40
'But there's no pool hall in the Lot,' Mark said. 'The closest one is over in Gates Falls. Would he go there?'
'No,' Jimmy said. 'I'm sure he wouldn't. But some people have pool tables or billiard tables in their houses.'
'Yes, I know that.'
'There's something else,' Jimmy said. 'I can almost get it.'
Chapter Fourteen THE LOT (IV) 5
He leaned back, closed his eyes, and put his hands over them. There was something else, and in his mind he associated it with plastic. Why plastic? There were plastic toys and plastic utensils for picnics and plastic drop covers to put over your boat when winter came -
And suddenly a picture of a pool table draped in a large plastic dust cover formed in his mind, complete with sound track, a voiceover that was saying, I really ought to sell it before the felt gets mildew or something - Ed Craig says it might mildew - but it was Ralph's . . .
He opened his eyes. 'I know where he is,' he said. 'I know where Barlow is. He's in the basement of Eva Miller's boardinghouse.' And it was true; he knew it was. It felt incontrovertibly right in his mind.
Mark's eyes flashed brilliantly. 'Let's go get him.'
'Wait.'
He went to the phone, found Eva's number in the book, and dialed it swiftly. It rang with no answer. Ten rings, eleven, a dozen. He put it back in its cradle, frightened. There had been at least ten roomers at Eva's, many of them old men, retired. There was always someone around. Always before this.
He looked at his watch. It was quarter after three and time was racing, racing.
'Let's go,' he said.
'What about Ben?'
Jimmy said grimly, 'We can't call. The line's out at your house. If we go straight to Eva's, there'll be plenty of daylight left if we're wrong. If we're right, we'll come back and get Ben and stop his f**king clock.'
'Let me put my shirt on again,' Mark said, and ran down the hall to the bathroom.
41
Ben's Citro?n was still sitting in Eva's parking lot, now plastered with wet leaves from the elms that shaded the square of gravel. The wind had picked up but the rain had stopped. The sign that said 'Eva's Rooms' swung and squeaked in the gray afternoon. The house had an eerie silence about it, a waiting quality, and Jimmy made a mental connection and was chilled by it. It was just like the Marsten House. He wondered if anyone had ever committed suicide here. Eva would know, but he didn't think Eva would be talking . . . not anymore.
'It would be perfect,' he said aloud. 'Take up residence in the local boardinghouse and then surround yourself with your children,'
'Are you sure we shouldn't get Ben?'
'Later. Come on.'
They got out of the car and walked toward the porch.
The wind pulled at their clothes, riffled their hair. All the shades were drawn, and the house seemed to brood over them.
'Can you smell it?' Jimmy asked.
'Yes. Thicker than ever.'
'Are you up to this?'
'Yes,' Mark said firmly. 'Are you.
'I hope to Christ I am,' Jimmy said.
They went up the porch steps and Jimmy tried the door. It was unlocked. When they stepped into Eva Miller's compulsively neat big kitchen, the odor smote them both, like an open garbage pit - yet dry, as with the smoke of years.
Jimmy remembered his conversation with Eva - it had been almost four years ago, just after he had begun practic?ing. Eva had come in for a check-up. His father had had her for a patient for years, and when Jimmy took his place, even running things out of the same Cumberland office, she had come to him without embarrassment. They had spoken of Ralph, dead twelve years even then, and she had told him that Ralph's ghost was still in the house ?every now and then she would turn up something new and temporarily forgotten in the attic or a bureau drawer. And of course there was the pool table in the basement. She said that she really ought to get rid of it; it was just taking up space she could use for something else. But it had been Ralph's and she just couldn't bring herself to take out an ad in the paper or call up the local radio 'Yankee Trader' program.
Now they walked across the kitchen to the cellar door and Jimmy opened it. The stench was thick, powering. He thumbed the light switch but got no response. He would have broken that, of course.
'Look around,' he told Mark. 'She's got to have a flashlight, or candles.'
Mark began nosing around, pulling open drawers and looking into them. He noticed that the knife rack over the sink was empty, but thought nothing of it at the time. His heart was thudding with painful slowness, like a muffled drum. He recognized the fact that he was now on the far, ragged edges of his endurance, at the outer limits. His mind did not seem to be thinking, but only reacting. He kept seeing movement at the corners of his eyes and jerking his head around to look, seeing nothing. A war veteran might have recognized the symptoms which signaled the onset of battle fatigue.
He went out into the hall and looked through the dresser there. In the third drawer he found a long four?cell flashlight. He took it back to the kitchen. 'Here it is, J - '
There was a rattling noise, followed by a heavy thump. The cellar door stood open.
And the screams began.
42
When Mark stepped back into the kitchen of Eva's Rooms, it was twenty minutes of five. His eyes were hollow, and his T-shirt was smeared with blood. His eyes were stunned and slow.
Suddenly he shrieked.
