Salem's Lot

2

At first Ben thought he had the wrong house.

When Matt Burke invited him for supper he was quite sure he had said the house was the small gray one after the red brick, but there was rock ‘n’ roll music pouring from this one in a steady stream.

He used the tarnished brass knocker, got no answer, and rapped again. This time the music was turned down and a voice that was unmistakably Matt’s yelled, ‘It’s open! Come on in!’

He did, looking around curiously. The front door opened directly on a small living room furnished in Early American Junk Shop and dominated by an incredibly ancient Motorola TV. A KLH sound system with quad speakers was putting out the music.

Matt came out of the kitchen, outfitted in a red-and-white-checked apron. The odor of spaghetti sauce wandered out after him.

‘Sorry about the noise,’ Matt said. ‘I’m a little deaf. I turn it up.’

‘Good music.’

‘I’ve been a rock fan ever since Buddy Holly. Lovely music. Are you hungry?’

‘Yeah,’ Ben said. ‘Thanks again for asking me. I’ve eaten out more since I came back to ‘salem’s Lot than I have in the last five years, I guess.’

‘It’s a friendly town. Hope you don’t mind eating in the kitchen. An antique man came by a couple of months ago and offered me two hundred dollars for my dining room table. I haven’t gotten around to getting another one.’

‘I don’t mind. I’m a kitchen eater from a long line of kitchen eaters.’

The kitchen was astringently neat. On the small four-burner stove, a pot of spaghetti sauce simmered and a colander full of spaghetti stood steaming. A small drop-leaf table was set with a couple of mismatched plates and glasses which had animated cartoon figures dancing around the rims-jelly glasses, Ben thought with amusement. The last constraint of being with a stranger dropped away and he began to feel at home.

‘There’s Bourbon, rye, and vodka in the cupboard over the sink,’ Matt said, pointing. ‘There’s some mixers in the fridge. Nothing too fancy, I’m afraid.’

‘Bourbon and tap water will do me.’

‘Go to it. I’m going to serve this mess up.’

Mixing his drink, Ben said, ‘I liked your kids. They asked good questions. Tough, but good.’

‘Like where do you get your ideas?’ Matt asked, mimicking Ruthie Crockett’s sexy little-girl lisp.

‘She’s quite a piece.’

‘She is indeed. There’s a bottle of Lancers in the icebox behind the pineapple chunks. I got it special.’

‘Say, you shouldn’t-’

‘Oh come, Ben. We hardly see best-selling authors in the Lot every day.’

‘That’s a little extravagant.’

Ben finished the rest of his drink, took a plate of spaghetti from Matt, ladled sauce over it, and twirled a forkful against his spoon. ‘Fantastic,’ he said. ‘Mamma mia.’

‘But of course,’ Matt said.

Ben looked down at his plate, which had emptied with amazing rapidity. He wiped his mouth a little guiltily.

‘More?’

‘Half a plate, if it’s okay. It’s great spaghetti.’

Matt brought him a whole plate. ‘If we don’t eat it, my cat will. He’s a miserable animal. Weighs twenty pounds and waddles to his dish.’

‘Lord, how did I miss him?’

Matt smiled. ‘He’s cruising. Is your new book a novel?’

‘A fictionalized sort of thing,’ Ben said. ‘To be honest, I’m writing it for money. Art is wonderful, but just once I’d like to pull a big number out of the hat.’

‘What are the prospects?’

‘Murky,’ Ben said.

‘Let’s go in the living room,’ Matt said. ‘The chairs are lumpy but more comfortable than these kitchen horrors. Did you get enough to eat?’

‘Does the Pope wear a tall hat?’

In the living room Matt put on a stack of albums and went to work firing up a huge, knotted calabash pipe. After he had it going to his satisfaction (sitting in the middle of a huge raft of smoke), he looked up at Ben.

‘No,’ he said. ‘You can’t see it from here.’

Ben looked around sharply. ‘What?’

‘The Marsten House. I’ll bet you a nickel that s what you were looking for.’

Ben laughed uneasily. ‘No bet.’

‘Is your book set in a town like ‘salem’s Lot?’

‘Town and people,’ Ben nodded. ‘There are a series of sex murders and mutilations. I’m going to open with one of them and describe it in progress, from start to finish, in minute detail. Rub the reader’s nose in it. I was outlining that part when Ralphie Glick disappeared and it gave me… well, it gave me a nasty turn.’

‘You’re basing all of this on the disappearances of the thirties in the township?’

Ben looked at him closely. ‘You know about that?’

‘Oh yes. A good many of the older residents do, too. I wasn’t in the Lot then, but Mabel Werts and Glynis Mayberry and Milt Crossen were. Some of them have made the connection already.’

‘What connection?’

