'Salem's Lot(69)

'They've got another one: spaced out. Like coming down from an acid trip or speed, when even being normal is crazy.' He scrubbed a hand across his face. 'God, you must think I'm a lunatic. It all sounds like a madman's raving in the daylight, doesn't it?'

'Yes and no,' Ben said. He put a diffident hand on Matt's shoulder. 'Gillespie is right, you know. There is something going on. And I'm thinking more and more that it has to do with the Marsten House. Other than myself, the people up there are the only new people in town. And I know I haven't done anything. Is our trip up there tonight still on? The rustic welcome wagon?'

'If you like.'

'I do. You go in and get some sleep. I'll get in touch with Susan and we'll drop by this evening.'

'All right.' He paused. 'There's one other thing. It's been bothering me ever since you mentioned autopsies.'

'What?'

'The laugh I heard - or thought I heard - was a child' s laugh. Horrible and soulless, but still a child's laugh. Con?nected to Mike's story, does that make you think of Danny Glick?'

'Yes, of course it does.'

'Do you know what the embalming procedure is?'

'Not specifically. The blood is drained from the cadaver and replaced with some fluid. They used to use formal?dehyde, but I'm sure they've got more sophisticated methods now. And the corpse is eviscerated.'

'I wonder if all that was done to Danny?' Matt said, looking at him.

'Do you know Carl Foreman well enough to ask him in confidence?'

'Yes, I think I could find a way to do that.'

'Do it, by all means.'

'I will.'

They looked at each other a moment longer, and the glance that passed between them was friendly but indefin?able; on Matt's part the uneasy defiance of the rational man who has been forced to speak irrationalities, on Ben's a kind of ill-defined fright of forces he could not understand enough to define.

8

Eva was ironing and watching 'Dialing for Dollars' when he came in. The jackpot was currently up to forty-five dollars, and the emcee was picking telephone numbers out of a large glass drum.

'I heard,' she said as he opened the refrigerator and got a Coke. 'Awful. Poor Mike.'

'It's too bad.' He reached into his breast pocket and fished out the crucifix on its fine-link chain.

'Do they know what - '

'Not yet,' Ben said. 'I'm very tired, Mrs Miller. I think I'll sleep for a while.'

'Of course you should. That upstairs room is hot at midday, even this late in the year. Take the one in the downstairs hall if you like. The sheets are fresh.'

'No, that's all right. I know all the squeaks in the one upstairs.'

'Yes, a person does get used to their own,' she said matter-of-factly. 'Why in the world did Mr Burke want Ralph's crucifix?'

Ben paused on his way to the stairs, momentarily at a loss. 'I think he must have thought Mike Ryerson was a Catholic.'

Eva slipped a new shirt on the end of her ironing board. 'He should have known better than that. After all, he had Mike in school. All his people were Lutherans.'

Ben had no answer for that. He went upstairs, pulled his clothes off, and got into bed. Sleep came rapidly and heavily. He did not dream.

9

When he woke up, it was quarter past four. His body was beaded with sweat, and he had kicked the upper sheet away. Still, he felt clear-headed again. The events of that early morning seemed to be far away and dim, and Matt Burke's fancies had lost their urgency. His job for tonight was only to humor him out of them if he could.

10

He decided that he would call Susan from Spencer's and have her meet him there. They could go to the park and he would tell her the whole thing from beginning to end.

He could get her opinion on their way out to see Matt, and at Matt's house she could listen to his 'version and complete her judgment. Then, on to the Marsten House. The thought caused a ripple of fear in his midsection.

He was so involved in his own thoughts that he never noticed that someone was sitting in his car until the door opened and the tall form accordioned out. For a moment his mind was too stunned to command his body; it was busy boggling at what it first took to be an animated scarecrow. The slanting sun picked the figure out in detail that was sharp and cruel: the old fedora hat pulled low around the ears; the wrap-around sunglasses; the ragged overcoat with the collar turned up; the heavy industrial green rubber gloves on the hands.

'Who - ' was all Ben had time to get out The figure moved closer. The fists bunched. There was an old yellow smell that Ben recognized as that of mothballs. He could hear breath slobbering in and out.

'You're the son of a bitch that stole my girl,' Floyd Tibbits said in a grating, toneless voice. 'I'm going to kill you.'

And while Ben was still trying to clear all this through his central switchboard, Floyd Tibbits waded in.

Chapter Nine SUSAN (II)

1

Susan arrived home from Portland a little after three in the afternoon, and came into the house carrying three crackling brown department-store bags - she had sold two paintings for a sum totaling just over eighty dollars and had gone on a small spree. Two new skirts and a cardigan top.

'Suze?' Her mother called. 'Is that you?'