The sound came roaring out of his belly, up the dark passage of his throat, and through his distended jaws. He shrieked until he felt some of the madness begin to leave his brain. He shrieked until his throat cracked and an awful pain lodged in his vocal cords like a sliver of bone. And even when he had externalized all the fear, the horror, the rage, the disappointment that he could, that awful pressure remained, coming up out of the cellar in waves - the knowledge of Barlow's presence somewhere down there - ?and now it was close to dark.
He went outside onto the porch and breathed great gasps of the windy air. Ben. He had to get Ben. But an odd sort of lethargy seemed to have wrapped his legs in lead. What was the use? Barlow was going to win. They had been crazy to go against him. And now Jimmy had paid the full price, as well as Susan and the Father.
The steel in him came up. No. No. No.
He went down the porch steps on trembling legs and got into Jimmy's Buick. The keys hung in the ignition.
Get Ben. Try once more.
His legs were too short to reach the pedals. He pulled the seat up and twisted the key. The engine roared. He put the gearshift lever in drive and put his foot on the gas. The car leaped forward. He slammed his foot down on the power brake and was thrown painfully into the steering wheel. The horn honked.
I can't drive it!
And he seemed to hear his father saying in his logical, pedantic voice: You must be careful when you learn to drive, Mark. Driving is the only means of transportation that is not fully regulated by federal law. As a result, all the operators are amateurs. Many of these amateurs are suicidal. Therefore, you must be extremely careful. You use the gas pedal like there was an egg between it and your foot. When you're driving a car with an automatic transmission, like ours, the left foot is not used at all. Only the right is used; first brake and then gas.
He let his foot off the brake and the car crawled forward down the driveway. It bumped over the curb and he brought it to a jerky stop. The windshield had fogged up. He rubbed it with his arm and only smeared it more.
'Screw it,' he muttered.
He started up jerkily and performed a wide, drunken U-turn, driving over the far curb in the process, and set off for his house. He had to crane his neck to see over the steering wheel. He fumbled out with his right hand and turned on the radio and played it loud. He was crying.
43
Ben was walking down Jointner Avenue toward town when Jimmy's tan Buick came up the road, moving in jerks and spasms, weaving drunkenly. He waved at it and it pulled over, bounced the left front wheel over the curb, and came to a stop.
He had lost track of time making the stakes, and when he looked at his watch, he had been startled to see that it was nearly ten minutes past four. He had shut down the lathe, taken a couple of the stakes, put them in his belt, and gone upstairs to use the telephone. He had only put his hand on it when he remembered it was out.
Badly worried now, he ran outside and looked in both cars, Callahan's and Petrie's. No keys in either. He could have gone back and searched Henry Petrie's pockets, but the thought was too much. He had set off for town at a fast walk, keeping an eye peeled for Jimmy's Buick. He had been intending to go straight to the Brock Street School when Jimmy's car came into sight.
He ran around to the driver's seat and Mark Petrie was sitting behind the wheel . . . alone. He looked at Ben numbly. His lips worked but no sound came out.
'What's the matter? Where's Jimmy?'
'Jimmy's dead,' Mark said woodenly. 'Barlow thought ahead of us again. He's in the basement of Mrs Miller's boardinghouse somewhere. Jimmy's there, too. I went down to help him and I couldn't get back out. Finally I got a board that I could crawl up, but at first I thought I was going to be trapped down there . . . until s-s-sunset. . . . '
'What happened? What are you talking about?'
'Jimmy figured out the blue chalk, you see? While we were at a house in the Bend. Blue chalk. Pool tables. There's a pool table in the cellar at Mrs Miller's, it belonged to her husband. Jimmy called the boardinghouse and there was no answer so we drove over.'
He lifted his tearless face to Ben's.
'He told me to look around for a flashlight because the cellar light switch was broken, just like at the Marsten House. So I started to look around. I . . . I noticed that all the knives in the rack over the sink were gone, but I didn't think anything of it. So in a way I killed him. I did it. It's my fault, all my fault, all my - '
Ben shook him: two brisk snaps. 'Stop it, Mark. Stop it!
Mark put his hands to his mouth, as if to catch the hysterical babble before it could flow out. His eyes stared hugely at Ben over his hands.
At last he went on: 'I found a flashlight in the hall dresser, see. And that was when Jimmy fell, and he started to scream. He - I would have fallen, too, but he warned me. The last thing he said was Look out, Mark.'
'What was it?' Ben demanded.
'Barlow and the others just took the stairs away,' Mark said in a dead, listless voice. 'Sawed the stairs off after the second one going down. They left a little more of the railing so it looked like . . . looked like . . .' He shook his head. 'In the dark, Jimmy just thought they were there. You see?'
'Yes,' Ben said. He saw. It made him feel sick. 'And the knives?'
'Set all around on the floor underneath,' Mark whis?pered. 'They pounded the blades through these thin ply?wood squares and then knocked off the handles so they would sit flat with the blades pointing . . . pointing.'
