'Salem's Lot(143)

'Very interesting,' he said, looking up. 'But I don't think. . . Mr Burke? Mr Burke, is something wrong? Are you. . . nurse! Hey, nurse!'

Matt's eyes had grown very fixed. One hand gripped the top sheet of the bed. The other was pressed against his chest. His face had gone pallid, and a pulse beat in the center of his forehead.

Too soon, he thought. No, too soon  -

Pain, smashing into him in waves, driving him down into darkness. Dimly he thought: Watch that last step, it's a killer.

Then, falling.

Herbert-or-Harold ran out of the room, knocking over his chair and spilling a pile of books. The nurse was already coming, nearly running herself.

'It's Mr Burke,' Herbert-or-Harold told her. He was still holding the book, with his index finger inserted at the picture of Momson, Vermont.

The nurse nodded curtly and entered the room. Matt was lying with his head half off the bed, his eyes closed.

'Is he - ?' Herbert-or-Harold asked timidly. It was a complete question.

'Yes, I think so,' the nurse answered, at the same time pushing the button that would summon the ECV unit. 'You'll have to leave now.'

She was calm again now that all was known, and had time to regret her lunch, left half-eaten.

40

'But there's no pool hall in the Lot,' Mark said. 'The closest one is over in Gates Falls. Would he go there?'

'No,' Jimmy said. 'I'm sure he wouldn't. But some people have pool tables or billiard tables in their houses.'

'Yes, I know that.'

'There's something else,' Jimmy said. 'I can almost get it.'

Chapter Fourteen THE LOT (IV) 5

He leaned back, closed his eyes, and put his hands over them. There was something else, and in his mind he associated it with plastic. Why plastic? There were plastic toys and plastic utensils for picnics and plastic drop covers to put over your boat when winter came  -

And suddenly a picture of a pool table draped in a large plastic dust cover formed in his mind, complete with sound track, a voiceover that was saying, I really ought to sell it before the felt gets mildew or something - Ed Craig says it might mildew - but it was Ralph's . . .

He opened his eyes. 'I know where he is,' he said. 'I know where Barlow is. He's in the basement of Eva Miller's boardinghouse.' And it was true; he knew it was. It felt incontrovertibly right in his mind.  

Mark's eyes flashed brilliantly. 'Let's go get him.'

'Wait.'

He went to the phone, found Eva's number in the book, and dialed it swiftly. It rang with no answer. Ten rings, eleven, a dozen. He put it back in its cradle, frightened. There had been at least ten roomers at Eva's, many of them old men, retired. There was always someone around. Always before this.

He looked at his watch. It was quarter after three and time was racing, racing.

'Let's go,' he said.

'What about Ben?'

Jimmy said grimly, 'We can't call. The line's out at your house. If we go straight to Eva's, there'll be plenty of daylight left if we're wrong. If we're right, we'll come back and get Ben and stop his f**king clock.'

'Let me put my shirt on again,' Mark said, and ran down the hall to the bathroom.

41

Ben's Citro?n was still sitting in Eva's parking lot, now plastered with wet leaves from the elms that shaded the square of gravel. The wind had picked up but the rain had stopped. The sign that said 'Eva's Rooms' swung and squeaked in the gray afternoon. The house had an eerie silence about it, a waiting quality, and Jimmy made a mental connection and was chilled by it. It was just like the Marsten House. He wondered if anyone had ever committed suicide here. Eva would know, but he didn't think Eva would be talking . . . not anymore.

'It would be perfect,' he said aloud. 'Take up residence in the local boardinghouse and then surround yourself with your children,'

'Are you sure we shouldn't get Ben?'

'Later. Come on.'

They got out of the car and walked toward the porch.

The wind pulled at their clothes, riffled their hair. All the shades were drawn, and the house seemed to brood over them.

'Can you smell it?' Jimmy asked.

'Yes. Thicker than ever.'

'Are you up to this?'

'Yes,' Mark said firmly. 'Are you.

'I hope to Christ I am,' Jimmy said.

They went up the porch steps and Jimmy tried the door. It was unlocked. When they stepped into Eva Miller's compulsively neat big kitchen, the odor smote them both, like an open garbage pit - yet dry, as with the smoke of years.

Jimmy remembered his conversation with Eva - it had been almost four years ago, just after he had begun practic?ing. Eva had come in for a check-up. His father had had her for a patient for years, and when Jimmy took his place, even running things out of the same Cumberland office, she had come to him without embarrassment. They had spoken of Ralph, dead twelve years even then, and she had told him that Ralph's ghost was still in the house ?every now and then she would turn up something new and temporarily forgotten in the attic or a bureau drawer. And of course there was the pool table in the basement. She said that she really ought to get rid of it; it was just taking up space she could use for something else. But it had been Ralph's and she just couldn't bring herself to take out an ad in the paper or call up the local radio 'Yankee Trader' program.