'Salem's Lot

'About how I took Matt's story?'

'Yes.'

'Let me answer you by saying what you think. You think the Marsten House has buggered my brain to the point where I'm seeing bats in my own belfry, to coin a phrase. Is that a fair estimate?'

'Yes, I suppose that's it. But I never thought about it in such . . . such harsh terms.'

'I know that, Susan. Let me trace the progression of my thoughts for you, if I can. It may do me some good to sort them out. I can tell from your own face that something has knocked you back a couple of steps. Is that right?'

'Yes . . . but I don't believe, can't - '

'Stop a minute. That word can't blocks up everything. That's where I was stuck. That absolute, goddamned im?perative, word. Can't. I didn't believe Matt, Susan, because such things can't be true. But I couldn't find a hole in his story any way I looked at it. The most obvious conclusion was that he had jumped the tracks somewhere, right?'

'Yes.'

'Did he seem crazy to you?'

'No. No, but - '

'Stop.' He held up his hand. 'You re thinking can't thoughts, aren't you?'

'I suppose I am,' she said.

'He didn't seem crazy or irrational to me, either. And we both know that paranoid fantasies or persecution com?plexes just don't appear overnight. They grow over a period of time. They need careful watering, care, and feeding. Have you ever heard any talk in town about Matt having a screw loose? Ever heard Matt say that someone had the knife out for him? Has he ever been involved with any dubious causes - fluoridation causes brain cancer or Sons of the American Patriots or the NLF? Has he ever expressed an inordinate amount of interest in things such as s6ances or astral projection or reincarnation? Ever been arrested that you know of?'

'No,' she said. 'No to everything. But Ben . . . it hurts me to say this about Matt, even to suggest it, but some people go crazy very quietly. They go crazy inside.'

'I don't think so,' he said quietly. 'There are signs. Sometimes you can't read them before, but you can after?ward. If you were on a jury, would you believe Matt's testimony about a car crash?'

'Yes. . . '

'Would you believe him if he had told you he saw a prowler kill Mike Ryerson?'

'Yes, I guess I would.'

'But not this.'

'Ben, I just can't - '

'There, you said it again.' He saw her ready to protest and held up a forestalling hand. 'I'm not arguing his case, Susan. I'm only laying out my own train of thought. Okay?'

'Okay. Go on.'

'My second thought was that somebody set him up. Someone with bad blood, or a grudge.'

'Yes, that occurred to me.'

'Matt says he has no enemies. I believe him.'

'Everybody has enemies.'

'There are degrees. Don't forget the most important thing - there's a dead man wrapped up in this mess. If someone was out to get Matt, then someone must have murdered Mike Ryerson to do it.'

'Why?'

'Because the whole song and dance doesn't make much sense without a body. And yet, according to Matt's story, he met Mike purely by chance. No one led him to Dell's last Thursday night. There was no anonymous call, no note, no nothing. The coincidence of the meeting was enough to rule out a setup.'

'What does that leave for rational explanations?'

'That Matt dreamed the sounds of the window going up, the laugh, and the sucking sounds. That Mike died of some natural but unknown causes.'

'You don't believe that, either.'

'I don't believe that he dreamed hearing the window go up. It was open. And the outside screen was lying on the lawn. I noticed it and Parkins Gillespie noticed it. And I noticed something else. Matt has latch-type screens on his house - they lock on the outside, not the inside. You can't get them off from the inside unless you pry them off with a screw driver or a paint scraper. Even then it would be tough. It would leave marks. I didn't see any marks. And here's another thing: The ground below that window was relatively soft. If you wanted to take off a second-floor screen, you'd need to use a ladder, and that would leave marks. There weren't any. That's what bothers me the most. A second-floor screen removed from the outside and no ladder marks beneath.'  

They looked at each other somberly.

He resumed: 'I was running this through my head this morning. The more I thought about it, the better Matt's story looked. So I took a chance. I took the can't away for a while. Now, tell me what happened at Matt's last night. If it will knock all this into a cocked hat, no one is going to be happier than I.'