'Oh,' Ben said helplessly. 'Oh, Christ.' He reached down and took Mark by the shoulders. 'Are you sure he's dead, Mark?'
'Yes. He . . . he was stuck in half a dozen places. The blood . . . '
Ben looked at his watch. It was ten minutes of five. Again he had that feeling of being crowded, of running out of time.
'What are we going to do now?' Mark asked remotely.
'Go into town. Talk to Matt on the phone and then talk to Parkins Gillespie. We'll finish Barlow before dark. We've got to.'
Mark smiled a small, morbid smile. 'Jimmy said that, too. He said we were going to stop his clock. But he keeps beating us. Better guys than us must have tried, too.'
Ben looked down at the boy and got ready to do some?thing nasty.
'You sound scared,' he said.
'I am scared,' Mark said, not rising to it. 'Aren't you?'
'I'm scared,' Ben said, 'but I'm mad, too. I lost a girl I liked one hell of a lot. I loved her, I guess. We both lost Jimmy. You lost your mother and father. They're lying in your living room under a dust cover from your sofa.' He pushed himself to a final brutality. 'Want to go back and look?'
Mark winced away from him, his face horrified and hurting.
'I want you with me,' Ben said more softly He felt a germ of self-disgust in his stomach. He sounded like a football coach before the big game. 'I don't care who's tried to stop him before. I don't care if Attila the Run played him and lost. I'm going to have my shot. I want you with me. I need you.' And that was the truth, pure and naked.
'Okay,' Mark said. He looked down into his lap, and his hands found each other and entwined in distraught pantomime.
'Dig your feet in,' Ben said.
Mark looked at him hopelessly. I'm trying,' he said.
44
Sonny's Exxon station on outer Jointner Avenue was open and Sonny James (who exploited his country-music name?sake with a huge color poster in the window beside a pyramid of oil cans) came out to wait on them himself. He was a small, gnome-like man whose receding hair was lawn-mowered into a perpetual crew cut that showed his pink scalp.
'Hey there, Mr Mears, howya doin'? Where your Citrowan?'
'Laid up, Sonny. Where's Pete?' Pete Cook was Sonny's part-time help, and lived in town. Sonny did not.
'Never showed up today. Don't matter. Things been slow, anyway. Town seems downright dead.'
Ben felt dark, hysterical laughter in his belly. It threatened to boil out of his mouth in a great and rancid wave.
'Want to fill it up?' he managed. 'Want to use your phone.'
'Sure. Hi, kid. No school today?'
I'm on a field trip with Mr Mears,' Mark said. 'I had a bloody nose.'
'I guess to God you did. My brother used to get 'em. They're a sign of high blood pressure, boy. You want to watch out.' He strolled to the back of Jimmy's car and took off the gas cap
Ben went inside and dialed the pay phone beside the rack of New England road maps.
'Cumberland Hospital, which department?'
'I'd like to speak with Mr Burke, please. Room 402.
There was an uncharacteristic hesitation, and Ben was about to ask if the room had been changed when the voice said: 'Who is this, please?'
'Benjaman Mears.' The possibility of Matt's death sud?denly loomed up in his mind like a long shadow. Could that be? Surely not - that would be too much. 'Is he all right?'
'Are you a relative?'
'No, a close friend. He isn't - '
'Mr Burke died at 3:07 this afternoon, Mr Mears. If you'd like to hold for just a minute, I'll see if Dr Cody has come in yet. Perhaps he could . . . '
The voice went on but Ben had ceased hearing it, although the receiver was still glued to his ear. The realiz?ation of how much he had been depending on Matt to get them through the rest of this nightmare afternoon crashed home with sickening weight. Matt was dead. Congestive heart failure. Natural causes. It was as if God Himself had turned His face away from them.
Just Mark and I now.
Susan, Jimmy, Father Callahan, Matt. All gone.
Panic seized him and he grappled with it silently. He put the receiver back into its cradle without thinking about it, guillotining a question half-asked.
He walked back outside. It was ten after five. In the west the clouds were breaking up.
'Comes to just three dollars even,' Sonny told him brightly. 'That's Doc Cody's car, ain't it? I see them MD plates and it always makes me think of this movie I seen, this story about a bunch of crooks and one of them would always steal cars with MD plates because - '
Ben gave him three one-dollar bills. 'I've got to split, Sonny. Sorry. I've got trouble.'
Sonny's face crinkled up. 'Gee, I'm sorry to hear that, Mr Mears. Bad news from your editor?'
'I guess you could say that.' He got behind the wheel, shut the door, pulled out, and left Sonny looking after him in his yellow foulweather slicker.
'Matt's dead, isn't he?' Mark asked, watching him.
'Yes. Heart attack. How did you know?'
'Your face. I saw your face.'
It was 5:15.