'Salem's Lot(74)

'You didn't see his partner?'

'Mr Barlow? No, he's in New York, on a buying trip.'

'Is he?' Matt said, speaking to himself. 'I wonder. The elusive Mr Barlow.'

'Mr Burke, don't you think you better tell me what all this is about?'

He sighed heavily.

'I suppose I must try. What you've just told me is disturbing. Very disturbing. It all fits so well . . . '

'What? What does?'

'I have to start,' he began, 'with meeting Mike Ryerson in Dell's tavern last night . . . which already seems a century ago.'

5

It was twenty after eight by the time he had finished, and they had both drunk two cups of coffee.

'I believe that's everything,' Matt said. 'And now shall I do my Napoleon imitation? Tell you about my astral conversations with Toulouse-Lautrec?'

'Don't be silly,' she said. 'There's something going on, but not what you think. You must know that.'

'I did until last night.'

'If no one has it in for you, as Ben suggested, then maybe Mike did it himself. In a delirium or something. That sounded thin, but she pushed ahead anyway. 'Or maybe you fell asleep without knowing and dreamed the whole thing. I've dozed off without knowing it before and lost a whole fifteen or twenty minutes.'

He shrugged tiredly. 'How does a person defend testi?mony no rational mind will accept at face value? I heard what I heard. I was not asleep. And something has me worried . . . rather badly worried. According to the old literature, a vampire cannot simply walk into a man's house and suck his blood. No. He has to be invited. But Mike Ryerson invited Danny Glick in last night. And I invited Mike myself!'

'Matt, has Ben told you about his new book?'

He fiddled with his pipe but didn't light it. 'Very little. Only that it's somehow connected with the Marsten House.'

'Has he told you he had a very traumatic experience in the Marsten House as a boy?'

He looked up sharply. 'In it? No.'

'He went in on a dare. He wanted to join a club, and the initiation was for him to go into the Marsten House and bring something out. He did, as a matter of fact - but before he left, he went up to the second-floor bedroom where Hubie Marsten hung himself. When he opened the door, he saw Hubie hanging there. He opened his eyes. Ben ran. That's festered in him for twenty-four years. He came back to the Lot to try to write it out of his system.'

'Christ,' Matt said.

'He has . . . a certain theory about the Marsten House. It springs partly from his own experience and partly from some rather amazing research he's done on Hubert Marsten - '

'His penchant for devil worship?'

She started. 'How did you know that.'

He smiled a trifle grimly. 'Not all the gossip in a small town is open gossip. There are secrets. Some of the secret gossip in 'salem's Lot has to do with Hubie Marsten. It's shared among perhaps only a dozen or so of the older people now - Mabel Werts is one of them. It was a long time ago, Susan. But even so, there is no statute of limitations on some stories. It's strange, you know. Even Mabel won't talk about Hubert Marsten with anyone but her own circle. They'll talk about his death, of course. About the murder. But if you ask about the ten years he and his wife spent up there in their house, doing God knows what, a sort of governor comes into play - perhaps the closest thing to a taboo our Western civilization knows. There have even been whispers that Hubert Marsten kid?napped and sacrificed small children to his infernal gods. I'm surprised Ben found out as much as he did. The secrecy concerning that aspect of Hubie and his wife and his house is almost tribal.'

'He didn't come by it in the Lot.'

'That explains it, then. I suspect his theory is a rather old parapsychological wheeze - that humans manufacture evil just as they manufacture snot or excrement or finger?nail parings. That it doesn't go away. Specifically, that the Marsten House may have become a kind of evil dry-cell; a malign storage battery.'

'Yes. He expressed it in exactly those terms.' She looked at him wonderingly.

He gave a dry chuckle. 'We've read the same books. And what do you think, Susan? Is there more than heaven and earth in your philosophy?'

'No,' she said with quiet firmness. 'Houses are only houses. Evil dies with the perpetration of evil acts.'

'You're suggesting that Ben's instability may enable me to lead him down the path to insanity that I am already traversing?'

'No, of course not. I don't think you're insane. But Mr Burke, you must realize - '

'Be quiet.'

He had cocked his head forward. She stopped talking and listened. Nothing . . . except perhaps a creaky board. She looked at him questioningly, and he shook his head. 'You were saying?'

'Only that coincidence has made this a poor time for him to exorcise the demons of his youth. There's been a lot of cheap talk going around town since the Marsten House reoccupied and that store was opened . . . there's been talk about Ben himself, for that matter. Rites of exorcism have been known to get out of hand and turn on the exorcist. I think Ben needs to get out of this town and I think maybe you could use a vacation from it, Mr Burke.'

Exorcism made her think of Ben's request to mention the Catholic priest to Matt. On impulse, she decided not to. The reason he had asked was now clear enough, but it would only be adding fuel to a fire that was, in her opinion, already dangerously high. When Ben asked her - if he ever did - she would say she had forgotten.