'It doesn't,' she said unhappily. 'It makes it worse. He had just finished telling me about Mike Ryerson. He said he heard someone upstairs. He was scared, but he went.' She folded her hands in her lap and was now holding them tightly, as if they might fly away. 'Nothing else happened for a little while . . . and then Matt called out, something like he was revoking his invitation. Then . . . well, I don't really know how to . . . '

'Go on. Don't agonize over it.'

'I think someone - someone else - made a kind of hissing noise. There was a bump, as if something had fallen.' She looked at him bleakly. 'And then I heard a voice say: I will see you sleep like the dead, teacher. That's word for word. And when I went in later to get a blanket for Matt I found this.'

She took the ring out of her blouse pocket and dropped it into his hand.

Ben turned it over, then tilted it toward the window to let the light pick out the initials. 'MCR. Mike Ryerson?'

'Mike Corey Ryerson. I dropped it and then made myself pick it up again - I thought you or Matt would want to see it. You keep it. I don't want it back.'

'It makes you feel - ?'

'Bad. Very bad.' She raised her head defiantly. But all rational thought goes against this, Ben. I'd rather believe that Matt somehow murdered Mike Ryerson and invented that crazy vampire story for reasons of his own. Rigged the screen to fall off. Did a ventriloquist act in that guest room while I was downstairs, planted Mike's ring - '

'And gave himself a heart attack to make it all seem more real,' Ben said dryly. 'I haven't given up hope of rational explanations, Susan. I'm hoping for one. Almost praying for one. Monsters in the movies are sort of fun, but the thought of them actually prowling through the night isn't fun at all. I'll even grant you that the screen could have been rigged - a simple rope sling anchored on the roof would do the trick. Let's go further. Matt is something of a scholar. I suppose there are poisons that would cause the symptoms that Mike had - maybe unde?tectable poisons. Of course, the idea of poison is a little hard to believe because Mike ate so little - '

'You only have Matt's word for that,' she pointed out.

'He wouldn't lie, because he would know that an examin?ation of the victim's stomach is an important part of any autopsy. And a hypo would leave tracks. But for the sake of argument, let's say it could be done. And a man like Matt could surely take something that would fake a heart attack. But where is the motive?'

She shook her head helplessly.

'Even granting some motive we don't suspect, why would he go to such Byzantine lengths, or invent such a wild cover story? I suppose Ellery Queen could explain it somehow, but life isn't an Ellery Queen plot.'

'But this . . . this other is lunacy, Ben.'

'Yes, like Hiroshima.'

'Will you stop doing that' she whipcracked at him suddenly. 'Don't go playing the phony intellectual! It doesn't fit you! We're talking about wives' tales, bad dreams, psychosis, anything you want to call it - '

'That's shit,' he said. 'Make connections. The world is coming down around our ears and you're sticking at a few vampires.'

"Salem's Lot is my town,' she said stubbornly. 'If some?thing is happening there, it's real. Not philosophy.'

'I couldn't agree with you more,' he said, and touched the bandage on his head with a rueful finger. 'And your ex packs a hell of a right.'

'I'm sorry. That's a side of Floyd I never saw. I can't understand it.'

'Where is he now?'

'In the town drunk tank. Parkins Gillespie told my mom he should turn him over to the county - to Sheriff McCaslin, that is - but he thought he'd wait and see if you wanted to prefer charges.'

'Do you have any feelings in the matter?'

'None whatever,' she said steadily. 'He's out of my life.'

'I'm not going to.'

She raised her eyebrows.

'But I want to talk to him.'

'About us?'

'About why he came at me wearing an overcoat, a hat, sunglasses and Playtex rubber gloves.'

'What?'

'Well,' he said, looking at her, 'the sun was out. It was shining on him. And I don't think he liked that.'

They looked at each other wordlessly. There seemed to be nothing else on the subject to say.



5

When Nolly brought Floyd his breakfast from the Excellent Café, Floyd was fast asleep. It seemed to Nolly that it would be a meanness to wake him up just to eat a couple of Pauline Dickens's hard-fried eggs and five or six pieces of greasy bacon, so Nolly disposed of it himself in the office and drank the coffee, too. Pauline did make nice coffee ?you could say that for her. But when he brought in Floyd's lunch and Floyd was still sleeping and still in the same position, Nolly got a little scared and set the tray on the floor and went over and banged on the bars with a spoon.

