Salem's Lot

10

It was nine o’clock and the Saturday night movie was coming on the hospital TV bolted to the wall when the phone beside Ben’s bed rang. It was Susan, and her voice was barely under control.

‘Ben, Floyd Tibbits is dead. He died in his cell some time last night. Dr Cody says acute anemia-but I went with Floyd! He had high blood pressure. That’s why the Army wouldn’t take him!’

‘Slow down,’ Ben said, sitting up.

‘There’s more. A family named McDougall out in the Bend. A little ten months baby died out there. They took Mrs McDougall away in restraints.’

‘Have you heard how the baby died?’

‘My mother said Mrs Evans came over when she heard Sandra McDougall screaming, and Mrs Evans called old Dr Plowman. Plowman didn’t say anything, but Mrs Evans told my mother that she couldn’t see a thing wrong with the baby… except it was dead.’

‘And both Matt and I, the crackpots, just happen to be out of town and out of action,’ Ben said, more to himself than to Susan. ‘Almost as if it were planned.’

‘There’s more.’

‘What?’

‘Carl Foreman is missing. And so is the body of Mike Ryerson.’

‘I think that’s it,’ he heard himself saying. ‘That has to be it. I’m getting out of here tomorrow.’

‘Will they let you go so soon?’

‘They aren’t going to have anything to say about it.’ He spoke the words absently; his mind had already moved on to another subject. ‘Have you got a crucifix?’

‘Me?’ She sounded startled and a little amused. ‘Gosh, no.’

‘I’m not joking with you, Susan-I was never more serious. Is there any place where you can get one at this hour?’

‘Well, there’s Marie Boddin. I could walk-’

‘No. Stay off the streets. Stay in the house. Make one yourself, even if it only means gluing two sticks together. Leave it by your bed.’

‘Ben, I still don’t believe this. A maniac, maybe, someone who thinks he’s a vampire, but-’

‘Believe what you want, but make the cross.’

‘But-’

‘Will you do it? Even if it only means humoring me?’

Reluctantly: ‘Yes, Ben.’

‘Can you come to the hospital tomorrow around nine?’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay. We’ll go upstairs and fill in Matt together. Then you and I are going to talk to Dr James Cody.’

She said, ‘He’s going to think you’re crazy, Ben. Don’t you know that?’

‘I suppose I do. But it all seems more real after dark, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘God, yes.’

For no reason at all he thought of Miranda and Miranda’s dying: the motorcycle hitting the wet patch, going into a skid, the sound of her scream, his own brute panic, and the side of the truck growing and growing as they approached it broadside.

‘Susan?’

‘Yes.’

‘Take good care of yourself. Please.’

After she hung up, he put the phone back in the cradle and stared at the TV, barely seeing the Doris Day-Rock Hudson comedy that had begun to unreel up there. He felt naked, exposed. He had no cross himself. His eyes strayed to the windows, which showed only blackness. The old, childlike terror of the dark began to creep over him and he looked at the television where Doris Day was giving a shaggy dog a bubble bath and was afraid.