Ben thought his face looked drawn and cruelly aged, for the first time an old man's face. Lying still, with the loosened flesh of his neck rising out of the hospital johnny, he seemed vulnerable and defenseless. If it's all true, Ben thought, these people are doing you no favors, Matt. If it's all true, then we're in the citadel of unbelief, where nightmares are dispatched with Lysol and scalpels and chemotherapy rather than with stakes and Bibles and wild mountain thyme. They're happy with their life support units and hypos and enema bags filled with barium solution. If the column of truth has a hole in it, they neither know nor care.
He walked to the head of the bed and turned Matt's head with gentle fingers. There were no marks on the skin of his neck; the flesh was blameless.
He hesitated a moment longer, then went to the closet and opened it. Matt's clothes hung there, and hooked over the closet door's inside knob was the crucifix he had been wearing when Susan visited him. It hung from a filigreed chain that gleamed softly in the room's subdued light.
Ben took it back to the bed and put it around Matt's neck.
"Here, what are you doing?"
A nurse had come in with a pitcher of water and a bedpan with a towel spread decorously over the opening.
"I'm putting his cross around his neck," Ben said.
"Is he a Catholic?"
"He is now," Ben said somberly.
EIGHT
Night had fallen when a soft rap came at the kitchen door of the Sawyer house on the Deep Cut Road. Bonnie Sawyer, with a small smile on her lips, went to answer it. She was wearing a short ruffled apron tied at the waist, high heels, and nothing else.
When she opened the door, Corey Bryant's eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. "Buh," he said. "Buh...Buh...Bonnie?"
"What's the matter, Corey?" She put a hand on the doorjamb with light deliberation, pulling her bare breasts up to their sauciest angle. At the same time she crossed her feet demurely, modeling her legs for him.
"Jeez, Bonnie, what if it had been--"
"The man from the telephone company?" she asked, and giggled. She took one of his hands and placed it on the firm flesh of her right breast. "Want to read my meter?"
With a grunt that held a note of desperation (the drowning man going down for the third time, clutching a mammary instead of a straw), he pulled her to him. His hands cupped her buttocks, and the starched apron crackled briskly between them.
"Oh my," she said, wiggling against him. "Are you going to test my receiver, Mr Telephone Man? I've been waiting for an important call all day--"
He picked her up and kicked the door shut behind him. She did not need to direct him to the bedroom. He knew his way.
"You're sure he's not going to be home?" he asked.
Her eyes gleamed in the darkness. "Why, who can you mean, Mr Telephone Man? Not my handsome hubby...he's in Burlington, Vermont."
He put her down on the bed crossways, with her legs dangling off the side.
"Turn on the light," she said, her voice suddenly slow and heavy. "I want to see what you're doing."
He turned on the bedside lamp and looked down at her. The apron had been pulled away to one side. Her eyes were heavy-lidded and warm, the pupils large and brilliant.
"Take that thing off," he said, gesturing.
"You take it off," she said. "You can figure out the knots, Mr Telephone Man."
He bent to do it. She always made him feel like a dry-mouth kid stepping up to the plate for the first time, and his hands always trembled when they got near her, as if her very flesh was transmitting a strong current into the air all around her. She never left his mind completely anymore. She was lodged in there like a sore inside the cheek which the tongue keeps poking and testing. She even cavorted through his dreams, golden-skinned, blackly exciting. Her invention knew no bounds.
"No, on your knees," she said. "Get on your knees for me."
He dropped clumsily onto his knees and crawled toward her, reaching for the apron ties. She put one high-heeled foot on each shoulder. He bent to kiss the inside of her thigh, the flesh firm and slightly warm under his lips.
"That's right, Corey, that's just right, keep going up, keep--"
"Well, this is cute, ain't it?"
Bonnie Sawyer screamed.
Corey Bryant looked up, blinking and confused.
Reggie Sawyer was leaning in the bedroom doorway. He was holding a shotgun cradled loosely over his forearm, barrels pointed at the floor.
Corey felt a warm gush as his bladder let go.
"So it's true," Reggie marveled. He stepped into the room. He was smiling. "How about that? I owe that tosspot Mickey Sylvester a case of Budweiser. Goddamn."
Bonnie found her voice first.
"Reggie, listen. It isn't what you think. He broke in, he was like a crazy-man, he, he was--"
"Shut up, cunt." He was still smiling. It was a gentle smile. He was quite big. He was wearing the same steel-colored suit he had been wearing when she had kissed him good-by two hours before.