‘Come now, Ben. The connection is pretty obvious, isn’t it?’

I suppose so. The last time the house was occupied, four kids disappeared over a period of ten years. Now it’s occupied again after a thirty-six-year period, and Ralphie Glick disappears right off the bat.’

‘Do you think it’s a coincidence?’

‘I suppose so,’ Ben said cautiously. Susan’s words of caution were very much in his ears. ‘But it’s funny. I checked through the copies of the Ledger from 1939 to 1970 just to get a comparison. Three kids disappeared. One ran off and was later found working in Boston-he was sixteen and looked older. Another one was fished out of the Androscoggin a month later. And one was found buried off Route 116 in Gates, apparently the victim of a hit-and-run. All explained.’

‘Perhaps the Glick boy’s disappearance will be explained, too.’

‘Maybe.’

‘But you don’t think so. What do you know about this man Straker?’

‘Nothing at all,’ Ben said. ‘I’m not even sure I want to meet him. I’ve got a viable book working right now, and it’s bound up in a certain concept of the Marsten House and inhabitants of that house. Discovering Straker to be a perfectly ordinary businessman, as I’m sure he is, might knock me off kilter.’

‘I don’t think that would be the case. He opened the store today, you know. Susie Norton and her mother dropped by, I understand… hell, most of the women in town got in long enough to get a peek. According to Dell Markey, an unimpeachable source, even Mabel Werts hobbled down. The man is supposed to be quite striking. A dandy dresser, extremely graceful, totally bald, and charming. I’m told he actually sold some pieces.’

Ben grinned. ‘Wonderful. Has anyone seen the other half of the team?’

‘He’s on a buying trip, supposedly.’

‘Why supposedly?’

Matt shrugged restlessly. ‘I don’t know. The whole thing is probably perfectly on the level, but the house makes me nervous. Almost as if the two of them had sought it out. As you said, it’s like an idol, squatting there on top of its hill.’

Ben nodded.

‘And on top of everything else, we have another child disappearance. And Ralphie’s brother, Danny. Dead at twelve. Cause of death pernicious anemia.’

‘What’s odd about that? It’s unfortunate, of course-’

‘My doctor is a young fellow named Jimmy Cody, Ben. I had him in school. He was a little heller then, a good doctor now. This is gossip, mind you. Hearsay.’

‘Okay.’

‘I was in for a check-up, and happened to mention that it was a shame about the Glick boy, dreadful for his parents on top of the other one’s vanishing act. Jimmy said he had consulted with George Gorby on the case. The boy was anemic, all right. He said that a red cell count on a boy Danny’s age should run anywhere from eighty-five to ninety-eight per cent. Danny’s was down to forty-five per cent.’

‘Wow,’ Ben said.

‘They were giving him B12 injections and calf liver and it seemed to be working fine. They were going to release him the next day. And boom, he dropped dead.’

‘You don’t want to let Mabel Werts get that,’ Ben said. ‘She’ll be seeing natives with poison blowguns in the park.’

‘I haven’t mentioned it to anyone but you. And I don’t intend to. And by the way, Ben, I believe I’d keep the subject matter of your book quiet, if I were you. If Loretta Starcher asks what you’re writing about, tell her it’s architecture.’

‘I’ve already been given that advice.’

‘By Susan Norton, no doubt.’

Ben looked at his watch and stood up. ‘Speaking of Susan-’

‘The courting male in full plumage,’ Matt said. ‘As it happens, I have to go up to the school. We are reblocking the third act of the school play, a comedy of great social significance called Charley’s Problem.’

‘What is his problem?’

‘Pimples,’ Matt said, and grinned.

They walked to the door together, Matt pausing to pull on a faded school letter jacket. Ben thought he had the figure of an aging track coach rather than that of a sedentary English teacher-if you ignored his face, which was intelligent yet dreamy, and somehow innocent.

‘Listen,’ Matt said as they went out onto the stoop, ‘what have you got on the stove for Friday night?’

‘I don’t know,’ Ben said. ‘I thought Susan and I might go to a movie. That’s about the long and short of it around here.’

‘I can think of something else,’ Matt said. ‘Perhaps we should form a committee of three and take a drive up to the Marsten House and introduce ourselves to the new squire. On behalf of the town, of course.’

‘Of course,’ Ben said. ‘It would be only common courtesy, wouldn’t it?’

‘A rustic welcome wagon,’ Matt agreed.

‘I’ll mention it to Susan tonight. I think she’ll go for it.’

‘Good.’

Matt raised his hand and waved as Ben’s Citroën purred away. Ben tooted twice in acknowledgment, and then his taillights disappeared over the hill.

Matt stood on his stoop for almost a full minute after the sound of the car had died away, his hands poked into his jacket pockets, his eyes turned toward the house on the hill.