Salem's Lot

12

Ben got up from the tab and rinsed his coffee cup at the sink, pausing to look out the window into the night’s blackness. What was out there tonight? Marjorie Glick, reunited with her son at last? Mike Ryerson? Floyd Tibbits? Carl Foreman?

He turned away and went upstairs.

He slept the rest of the night with the desk lamp on and left the tongue-depressor cross that had vanquished Mrs Glick on the table by his right hand. His last thought before sleep took him was to wonder if Susan was all Tight, and safe.

Chapter Twelve

MARK

1

When he first heard the distant snapping of twigs, he crept behind the trunk of a large spruce and stood there, waiting to see who would show up. They couldn’t come out in the daytime, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t get people who could; giving them money was one way, but it wasn’t that guy Straker in town, the only way. Mark had seen of a toad sunning itself on and his eyes were like the eyes a rock. He looked like he could break a baby’s arm and smile while he did it.

He touched the heavy shape of his father’s target pistol in his jacket pocket. Bullets were no good against them except maybe silver ones-but a shot between the eyes would punch that Straker’s ticket, all right.

His eyes shifted downward momentarily to the roughly cylindrical shape propped against the tree, wrapped in an old piece of toweling. There was a woodpile behind his house, half a cord of yellow ash stove lengths which he and his father had cut with the McCulloch chain saw in July and August. Henry Petrie was methodical, and each length, Mark knew, would be within an inch of three feet, one way or the other. His father knew the proper length just as he knew that winter followed fall and that yellow ash would burn longer and cleaner in the living room fireplace.

His son, who knew other things, knew that ash was for men-things-like him. This morning, while his mother and father were out on their Sunday bird walk, he had taken one of the lengths and whacked one end into a rough point with his Boy Scout hatchet. It was rough, but it would serve.

He saw a flash of color and shrank back against the tree, peering around the rough bark with one eye. A moment later he got his first clear glimpse of the person climbing the hill. It was a girl. He felt a sense of relief mingled with disappointment. No henchman of the devil there; that was Mr Norton’s daughter.

His gaze sharpened again. She was carrying a stake of her own! As she drew closer, he felt an urge to laugh bitterly-a piece of snow fence, that’s what she had. Two swings with an ordinary tool box hammer would split it right in two.

She was going to pass his tree on the right. As she drew closer, he began to slide carefully around his tree to the left, avoiding any small twigs that might pop and give him away. At last the synchronized little movement was done; her back was to him as she went on up the hill toward the break in the trees. She was going very carefully, he noted with approval. That was good. In spite of the silly snow fence stake, she apparently had some idea of what she was getting into. Still, if she went much further, she was going to be in trouble. Straker was at home. Mark had been here since twelve-thirty, and he had seen Straker go out to the driveway and look down the road and then go back into the house. Mark had been trying to make up his mind on what to do himself when this girl had entered things, upsetting the equation.

Perhaps she was going to be all right. She had stopped behind a screen of bushes and was crouching there, just looking at the house. Mark turned it over in his mind. Obviously she knew. How didn’t matter, but she would not have had even that pitiful stake with her if she didn’t know. He supposed he would have to go up and warn her that Straker was still around, and on guard. She probably didn’t have a gun, not even a little one like his.

He was pondering how to make his presence known to her without having her scream her head off when the motor of Straker’s car roared into life. She jumped visibly, and at first he was afraid she was going to break and run, crashing through the woods and advertising her presence for a hundred miles. But then she hunkered down again, holding on to the ground like she was afraid it would fly away from her. She’s got guts even if she is stupid, he thought, approvingly.

Straker’s car backed down the driveway-she would have a much better view from where she was; he could only see the Packard’s black roof-hesitated for a moment, and then went off down the road toward town.

He decided they had to team up. Anything would be better than going up to that house alone. He had already sampled the poison atmosphere that enveloped it. He had felt it from a half a mile away, and it thickened as you got closer.

Now he ran lightly up the carpeted incline and put his hand on her shoulder. He felt her body tense, knew she was going to scream, and said, ‘Don’t yell. It’s all right. It’s me.’

She didn’t scream. What escaped was a terrified exhalation of air. She turned around and looked at him, her face white. ‘W-Who’s me?’

He sat down beside her. ‘My name is Mark Petrie. I know you; you’re Sue Norton. My dad knows your dad.’

‘Petrie…? Henry Petrie?’

‘Yes, that’s my father.’

‘What are you doing here?’ Her eyes were moving continually over him, as if she hadn’t been able to take in his actuality yet.

‘The same thing you are. Only that stake won’t work. It’s too… He groped for a word that had checked into his vocabulary through sight and definition but not by use. ‘It’s too flimsy.’

She looked down at her piece of snow fence and actually blushed. ‘Oh, that. Well, I found that in the woods and… and thought someone might fall over it, so I just-’

He cut her adult temporizing short impatiently: ‘You came to kill the vampire, didn’t you?’