'Hey! Floyd! Wake up, I got y'dinner.'

Floyd didn't wake up, and Nolly took his key ring out of his pocket to open the drunk-tank door. He paused just before inserting the key. Last week's' Gunsmoke' had been about a hard guy who pretended to be sick until he jumped the turnkey. Nolly had never thought of Floyd Tibbits as a particularly hard guy, but he hadn't exactly rocked that Mears guy to sleep.

He paused indecisively, holding the spoon in one hand and the key ring in the other, a big man whose open-throat white shirts always sweat-stained around the armpits by noon of a warm day. He was a league bowler with an average of 151 and a weekend bar-hopper with a list of Portland red-light bars and motels in his wallet right behind his Lutheran Ministry pocket calendar. He was a friendly man, a natural fall guy, slow of reaction and also slow to anger. For all these not inconsiderable advantages, he was not particularly agile on his mental feet and for several minutes he stood wondering how to proceed, beating on the bars with the spoon, hailing Floyd, wishing he would move or snore or do something. He was just thinking he better call Parkins on the citizen's band and get instructions when Parkins himself said from the office doorway:

'What in hell are you doin', Nolly? Callin' the hogs?'

Nolly blushed. 'Floyd won't move, Park. I'm afraid that maybe he's . . . you know, sick.'

'Well, do you think beatin' the bars with that goddamn spoon will make him better?' Parkins stepped by him and unlocked the cell.

'Floyd?' He shook Floyd's shoulder. 'Are you all r - '

Floyd fell off the chained bunk and onto the floor.

'Goddamn,' said Nolly. 'He's dead, ain't he?'

But Parkins might not have heard. He was staring down at Floyd's uncannily reposeful face. The fact slowly dawned on Nolly that Parkins looked as if someone had scared the bejesus out of him.

'What's the matter, Park?'

'Nothin',' Parkins said. 'Just . . . let's get out of here.' And then, almost to himself, he added: 'Christ, I wish I hadn't touched him.'

Nolly looked down at Floyd's body with dawning horror.

'Wake up,' Parkins said. 'We've got to get the doctor down here.'

6

It was midafternoon when Franklin Boddin and Virgil Rathbun drove up to the slatted wooden gate at the end of the Burns Road fork, two miles beyond Harmony Hill Cemetery. They were in Franklin's 1957 Chevrolet pickup, a vehicle that had been Corinthian ivory back in the first year of Ike's second term but which was now a mixture of shit brown and primer-paint red. The back of the truck was filled with what Franklin called Crappie. Once every month or so, he and Virgil took a load of Crappie to the dump, and a great deal of said Crappie consisted of empty beer bottles, empty beer cans, empty half-kegs, empty wine bottles, and empty Popov vodka bottles.

'Closed,' Franklin Boddin said, squinting to read the sign nailed to the gate. 'Well I'll be dipped in shit.' He took a honk off the bottle of Dawson's that had been resting comfortably against the bulge of his crotch and wiped his mouth with his arm. 'This is Saturday, ain't it?'

'Sure is,' Virgil Rathbun said. Virgil had no idea if it was Saturday or Tuesday. He was so drunk he wasn't even sure what month it was.

'Dump ain't closed on Saturday, is it'?' Franklin asked. There was only one sign, but he was seeing three. He squinted again. All three signs said 'Closed'. The paint was barn-red and had undoubtedly come out of the can of paint that rested inside the door of Dud Rogers's caretaker shack.

'Never was closed on Saturday,' Virgil said. He swung his bottle of beer toward his face, missed his mouth, and poured a blurt of beer on his left shoulder. 'God, that hits the spot.'

'Closed,' Franklin said, with mounting irritation. 'That son of a whore is off on a toot, that's what. I'll close him.' He threw the truck into first gear and popped the clutch. Beer foamed out of the bottle between his legs and ran over his pants.

