'Salem's Lot(139)

But as they entered town, Jimmy said in an almost absurdly relieved tone, 'Look there. Crossen's is open.'

It was. Milt was out front, fussing a plastic drop cover over his rack of newspapers, and Lester Silvius was stand?ing next to him, dressed in a yellow slicker.

'Don't see the rest of the crew, though,' Ben said.

Milt glanced up at them and waved, and Ben thought be saw lines of strain on both men's faces. The 'Closed' sign was still posted inside the door of Foreman's Mortu?ary. The hardware store was also closed, and Spencer's was locked and dark. The diner was open, and after they had passed it, Jimmy pulled his Buick up to the curb in front of the new shop. Above the show window, simple goldfaced letters spelled out the name: 'Barlow and Straker - Fine Furnishings.' And taped to the door, as Callahan had said, a sign which had been hand-lettered in a fine script which they all recognized from the note they had seen the day before: 'Closed until further notice.'

'Why are you stopping here?' Mark asked.

'Just on the off-chance that he might be holing up inside,' Jimmy said. 'It's so obvious he might figure we'd overlook it. And I think that sometimes customs men put an okay on boxes they've checked through. They write it on with chalk.'

They went around to the back, and while Ben and Mark hunched their shoulders against the rain, Jimmy poked one overcoated elbow through the glass in the back door until they could all climb inside.

The air was noxious and stale, the air of a room shut up for centuries rather than days. Ben poked his head out into the showroom, but there was no place to hide out there. Sparsely furnished, there was no sign that Straker had been replenishing his stock.

'Come here!' Jimmy called hoarsely, and Ben's heart leaped into his throat.

Jimmy and Mark were standing by a long crate which Jimmy had partly pried open with the claw end of his hammer. Looking in, they could see one pale hand and a darksleeve.

Without thinking, Ben attacked the crate. Jimmy was fumbling at the far end with the hammer.

'Ben,' Jimmy said, 'you're going to cut your hands. You - '

He hadn't heard. He snapped boards off the crate, regardless of nails and splinters. They had him, they had the slimy night-thing, and he would pound the stake into him as he had pounded it into Susan, he would - He snapped back another piece of the cheap wooden crating and looked into the dead, moon-pallid face of Mike Ryer?son.

For a moment there was utter silence, and then they all let out their breath . . . it was as if a soft wind had coursed through the room.

'What do we do now?' Jimmy asked.

'We better get out to Mark's house first,' Ben said. His voice was dull with disappointment. 'We know where he is. We don't even have a finished stake yet.'

They put the splintered strips of wood back helter?skelter.

'Better let me look at those hands, Jimmy said. 'They're bleeding.'

'Later,' Ben said. 'Come on.'

They went back around the building, all of them word?lessly glad to be back in the open air, and Jimmy drove the Buick up Jointner Avenue and into the residential part of town, just outside the skimpy business district. They arrived at Mark's house perhaps sooner than any of them would have liked.

Father Callahan's old sedan was parked behind Henry Petrie's sensible Pinto runabout in the circular Petrie drive?way. At the sight of it, Mark sucked in his breath and looked away. All color had drained out of his face.

'I can't go in there,' he muttered. 'I'm sorry. I'll wait in the car.'

'Nothing to be sorry for, Mark,' Jimmy said.

He parked, turned off the ignition, and got out. Ben hesitated a minute, then put a hand on Mark's shoulder. 'Are you going to be all right?'

'Sure.' But he did not look all right. His chin was trembling and his eyes looked hollow. He suddenly turned to Ben and the hollowness was gone from the eyes and they were filled with simple pain, swimming with tears. 'Cover them up, will you? If they're dead, cover them up.'

'Sure I will,' Ben said.

'It's better this way,' Mark said. 'My father . . . he would have made a very successful vampire. Maybe as good as Barlow, in time. He . . . he was good at everything he tried. Maybe too good.'

'Try not to think too much,' Ben said, hating the lame sound of the words as they left his mouth. Mark looked up at him and smiled wanly.

'The woodpile's around in the back,' Mark said. 'You can go faster if you use my father's lathe down in the basement.'

'All right,' Ben said. 'Be easy, Mark. As easy as you can.'

But the boy was looking away now, swiping at his eyes with his arm.

He and Jimmy went up the back steps and inside.

35

'Callahan's not here,' Jimmy said flatly. They had gone through the entire house.

Ben forced himself to say it. 'Barlow must have gotten him.'

He looked at the broken cross in his hand. It had been around Callahan's neck yesterday. It was the only trace of him they had found. It had been lying next to the bodies of the Petries, who were very dead indeed. Their heads had been crushed together with force enough to literally shatter the skulls. Ben remembered the unnatural strength Mrs Glick had displayed and felt sick.

'Come on,' he said to Jimmy. 'We've got to cover them up. I promised.'