was two minutes of seven when the big orange-and-white truck with 'Henry's U-Haul' printed on the sides and back pulled up to the corrugated-steel shack at the end of Custom House Wharf at the Portland docks. The tide was on the turn and the gulls were restless with it, wheeling and crying overhead against the sunset crimson sky.

'Christ, there's nobody here,' Royal Snow said, swigging the last of his Pepsi and dropping the empty to the floor of the cab. 'We'll get arrested for burglars.'

'There's somebody,' Hank Peters said. 'Cop.'

It wasn't precisely a cop; it was a night watchman. He shone his light in at them. 'Either of you guys Lawrence Crewcut?'

'Crockett,' Royal said. 'We're from him. Come to pick up some boxes.'

'Good,' the night watchman said. 'Come on in the office. I got an invoice for you to sign.' He gestured to Peters, who was behind the wheel. 'Back up right over there. Those double doors with the light burning. See?'

'Yeah.' He put the truck in reverse.

Royal Snow followed the night watchman into the office where a coffee maker was burbling. The clock over the pin-up calendar said 7:04. The night watchman scrabbled through some papers on the desk and came up with a clipboard. 'Sign there.'

Royal signed his name.

'You want to watch out when you go in there. Turn on the lights. There's rats.'

'I've never seen a rat that wouldn't run from one of these,' Royal said, and swung his work-booted foot in an arc.

'These are wharf rats, sonny,' the watchman said dryly. 'They've run off with bigger men than you.'

Royal went back out and walked over to the warehouse door. The night watchman stood in the doorway of the shack, watching him, 'Look out,' Royal said to Peters. 'The old guy said there was rats.'

'Okay.' He sniggered. 'Good ole Larry Crewcut.'

Royal found the light switch inside the door and turned them on. There was something about the atmosphere, heavy with the mixed aromas of salt and wood rot and wetness, that stifled hilarity. That, and the thought of rats.

The boxes were stacked in the middle of the wide ware?house floor. The place was otherwise empty, and the collection looked a little portentous as a result. The side?board was in the center, taller than the others, and the only one not stamped 'Barlow and Straker, 27 Jointner Avenue, Jer. Lot, Maine.'

'Well, this don't look too bad,' Royal said. He consulted his copy of the invoice and then counted boxes. 'Yeah, they're all here.'

'There are rats,' Hank said. 'Hear 'em?'

'Yeah, miserable things. I hate 'em.'

They both fell silent for a moment, listening to the squeak and patter coming from the shadows.

'Well, let's get with it,' Royal said. 'Let's put that big baby on first so it won't be in the way when we get to the store.'

'Okay.'

They walked over to the box, and Royal took out his pocket knife. With one quick gesture he had slit the brown invoice envelope taped to the side.

'Hey Hank said. 'Do you think we ought to - '

'We gotta make sure we got the right thing, don't we? If we screw up, Larry'll tack our asses to his bulletin board.' He pulled the invoice out and looked at it.

'What's it say?' Hank asked.

'Heroin,' Royal said judiciously. 'Two hundred pounds of the shit. Also two thousand girlie books from Sweden, three hundred gross of French ticklers - '

'Gimme that.' Hank snatched it away. 'Sideboard,' he said. 'Just like Larry told us. From London, England. Portland, Maine, POE. French ticklers, my ass. Put this back.'

Royal did. 'Something funny about this,' he said.

'Yeah, you. Funny like the Italian Army.'

'No, no shit. There's no customs stamp on this f**ker. Not on the box, not on the invoice envelope, not on the invoice. No stamp.'

'They probably do 'em in that ink that only shows up under a special black light.'

'They never did when I was on the docks. Christ, they stamped cargo ninety ways for Sunday. You couldn't grab a box without getting blue ink up to your elbows.'

'Good. I'm very glad. But my wife happens to go to bed very early and I had hopes of getting some tonight.'

'Maybe if we took a look inside - '

'No way. Come on. Grab it.'

Royal shrugged. They tipped the box, and something shifted heavily inside. The box was a bitch to lift. It could be one of those fancy dressers, all right. It was heavy enough.

Grunting, they staggered out to the truck and heaved it onto the hydraulic lifter with identical cries of relief. Royal stood back while Hank operated the lift. When it was even with the truck body, they climbed up and walked it inside.

There was something about the box he didn't like. It was more than the lack of customs stamp. An indefinable something. He looked at it until Hank ran down the back gate.

'Come on,' he said. 'Let's get the rest of them.'

The other boxes had regulation customs stamps, except for three that had been shipped here from inside the United States. As they loaded each box onto the truck, Royal checked it off on the invoice form and initialed it. They stacked all of the boxes bound for the new store near the back gate of the truck, away from the sideboard.

'Now, who in the name of God is going to buy all this stuff?' Royal asked when they had finished. 'A Polish rocking chair, a German clock, a spinning wheel from Ireland . . . Christ Almighty, I bet they charge a frigging fortune.'

'Tourists,' Hank said wisely. 'Tourists'll buy anything. Some of those people from Boston and New York they'd buy a bag of cowshit if it was an old bag.'

'I don't like that big box, neither,' Royal said. 'No customs stamp, that's a hell of a funny thing.'

'Well, let's get it where it's going.'

They drove back to 'salem's Lot without speaking, Hank driving heavy on the gas. This was one errand he wanted done. He didn't like it. As Royal had said, it was damn peculiar.

He drove around to the back of the new store, and the back door was unlocked, as Larry had said it would be. Royal tried the lightswitch just inside with no result.