'Wind her, Franklin!' Virgil cried, and let out a massive belch as the pickup crashed through the gate, knocking it onto the can-littered verge of the road. Franklin shifted into second and shot up the rutted, chuck-holed road. The truck bounced madly on its worn springs. Bottles fell off the back end and smashed. Sea gulls took to the air in screaming, circling waves.

A quarter of a mile beyond the gate, the Burns Road fork (now known as the Dump Road) ended in a widening clearing that was the dump. The close-pressing alders and maples gave way to reveal a great flat area of raw earth which had been scored and runneled by the constant use of the old Case bulldozer which was now parked by Dud's shack. Beyond this flat area was the gravel pit where current dumping went on. The trash and garbage, glitter?shot with bottles and aluminum cans, stretched away in gigantic dunes.

'Goddamn no-account hunchbacked pisswah, looks like he ain't plowed nor burned all the week long,' Franklin said. He jammed both feet on the brake pedal, which sank all the way to the floor with a mechanical scream. After a while the truck stopped. 'He's laid up with a case, that's what.'

'I never knew Dud to drink much,' Virgil said, tossing his empty out the window and pulling another from the brown bag on the floor. He opened it on the door latch, and the beer, crazied up from the  bumps, bubbled out over his hand.

'All them hunchbacks do,' Franklin said wisely. He spat out the window, discovered it was closed, and swiped his shirt sleeve across the scratched and cloudy glass. 'We'll go see him. Might be somethin' in it.'

He backed the truck around in a huge wandering circle and pulled up with the tailgate hanging over the latest accumulation of the Lot's accumulated throwaway. He switched off the ignition, and silence pressed in on them suddenly. Except for the restless calling of the gulls, it was complete.

'Ain't it quiet,' Virgil muttered.

They got out of the truck and went around to the back. Franklin unhooked the S-bolts that held the tailgate and let it drop with a crash. The gulls that had been feeding at the far end of the dump rose in a cloud, squalling and scolding.

The two of them climbed up without a word and began heaving the Crappie off the end. Green plastic bags spun through the clear air and smashed open as they hit. It was an old job for them. They were a part of the town that few tourists ever saw (or cared to) - firstly, because the town ignored them by tacit agreement, and secondly, because they had developed their own protective coloration. If you met Franklin's pickup on the road, you forgot it the instant it was gone from your rear-view mirror. If you happened to see their shack with its tin chimney sending a pencil line of smoke into the white November sky, you overlooked it. If you met Virgil coming out of the Cumberland greenfront with a bottle of welfare vodka in a brown bag, you said hi and then couldn't quite remember who it was you had spoken to; the face was familiar but the name just slipped your mind. Franklin's brother was Derek Boddin, father of Richie (lately deposed king of Stanley Street Elementary School), and Derek had nearly forgotten that Franklin was still alive and in town. He had progressed beyond black sheepdom; he was totally gray.

Now, with the truck empty, Franklin kicked out a last can - clink! - and hitched up his green work pants. 'Let's go see Dud,' he said.

They climbed down from the truck and Virgil tripped over one of his own rawhide lacings and sat down hard. 'Christ, they don't make these things half-right,' he mut?tered obscurely.

They walked across to Dud's tarpaper shack. The door was closed.

'Dud!' Franklin bawled. 'Hey, Dud Rogers!' He thumped the door once, and the whole shack trembled. The small hook-and-eye lock on the inside of the door snapped off, and the door tottered open. The shack was empty but filled with a sickish-sweet odor that made them look at each other and grimace - and they were barroom veterans of a great many fungoid smells. It reminded Franklin fleetingly of pickles that had lain in a dark crock for many years, until the fluid seeping out of them had turned white.

'Son of a whore,' Virgil said. 'Worse than gangrene.'

Yet the shack was astringently neat. Dud's extra shirt was hung on a hook over the bed, the splintery kitchen chair was pushed up to the table, and the cot was made up Army-style. The can of red paint, with fresh drips down the sides, was placed on a fold of newspaper behind the door.

'I'm about to puke if we don't get out of here,' Virgil said. His face had gone a whitish-green.