Salem's Lot

‘Hard… to tell.’ And Mark knew by the pause that his father was lighting his pipe. ‘He’s got a hell of a poker face.’

‘Still waters run deep, though.’ She paused. His mother was always saying things like still waters run deep or it’s a long, long road that has no turning. He loved them both dearly, but sometimes they seemed just as ponderous as the books in the folio section of the library… and just as dusty.

‘They were on their way to see Mark,’ she resumed. ‘To play with his train set… now one dead and one missing! Don’t fool yourself, Henry. The boy feels something.’

‘He’s got his feet pretty solidly planted on the ground,’ Mr Petrie said. ‘Whatever his feelings are, I’m sure he’s got them in hand.’

Mark glued the Frankenstein m6nster’s left arm into the shoulder socket. It was a specially treated Aurora model that glowed green in the dark, just like the plastic Jesus he had gotten for memorizing all of the 119th Psalm in Sunday school class in Kittery.

‘I’ve sometimes thought we should have had another,’ his father was saying. ‘Among other things, it would have been good for Mark.’

And his mother, in an arch tone: ‘Not for lack of trying, dear.’

His father grunted.

There was a long pause in the conversation. His father, he knew, would be rattling through The Wall Street Journal. His mother would be holding a novel by Jane Austen on her lap, or perhaps Henry James. She read them over and over again, and Mark was darned if he could see the sense in reading a book more than once. You knew how it was going to end.

‘D’you think it’s safe to let him go in the woods behind the house?’ his mother asked presently. ‘They say there’s quicksand somewhere in town-’

‘Miles from here.’

Mark relaxed a little and glued the monster’s other arm on. He had a whole table of Aurora horror monsters, arranged in a scene that he changed each time a new element was added. It was a pretty good set. Danny and Ralphie had really been coming to see that the night when… whatever.

‘I think it’s okay,’ his father said. ‘Not after dark, of course.’

‘Well, I hope that awful funeral won’t give him nightmares.’

Mark could almost see his father shrug. ‘Tony Glick… unfortunate. But death and grief are part of living. Time he got used to the idea.’

‘Maybe.’ Another long pause. What was coming now? he wondered. The child is the father of the man, maybe. Or as the twig is bent the tree is shaped. Mark glued the monster onto his base, which was a grave mound with a leaning headstone in the background. ‘In the midst of life we’re in death. But I may have nightmares.’

‘Oh?’

‘That Mr Foreman must be quite an artist, grisly as it sounds. He really looked as if he was just asleep. That any second he might open his eyes and yawn and… I don’t know why these people insist on torturing themselves with open-coffin services. It’s… heathenish.’

‘Well, it’s over.’

‘Yes, I suppose. He’s a good boy, isn’t he, Henry?’

‘Mark? The best.’

Mark smiled.

‘Is there anything on TV?’

‘I’ll look.’

Mark turned the rest off; the serious discussion was done. He set his model on the window sill to dry and harden. In another fifteen minutes his mother would be calling up for him to get ready for bed. He took his pajamas out of the top dresser drawer and began to undress.

In point of fact, his mother was worrying needlessly about his psyche, which was not tender at all. There was no particular reason why it should have been; he was a typical boy in most ways, despite his economy and his gracefulness. His family was upper middle class and still upwardly mobile, and the marriage of his parents was sound. They loved each other firmly, if a little stodgily. There had never been any great trauma in Mark’s life. The few school fights had not scarred him. He got along with his peers and in general wanted the same things they wanted.

If there was anything that set him apart, it was a reservoir of remoteness, of cool self-control. No one had inculcated it in him; he seemed to have been born with it. When his pet dog, Chopper, had been hit by a car, he had insisted on going with his mother to the vet’s. And when the vet had said, The dog has got to be put to sleep, my boy. Do you understand why? Mark said, You’re not going to put him to sleep. You’re going to gas him to death, aren’t you? The vet said yes. Mark told him to go ahead, but he had kissed Chopper first. He had felt sorry but he hadn’t cried and tears had never been close to the surface. His mother had cried but three days later Chopper was in the dim past to her, and he would never be in the dim past for Mark. That was the value in not crying. Crying was like pissing everything out on the ground.

He had been shocked by the disappearance of Ralphie Glick, and shocked again by Danny’s death, but he had not been frightened. He had heard one of the men in the store say that probably a sex pervert had gotten Ralphie. Mark knew what perverts were. They did something to you that got their rocks off and when they were done they strangled you (in the comic books, the guy getting strangled always said Arrrgggh) and buried you in a gravel pit or under the boards of a deserted shed. If a sex pervert ever offered him candy, he would kick him in the balls and then run like a split streak.

‘Mark?’ His mother’s voice, drifting up the stairs. ‘I am,’ he said, and smiled again.

‘Don’t forget your ears when you wash.’