Salem's Lot

forest along the path where Danny Glick and his brother had come to grief so long before. His pants were wet to the knees from his flight through Taggart Stream. He had hitched a ride, but couldn’t remember who he had hitched it with. The radio had been playing, he remembered that.

Ben’s tongue was frozen. He did not know what to say.

‘You poor boy,’ Matt said softly. ‘You poor, brave boy.’

Mark’s face began to break up. His eyes closed and his mouth twisted and strained. ‘My muh-muh- mother-’ He staggered blindly and Ben caught him in his arms, enfolded him, rocked him as the tears came and raged against his shirt.

24

Father Donald Callahan had no idea how long he walked in the dark. He stumbled back toward the downtown area along Jointner Avenue, never heeding his car, which he had left parked in the Petries’ driveway. Sometimes he wandered in the middle of the road, and sometimes he staggered along the sidewalk. Once a car bore down on him, its headlights great shining circles; its horn began to blare and it swerved at the last instant, tires screaming on the pavement. Once he fell in the ditch. As he approached the yellow blinking light, it began to rain.

There was no one on the streets to mark his passage; salem’s Lot had battened down for the night, even tighter than usual. The diner was empty, and in Spencer’s Miss Coogan was sitting by her cash register and reading a confession magazine off the rack in the frosty glow of the overhead fluorescents. Outside, under the lighted sign showing the blue dog in mid-flight, a red neon sign said:

BUS

They were afraid, he supposed. They had every reason to be. Some inner part of themselves had absorbed the danger, and tonight doors were locked in the Lot that had not been locked in years… if ever.

He was on the streets alone. And he alone had nothing to fear. It was funny. He laughed aloud, and the sound of it was like wild, lunatic sobbing. No vampire would touch him. Others, perhaps, by not him. The Master had marked him, and he would walk free until the Master claimed his own.

St Andrew’s loomed above him.

He hesitated, then walked up the path. He would pray. Pray all night, if necessary. Not to the new God, the God of ghettos and social conscience and free lunches, but the old God, who had proclaimed through Moses not to suffer a witch to live and who had given it unto his own son to raise from the dead. A second chance, God. All my life for penance. Only… a second chance.

He stumbled up the wide steps, his gown muddy and bedraggled, his mouth smeared with Barlow’s blood.

At the top he paused a moment, and then reached for the handle of the middle door.

As he touched it, there was a blue flash of light and he was thrown backward. Pain lanced his back, then his head, then his chest and stomach and shins as he fell head over heels down the granite steps to the walk.

He lay trembling in the rain, his hand afire.

He lifted it before his eyes. It was burned.

‘Unclean,’ he muttered. ‘Unclean, unclean, O God, so unclean.’

He began to shiver. He slid his arms around his shoulders and shivered in the rain and the church loomed behind him, its doors shut against him.

25

Mark Petrie sat on Matt’s bed, in exactly the spot Ben had occupied when Ben and Jimmy had come in. Mark had dried his tears with his shirt sleeve, and although his eyes were puffy and bloodshot, he seemed to have himself in control.

‘You know, don’t you,’ Matt asked him, ‘that ‘salem’s Lot is in a desperate situation?’

Mark nodded.

‘Even now, his Undead are crawling over it,’ Matt said somberly. ‘Taking others to themselves. They won’t get them all-not tonight-but there is dreadful work ahead of you tomorrow.’

‘Matt, I want you to get some sleep,’ Jimmy said. ‘We’ll be here don’t worry. You don’t look good. This has been a horrible strain on you-’

‘My town is disintegrating almost before my eyes and you want me to sleep?’ His eyes, seemingly tireless, flashed out of his haggard face.

Jimmy said stubbornly, ‘If you want to be around for the finish, you better save something back. I’m telling you that as your physician, goddammit.’

‘All right. In a minute.’ He looked at all of them. ‘Tomorrow the three of you must go back to Mark’s house. You’re going to make stakes. A great many of them.’ The meaning sank home to them.

‘How many?’ Ben asked softly.

‘I would say you’ll need three hundred at least. I advise you to make five hundred.’

‘That’s impossible,’ Jimmy said flatly. ‘There can’t be that many of them.’

‘The Undead are thirsty,’ Matt said simply. ‘It’s best to be prepared. You will go together. You dare not split up, even in the daytime. It will be like a scavenger hunt. You must start at one end of town and work toward the other.’

‘We’ll never be able to find them all,’ Ben objected. ‘Not even if we could start at first light and work through until dark.’