Salem's Lot

French menu and know what wine would go with what, not just red or white but the year and even the vineyard. Very definitely not the run of fellow you see around here. But not effeminate in the least. Lithe, like a dancer. And of course there’s something attractive about a man who is so unabashedly bald.’ She smiled a little defensively, knowing there was color in her cheeks, wondering if she had said more than she intended.

‘But then you didn’t,’ Matt said.

She shrugged. ‘That’s harder to put my finger on. I think… I think I sensed a certain contempt under the surface. A cynicism. As if he were playing a certain part, and playing it well, but as if he knew he wouldn’t have to pull out all the stops to fool us. A touch of condescension.’ She looked at him uncertainly. ‘And there seemed to be something a little bit cruel about him. I don’t really know why.’

‘Did anyone buy anything?’

‘Not much, but he didn’t seem to mind. Mom bought a little knickknack shelf from Yugoslavia ‘ and that Mrs Petrie bought a lovely little drop-leaf table, but that was all I saw. He didn’t seem to mind. Just urged people to tell their friends he was open, to come back by and not be strangers. Very Old World charming.’

‘And do you think people were charmed?’

‘By and large, yes,’ Susan said, mentally comparing her mother’s enthusiastic impression of R. T. Straker to her immediate dislike of Ben.

‘You didn’t see his partner?’

‘Mr Barlow? No, he’s in New York, on a buying trip.’

‘Is he?’ Matt said, speaking to himself. ‘I wonder. The elusive Mr Barlow.’

‘Mr Burke, don’t you think you better tell me what all this is about?’

He sighed heavily.

‘I suppose I must try. What you’ve just told me is disturbing. Very disturbing. It all fits so well… ’

‘What? What does?’

‘I have to start,’ he began, ‘with meeting Mike Ryerson in Dell’s tavern last night… which already seems a century ago.’

5

It was twenty after eight by the time he had finished, and they had both drunk two cups of coffee.

‘I believe that’s everything,’ Matt said. ‘And now shall I do my Napoleon imitation? Tell you about my astral conversations with Toulouse-Lautrec?’

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘There’s something going on, but not what you think. You must know that.’

‘I did until last night.’

‘If no one has it in for you, as Ben suggested, then maybe Mike did it himself. In a delirium or something. That sounded thin, but she pushed ahead anyway. ‘Or maybe you fell asleep without knowing and dreamed the whole thing. I’ve dozed off without knowing it before and lost a whole fifteen or twenty minutes.’

He shrugged tiredly. ‘How does a person defend testimony no rational mind will accept at face value? I heard what I heard. I was not asleep. And something has me worried… rather badly worried. According to the old literature, a vampire cannot simply walk into a man’s house and suck his blood. No. He has to be invited. But Mike Ryerson invited Danny Glick in last night. And I invited Mike myself!’

‘Matt, has Ben told you about his new book?’

He fiddled with his pipe but didn’t light it. ‘Very little. Only that it’s somehow connected with the Marsten House.’

‘Has he told you he had a very traumatic experience in the Marsten House as a boy?’

He looked up sharply. ‘In it? No.’

‘He went in on a dare. He wanted to join a club, and the initiation was for him to go into the Marsten House and bring something out. He did, as a matter of fact - but before he left, he went up to the second-floor bedroom where Hubie Marsten hung himself. When he opened the door, he saw Hubie hanging there. He opened his eyes. Ben ran. That’s festered in him for twenty-four years. He came back to the Lot to try to write it out of his system.’

‘Christ,’ Matt said.

‘He has… a certain theory about the Marsten House. It springs partly from his own experience and partly from some rather amazing research he’s done on Hubert Marsten-’

‘His penchant for devil worship?’

She started. ‘How did you know that.’

He smiled a trifle grimly. ‘Not all the gossip in a small town is open gossip. There are secrets. Some of the secret gossip in ‘salem’s Lot has to do with Hubie Marsten. It’s shared among perhaps only a dozen or so of the older people now-Mabel Werts is one of them. It was a long time ago, Susan. But even so, there is no statute of limitations on some stories. It’s strange, you know. Even Mabel won’t talk about Hubert Marsten with anyone but her own circle. They’ll talk about his death, of course. About the murder. But if you ask about the ten years he and his wife spent up there in their house, doing God knows what, a sort of governor comes into play-perhaps the closest thing to a taboo our Western civilization knows. There have even been whispers that Hubert Marsten kidnapped and sacrificed small children to his infernal gods. I’m surprised Ben found out as much as he did. The secrecy concerning that aspect of Hubie and his wife and his house is almost tribal.’

‘He didn’t come by it in the Lot.’