Salem's Lot

5

Some time in the darkness before Monday’s dawn.

Scratching at the window.

He came up from sleep with no pause, no intervening period of drowsiness or orientation. The insanities of sleep and waking had become remarkably similar.

The white face in the darkness outside the glass was Susan’s.

‘Mark… let me in.’

He got out of bed. The floor was cold under his bare feet. He was shivering.

‘Go away,’ he said tonelessly. He could see that she was still wearing the same blouse, the same slacks. I wonder if her folks are worried, he thought. If they’ve called the police.

‘It’s not so bad, Mark,’ she said, and her eyes were flat and obsidian. She smiled, showing her teeth, which shone in sharp relief below her pale gums. ‘It’s ever so nice. Let me in, I’ll show you. I’ll kiss you, Mark. I’ll kiss you all over like your mother never did.’

‘Go away,’ he repeated.

‘One of us will get you sooner or later,’ she said. ‘There are lots more of us now. Let it be me, Mark. I’m… I’m hungry.’ She tried to smile, but it turned into a nightshade grimace that made his bones cold.

He held up his cross and pressed it against the window.

She hissed, as if scalded, and let go of the window frame. For a moment she hung suspended in air, her body becoming misty and indistinct. Then, gone. But not before he saw (or thought he saw) a look of desperate unhappiness on her face.

The night was still and silent again.

There are lots more of us now.

His thoughts turned to his parents, sleeping in thoughtless peril below him, and dread gripped his bowels.

Some men knew, she had said, or suspected.

Who?

The writer, of course. The one she dated. Mears, his name was. He lived at Eva’s boardinghouse. Writers knew a lot. It would be him. And he would have to get to Mears before she did-

He stopped on his way back to bed.

If she hadn’t already.