Salem's Lot

7

They drove in silence until they were on the turnpike, each lost in his own thoughts. Ben was thinking about what Cody had said at the hospital. Carl Foreman gone. The bodies of Floyd Tibbits and the McDougall baby gone disappeared from under the noses of two morgue attendants. Mike Ryerson was also gone, and God knew who else. How many people in ‘salem’s Lot could drop out of sight and not be missed for a week… two weeks… a month? Two hundred? Three? It made the palms of his hands sweaty.

‘This is beginning to seem like a paranoid’s dream,’ Jimmy said, ‘or a Gahan Wilson cartoon. The scariest part of this whole thing, from an academic point of view, is the relative ease with which a vampire colony could be founded-always if you grant the first one. It’s a bedroom town for Portland and Lewiston and Gates Falls, mostly. There’s no in-town industry where a rise in absenteeism would be noticed. The schools are three-town consolidated, and if the absence list starts getting a little longer, who notices? A lot of people go to church over in Cumberland, a lot more don’t go at all. And TV has pretty well put the kibosh on the old neighborhood get-togethers, except for the duffers who hang around Milt’s store. All this could be going on with great effectiveness behind the scenes.’

‘Yeah,’ Ben said. ‘Danny Glick infects Mike. Mike infects… oh, I don’t know. Floyd, maybe. The McDougall baby infects… his father? Mother? How are they? Has anyone checked?’

‘Not my patients. I assume Dr Plowman would have been the one to call them this morning and tell them about their son’s disappearance. But I have no real way of knowing if he actually called or actually got in contact with them if he did.’

‘They should be checked on,’ Ben said. He began to feel harried. ‘You see how easily we could end up chasing our tails? A person from out of town could drive through the Lot and not know a thing was wrong. Just another one-horse town where they roll up the sidewalks at nine. But who knows what’s going on in the houses, behind drawn shades? People could be lying in their beds… or propped in closets like brooms… down in cellars… waiting for the sun to go down. And each sunrise, less people out on the streets. Less every day.’ He swallowed and heard a dry click in his throat.

‘Take it easy,’ Jimmy said. ‘None of this is proven.’

‘The proof is piling up in drifts,’ Ben retorted. ‘If we were dealing in an accepted frame of reference-with a possible outbreak of typhoid or A2 flu, say-the whole town would be in quarantine by now.’

‘I doubt that. You don’t want to forget that only one person has actually seen anything.’

‘Hardly the town drunk.’

‘He’d be crucified if a story like this got out,’ Jimmy said.

‘By whom? Not by Pauline Dickens, that’s for sure. She’s ready to start nailing hex signs on her door.’

‘In an era of Watergate and oil depletion, she’s an exception,’ Jimmy said.

They drove the rest of the way without conversation. Green’s Mortuary was at the north end of Cumberland, and two hearses were parked around back, between the rear door of the nondenominational chapel and a high board fence. Jimmy turned off the ignition and looked at Ben. ‘Ready?’

‘I guess.’

They got out.