'Salem's Lot(102)

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 exha?lation 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 actu?ally 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?'

'Wherever did you get that idea? Vampires and things like that?'

He said somberly, 'A vampire tried to get me last night. It almost did, too.'

'That's absurd. A big boy like you should know better than to make up - '

'It was Danny Glick.'

She recoiled, her eyes wincing as if he had thrown a mock punch instead of words. She groped out, found his arm, and held it. Their eyes locked. 'Are you making this up, Mark?'

'No,' he said, and told his story in a few simple sentences.

'And you came here alone?' she asked when he had finished. 'You believed it and came up here alone?'

'Believed it?' He looked at her, honestly puzzled. 'Sure I believed it. I saw it, didn't I?'

There was no response to that, and suddenly she was ashamed of her instant doubt (no, doubt was too kind a word) of Matt's story and of Ben's tentative acceptance.

'How come you're here?'

She hesitated a moment and then said, 'There are some men in town who suspect that there is a man in that house whom no one has seen. That he might be a . . . a . . .' Still she could not say the word, but he nodded his understand?ing. Even on short acquaintance, he seemed quite an extraordinary little boy.

Abridging all that she might have added, she said simply, 'So I came to look and find out.'

He nodded at the stake. 'And brought that to pound through him?'

'I don't know if I could do that.'

'I could,' he said calmly. 'After what I saw last night. Danny was outside my window, holding on like a great big fly. And his teeth . . .' He shook his head, dismissing the nightmare as a businessman might dismiss a bankrupt client.

'Do your parents know you're here?' she asked, knowing they must not.

'No,' he said matter-of-factly. 'Sunday is their nature day. They go on bird walks in the mornings and do other things in the afternoon. Sometimes I go and sometimes I don't. Today they went for a ride up the coast.'