Salem's Lot

2

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s took around.’ He clutched the stake very tightly and for just a moment looked longingly back at the window.

She moved slowly toward the hall and he came after her. Just outside the door there was a small end table with a book on it. Mark picked it up.

‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Do you know Latin?’

‘A little, from high school.’

‘What’s this mean?’ He showed her the binding.

She sounded the words out, a frown creasing her forehead. Then she shook her head. ‘Don’t know.’

He opened the book at random, and flinched. There was a picture of a naked man holding a child’s gutted body toward something you couldn’t see. He put the book down, glad to let go of it-the stretched binding felt uncomfortably familiar under his hand-and they went down the hallway toward the kitchen together. The shadows were more prominent here. The sun had gotten around to the other side of the house.

‘Do you smell it?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘It’s worse back here, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

He was remembering the cold-pantry his mother had kept in the other house, and how one year three bushel baskets of tomatoes had gone bad down there in the dark. This smell was like that, like the smell of tomatoes decaying into putrescence.

Susan whispered: ‘God, I’m so scared.’

His hand groped out, found hers, and they locked tightly.

The kitchen linoleum was old and gritty and pocked, worn black in front of the old porcelain-tub sink. A large, scarred table stood in the middle of the floor, and on it was a yellow plate, a knife and fork, and a scrap of raw hamburger.

The cellar door was standing ajar.

‘That’s where we have to go,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ she said weakly.

The door was open just a crack and the light did not penetrate at all. The tongue of darkness seemed to lick hungrily at the kitchen, waiting for night to come so it could swallow it whole. That quarter inch of darkness was hideous, unspeakable in its possibilities. She stood beside Mark, helpless and moveless.

Then he stepped forward and pulled the door open and stood for a moment, looking down. She saw a muscle jump beneath his jaw.

‘I think-’ he began, and she heard something behind her and turned, suddenly feeling slow, feeling too late. It was Straker. He was grinning.

Mark turned, saw, and tried to dive around him. Straker’s fist crashed into his chin and he knew no more.