Salem's Lot

3

‘-and I couldn’t go in,’ he finished. Couldn’t. I sat on my bed for nearly four hours. Then I crept downstairs like a thief and called you. What do you think?’

Ben had taken the crucifix off; now he poked at the glimmering heap of fine-link chain with a reflective finger. It was almost five o’clock and the eastern sky was rose with dawn. The fluorescent bar overhead had gone pallid.

‘I think we’d better go up to your guest room and look. That’s all, I think, right now.’

‘The whole thing seems like a madman’s nightmare now, with the light coming in the window.’ He laughed shakily. ‘I hope it is. I hope Mike is sleeping like a baby.’

‘Well, let’s go see.’

Matt firmed his lips with an effort. ‘Okay.’ He dropped his eyes to the table and then looked at Ben questioningly.

‘Sure,’ Ben said, and slipped the crucifix over Matt’s neck.

‘It actually does make me feel better.’ He laughed self-consciously. ‘Do you suppose they’ll let me wear it when they cart me off to Augusta?’

Ben said, ‘Do you want the gun?’

‘No, I guess not. I’d stick it in the top of my pants and blow my balls off.’

They went upstairs, Ben in the lead. There was a short hall at the top, running both ways. At one end, the door to Matt’s bedroom stood open, a pale sheaf of lamplight spilling out onto the orange runner.

‘Down at the other end,’ Matt said

Ben walked down the hall and stood in front of the guest room door. He did not believe the monstrosity Matt had implied, but nonetheless he found himself engulfed by a wave of the blackest fright he had ever known.

You open the door and he’s hanging from the beam, the face swelled and puffed and black, and then the eyes open and they’re bulging in the sockets but they’re SEEING you and they’re glad you came -

The memory rose up in -almost total sensory reference, and for the moment of its totality he was paralyzed. He could even smell the plaster and the wild odor of nesting animals. It seemed to him that the plain varnished wood door of Matt Burke’s guest room stood between him and all the secrets of hell.

Then he twisted the knob and pushed the door inward. Matt was at his shoulder, and he was holding Eva’s crucifix tightly.

The guest room window faced directly east, and the top arc of the sun had just cleared the horizon. The first pellucid rays shone directly through the window, isolating a few golden motes as it fell in a shaft to the white linen sheet that was pulled up to Mike Ryerson’s chest.

Ben looked at Matt and nodded. ‘He’s all right,’ he whispered. ‘Sleeping.’

Matt said tonelessly, ‘The window’s open. It was closed and locked. I made sure of it.’

Ben’s eyes centered on the upper hem of the flawlessly laundered sheet that covered Mike. There was a single small drop of blood on it, dried to maroon.

‘I don’t think he’s breathing,’ Matt said.

Ben took two steps forward and then stopped. ‘Mike? Mike Ryerson. Wake up, Mike!’

No response. Mike’s lashes lay cleanly against his cheeks. His hair was tousled loosely across his brow, and Ben thought that in the first delicate light he was more than handsome; he was as beautiful as the profile, of a Greek statue. Light color bloomed in his cheeks, and his body held none of the deathly pallor Matt had mentioned-only healthy skin tones.

‘Of course he’s breathing,’ he said a trifle impatiently. ‘Just fast asleep. Mike-’ He stretched out a hand and shook Ryerson slightly. Mike’s left arm, which had been crossed loosely on his chest, fell limply over the side of the bed and the knuckles rapped on the floor, like a request for entry.

Matt stepped forward and picked up the limp arm. He pressed his index finger over the wrist. ‘No pulse.’

He started to drop it, remembered the grisly knocking noise the knuckles had made, and put the arm across Ryerson’s chest. It started to fall anyway, and he put it back more firmly with a grimace.

Ben couldn’t believe it. He was sleeping, had to be. The good color, the obvious suppleness of the muscles, the lips half parted as if to draw breath… unreality washed over him. He placed his wrist against Ryerson’s shoulder and found the skin cool.

He moistened his finger and held it in front of those half-open lips. Nothing. Not a feather of breath.

He and Matt looked at each other.

‘The marks on the neck?’ Matt asked.

Ben took Ryerson’s jaw in: his hands and turned it gently until the exposed cheek lay against the pillow. The movement dislodged the left arm, and the knuckles rapped the floor again.

There were no marks on Mike Ryerson’s neck.