'Salem's Lot(148)

'I can't,' Mark muttered. 'I just can't.' His eyes were wide and white. He had drawn up his knees and was now crouched on the seat.

'It's got to be both of us,' Ben said. He held out two of the ampoules filled with holy water. Mark twitched away from them in horror, as if touching them would admit poison through his skin. 'Come on,' Ben said. He had no arguments left. 'Come on, come on.'

'No.'

'Mark?'

'No!'  

'Mark, I need you. You and me, that's all that's left.'

'I've done enough!' Mark cried. 'I can't do any more! 'Can't you understand I can't look at him?'

'Mark, it has to be the two of us. Don't you know that?'

Mark took the ampoules and curled them slowly against his chest. 'Oh boy,' he whispered. 'Oh boy, oh boy.' He looked at Ben and nodded. The movement of his head was jerky and agonized. 'Okay,' he said.

'Where's the hammer?' he asked as they got out.

'Jimmy had it.'

'Okay.'

They walked up the porch steps in the strengthening wind. The sun glared red through the clouds, dyeing every?thing. Inside, in the kitchen, the stink of death was palpable and wet, pressing against them like granite. The cellar door stood open.

'I'm so scared,' Mark said, shuddering.

'You better be. Where's that flashlight?'

'In the cellar. I left it when . . . '

'Okay.' They stood at the mouth of the cellar. As Mark had said, the stairs looked intact in the sunset light. 'Follow me,' Ben said.

48

Ben thought quite easily: I'm going to my death.

The thought came naturally, and there was no fear or regret in it. Inward-turning emotions were lost under the overwhelming atmosphere of evil that hung over this place. As he slipped and scraped his way down the board Mark had set up to get out of the cellar, all he felt was an unnatural glacial calm. He saw that his hands were glowing, as if wreathed in ghost gloves. It did not surprise him.

Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream. Who had said that? Matt? Matt was dead. Susan was dead. Miranda was dead. Wallace Stevens was dead, too. I wouldn't look at that, if I were you. But he had looked. That's what you looked like when it was over. Like something smashed and broken that had been filled with different-colored fluids. It wasn't so bad. Not so bad as his death. Jimmy had been carrying McCaslin's pistol; it would still be in his coat pocket. He would take it, and if sunset came before they could get to Barlow . . . first the boy, and then himself. Not good, but better than his death.

He dropped to the cellar floor and then helped Mark down. The boy's eyes flashed to the dark, curled thing on the floor and then skipped away.

'I can't look at that,' he said huskily.

'That's all right.'

Mark turned away and Ben knelt down. He swept away a number of the lethal plywood squares, the knife blades thrust through them glittering like dragon's teeth. Gently, then, he turned Jimmy over.

I wouldn't look at that, if I were you.

'Oh, Jimmy,' he tried to say, and the words broke open and bled in his throat. He cradled Jimmy in the curve of his left arm and pulled Barlow's blades out of him with his right hand. There were six of them, and Jimmy had bled a great deal.

There was a neatly folded stack of living room drapes on a corner shelf. He took them over to Jimmy and spread them over his body after he had the gun and the flashlight and the hammer.

He stood up and tried the flashlight. The plastic lens cover had cracked, but the bulb still worked. He flashed it around. Nothing. He shone it under the pool table. Bare. Nothing behind the furnace. Racks of preserves, and a pegboard hung with tools. The amputated stairs, pushed over in the far corner so they would be out of sight from the kitchen. They looked like a scaffold leading nowhere.

'Where is he?' Ben muttered. He glanced at his watch, and the hands stood at 6:23. When was sunset? He couldn't remember. Surely no later than 6:55. That gave them a bare half hour.

'Where is he?' he cried out. 'I can feel him, but where is he?'  

"There!' Mark cried, pointing with one glowing hand. 'What's that?'

Ben centered the light on it. A Welsh dresser. 'It's not big enough,' he said to Mark. 'And it's flush against the wall.'

'Let's look behind it.'

Ben shrugged. They crossed the room to the Welsh dresser and each took a side. He felt a trickle of building excitement. Surely the odor or aura or atmosphere or whatever you wanted to call it was thicker here, more offensive?

Ben glanced up at the open kitchen door. The light was dimmer now. The gold was fading out of it.

'It's too heavy for me,' Mark panted.

'Never mind,' Ben said. 'We're going to tip it over. Get your best hold.'

Mark bent over it, his shoulder against the wood. His eyes looked fiercely out of his glowing face. 'Okay.'

They threw their combined weight against it and the Welsh dresser went over with a bonelike crash as Eva Miller's long-ago wedding china shattered inside.

'I knew it!' Mark cried triumphantly.

There was a small door, chest-high, set into the wall where the Welsh dresser had been. A new Yale padlock secured the hasp.