'That's nice,' he grumbled. 'We get to unload this stuff in the goddamn dark . . . say, does it smell a little funny in here to you?'

Hank sniffed. Yes, there was an odor, an unpleasant one, but he could not have said exactly what it reminded him of. It was dry and acrid in the nostrils, like a whiff of old corruption.

'It's just been shut up too Ion ' he said, shining his flashlight around the long, empty room. 'Needs a good airing out.'

'Or a good burning down,' Royal said. He didn't like it. Something about the place put his back up. 'Come on. And let's try not to break our legs.'

They unloaded the boxes as quickly as they could, putting each one down carefully. A half an hour later, Royal closed the back door with a sigh of relief and snapped one of the new padlocks on it.

'That's half of it,' he said.

'The easy half,' Hank answered. He looked up toward the Marsten House, which was dark and shuttered tonight. 'I don't like goin' up there, and I ain't afraid to say so. If there was ever a haunted house, that's it. Those guys must be crazy, tryin' to live there. Probably queer for each other anyway.'

'Like those fag interior decorators,' Royal agreed. 'Prob?ably trying to turn it into a showplace. Good for business.'

'Well, if we got to do it, let's get with it.'

They spared a last look for the crated sideboard leaning against the side of the U-Haul and then Hank pulled the back door down with a bang. He got in behind the wheel and they drove up Jointner Avenue onto the Brooks Road.

A minute later the Marsten House loomed ahead of them, dark and crepitating, and Royal felt the first thread of real fear worm its way into his belly.

'Lordy, that's a creepy place,' Hank murmured. 'Who'd want to live there?'

'I don't know. You see any lights on behind those shutters?'

'No.'

The house seemed to lean toward them, as if awaiting their arrival, Hank wheeled the truck up the driveway and around to the back. Neither of them looked too closely at what the bouncing headlights might reveal in the rank grass of the back yard. Hank felt a strain of fear enter his heart that he had not even felt in Nam, although he had been scared most of his time there. That was a rational fear. Fear that you might step on a pongee stick and see your foot swell up like some noxious green balloon, fear that some kid in black p.j.'s whose name you couldn't even fit in your mouth might blow your head off with a Russian rifle, fear that you might draw a Crazy Jake on patrol that might want you to blow up everyone in a village where the Cong had been a week before. But this fear was childlike, dreamy. There was no reference point to it. A house was a house - boards and hinges and nails and sills. There was no reason, really no reason, to feel that each splintered crack was exhaling its own chalky aroma of evil. That was just plain stupid thinking. Ghosts? He didn't believe in ghosts. Not after Nam.

He had to fumble twice for reverse, and then backed the truck jerkily up to the bulkhead leading to the cellar. The rusted doors stood open, and in the red glow of the truck's taillights, the shallow stone steps seemed to lead down into hell.

'Man ', I don't dig this at all,' Hank said. He tried to smile and it became a grimace.

'Me either.'

They looked at each other in the wan dash lights, the fear heavy on both of them. But childhood was beyond them, and they were incapable of going back with the job undone because of irrational fear - how would they explain it in bright daylight? The job had to be done.

Hank killed the engine and they got out and walked around to the back of the truck. Royal climbed up, released the door catch, and thrust the door up on its tracks.

The box sat there, sawdust still clinging to it, squat and mute.

'God, I don't want to take that down there!' Hank Peters choked out, and his voice was almost a sob.

'Come on up,' Royal said. 'Let's get rid of it.'

They dragged the box onto the lift and let it down with a hiss of escaping air. When it was at waist level, Hank let go of the lever and they gripped it.

'Easy,' Royal grunted, backing toward the steps. 'Easy does it . . . easy . . . ' In the red glow of the taillights his face was constricted and corded like the face of a man having a heart attack.

He backed down the stairs one at a time, and as the box tilted up against his chest, he felt its dreadful weight settle against him like a slab of stone. It was heavy, he would think later, but not that heavy. He and Hank had muscled bigger loads for Larry Crockett, both upstairs and down, but there was something about the atmosphere of this place that took the heart out of you and made you no good.

The steps were slimy-slick and twice he tottered on the precarious edge of balance, crying out miserably, 'Hey! For Christ's sake! Watch it!'

And then they were down. The ceiling was low above them and they carried the sideboard bent over like hags.

'Set it here" Hank gasped. 'I can't carry it no further!'

They set it down with a thump and stepped away. They looked into each other's eyes and saw that fear had been changed to near terror by some secret alchemy. The cellar seemed suddenly filled with secret rustling noises. Rats, perhaps, or perhaps something that didn't even bear think?ing of.

They bolted, Hank first and Royal Snow right behind him. They ran up the cellar steps and Royal slammed the bulkhead doors with backward sweeps of his arm.

They clambered into the cab of the U-Haul and Hank started it up and put it in gear. Royal grabbed his arm, and in the darkness his face seemed to be all eyes, huge and staring.

'Hank, we never put on those locks.'

They both stared at the bundle of new padlocks on the truck's dashboard, held together by a twist of baling wire. Hank grabbed at his jacket pocket and brought out a key ring with five new Yale keys on it, one which would fit the lock on the back door of the shop in town, four for out here. Each was neatly labeled.

'Oh, Christ,' he said. 'Look, if we come back early tomorrow morning - '

Royal unclamped the flashlight under the dashboard. 'That won't work,' he said, 'and you know it.'

They got out of the cab, feeling the cool evening breeze strike the sweat on their foreheads. 'Go do the back door,' Royal said. 'I'll get the front door and the shed.'