He went down into the cellar to get Jimmy’s body, and that was the hardest trip of all. The coffin lay where it had the night before, empty even of dust. Yet… not entirely empty. The stake was in there, and something else. He felt his gorge rise. Teeth. Barlow’s teeth-all that was left of him. Ben reached down, picked them up-and they twisted in his hand like tiny white animals, trying to come together and bite.
With a disgusted cry he threw them outward, scattering them.
‘God,’ he whispered, rubbing his hand against his shirt ‘Oh, my dear God. Please let that be the end. Let it be the end of him.’
6
Somehow he managed to get Jimmy, still bundled up in Eva’s drapes, out of the cellar. He tucked the bundle into the trunk of Jimmy’s Buick and then drove out to the Petrie house, the pick and shovel resting next to Jimmy’s black bag in the back seat. In a wooded clearing behind the Petrie house and close to the babble of Taggart Stream, he spent the rest of the morning and half the afternoon digging a wide grave four feet deep. Into it he put Jimmy’s body and the Petries, still wrapped in the sofa dust cover.
He began filling in the grave of these clean ones at two-thirty. He began to shovel faster and faster as the light began its long drain from the cloudy sky. Sweat that was not wholly from exertion condensed on his skin.
The hole was filled in by four. He tamped in the sods as well as he could, and drove back to town with the earth-clotted pick and shovel in the trunk of Jimmy’s car. He parked it in front of the Excellent Cafe, leaving the keys in the ignition.
He paused for a moment, looking around. The deserted business buildings with their false fronts seemed to lean crepitatingly over the street. The rain, which had started around noon, fell softly and slowly, as if in mourning. The little park where he had met Susan Norton was empty and forlorn. The shades of the Municipal Building were drawn. A ‘Be back soon’ sign hung in the window of Larry Crockett’s Insurance and Real Estate office with hollow jauntiness. And the only sound was soft rain.
He walked up toward Railroad Street, his heels clicking emptily on the sidewalk. When he got to Eva’s, he paused by his car for a moment, looking around for the last time.
Nothing moved.
The town was dead. All at once he knew it for sure and true, just as he had known for sure that Miranda was dead when he had seen her shoe lying in the road.
He began to cry.
He was still crying when he drove past the Elks sign, which read: ‘You are now leaving Jerusalem’s Lot, a nice little town. Come again!’
He got on the turnpike. The Marsten House was blotted out by the trees as he went down the feeder ramp. He began to drive south toward Mark, toward his life.
EPILOGUE
1
JERUSALEM’S LOT-The Charles V. Pritchett family, who bought a farm in the Cumberland County town of Jerusalem’s Lot only a month ago, are moving out because things keep going bump in the night, according to Charles and Amanda Pritchett, who moved here from Portland. The farm, a local landmark on Schoolyard Hill, was previously owned by Charles Griffen. Griffen’s father was the owner of Sunshine Dairy, Inc., which was absorbed by the Slewfoot Dairy Corporation in 1962. Charles Griffen, who sold the farm through a Portland realtor for what Pritchett called ‘a bargain basement price’, could not be reached for comment. Amanda Pritchett first told her husband about the ‘funny noises’ in the hayloft shortly after…
JERUSALEM’S LOT-A bizarre car crash occurred last night or early this morning in the small southern Maine town of Jerusalem’s Lot. Police theorize from skid marks found near the scene that the car, a late-model sedan, was traveling at an excessive speed when it left the road and struck a Central Maine Power utility pole. The car was a total wreck, but although blood was found on the front seat and the dashboard, no passengers have yet been found. Police say that the car was registered to Mr Gordon Phillips of Scarborough. According to a neighbor, Phillips and his family had been on their way to see relatives in Yarmouth. Police theorize that Phillips, his wife, and their two children may have wandered off in a daze and become lost. Plans for a search have been…
CUMBERLAND-Mrs Fiona Coggins, a widow who lived alone on the Smith Road in West Cumberland, was reported missing this morning to the Cumberland County sheriff’s office by her niece, Mrs Gertrude Hersey. Mrs Hersey told police officers that her aunt was a shut-in and is in poor health. Sheriff’s deputies are investigating, but claim that at this point it is impossible to say what…