"Listen," Corey said weakly. His mouth felt full of loose spit. "Please. Please don't kill me. Not even if I deserve it. You don't want to go to jail. Not over this. Beat me up, I got that coming, but please don't--"
"Get up off your knees, Perry Mason," Reggie Sawyer said, still smiling his gentle smile. "Your fly's unzipped."
"Listen, Mr Sawyer--"
"Oh, call me Reggie," Reggie said, smiling gently. "We're almost best buddies. I've even been getting your sloppy seconds, isn't that right?"
"Reggie, this isn't what you think, he raped me--"
Reggie looked at her and his smile was gentle and benign. "If you say another word, I'm going to jam this up inside you and let you have some special airmail."
Bonnie began to moan. Her face had gone the color of unflavored yogurt.
"Mr Sawyer...Reggie..."
"Your name's Bryant, ain't it? Your daddy's Pete Bryant, ain't he?"
Corey's head bobbed madly in agreement. "Yeah, that's right. That's just right. Listen--"
"I used to sell him number two fuel oil when I was driving for Jim Webber," Reggie said, smiling with gentle reminiscence. "That was four or five years before I met this high-box bitch here. Your daddy know you're here?"
"No, sir, it'd break his heart. You can beat me up, I got that coming, but if you kill me my daddy'd find out and I bet it'd kill him dead as shit and then you'd be responsible for two--"
"No, I bet he don't know. Come on out in the living room a minute. We got to talk this over. Come on." He smiled gently at Corey to show him that he meant him no harm and then his eyes flicked to Bonnie, who was staring at him with bulging eyes. "You stay right there, puss, or you ain't never going to know how Secret Storm comes out. Come on, Bryant." He gestured with the shotgun.
Corey walked out into the living room ahead of Reggie, staggering a little. His legs were rubber. A patch between his shoulder blades began to itch insanely. That's where he's going to put it, he thought, right between the shoulder blades. I wonder if I'll live long enough to see my guts hit the wall--
"Turn around," Reggie said.
Corey turned around. He was beginning to blubber. He didn't want to blubber, but he couldn't seem to help it. He supposed it didn't matter if he blubbered or not. He had already wet himself.
The shotgun was no longer dangling casually over Reggie's forearm. The double barrels were pointing directly at Corey's face. The twin bores seemed to swell and yawn until they were bottomless wells.
"You know what you been doin'?" Reggie asked. The smile was gone. His face was very grave.
Corey didn't answer. It was a stupid question. He did keep on blubbering, however.
"You slept with another guy's wife, Corey. That your name?"
Corey nodded, tears streaming down his cheeks.
"You know what happens to guys like that if they get caught?"
Corey nodded.
"Grab the barrel of this shotgun, Corey. Very easy. It's got a five-pou
nd pull and I got about three on it now. So pretend...oh, pretend you're grabbing my wife's tit."
Corey reached out one shaking hand and placed it on the barrel of the shotgun. The metal was cool against his flushed palm. A long, agonized groan came out of his throat. Nothing else was left. Pleading was done.
"Put it in your mouth, Corey. Both barrels. Yes, that's right. Easy!...that's okay. Yes, your mouth's big enough. Slip it right in there. You know all about slipping it in, don't you?"
Corey's jaws were open to their widest accommodation. The barrels of the shotgun were pushed back nearly to his palate, and his terrified stomach was trying to retch. The steel was oily against his teeth.
"Close your eyes, Corey."
Corey only stared at him, his swimming eyes as big as tea saucers.
Reggie smiled his gentle smile again. "Close those baby blue eyes, Corey."
Corey closed them.
His sphincter let go. He was only dimly aware of it.
Reggie pulled both triggers. The hammers fell on empty chambers with a double click-click.
Corey fell onto the floor in a dead faint.
Reggie looked down at him for a moment, smiling gently, and then reversed the shotgun so the butt end was up. He turned to the bedroom.
"Here I come, Bonnie. Ready or not."
Bonnie Sawyer began to scream.
NINE
Corey Bryant was stumbling up the Deep Cut Road toward where he had left his phone truck parked. He stank. His eyes were bloodshot and glassy. There was a large bump on the back of his head where he had struck it on the floor when he fainted. His boots made dragging, scuffing sounds on the soft shoulder. He tried to think about the scuffing sounds and nothing else, most notably about the sudden and utter ruin of his life. It was quarter past eight.
Reggie Sawyer had still been smiling gently when he ushered Corey out the kitchen door. Bonnie's steady, racking sobs had come from the bedroom, counterpointing his words. "You go on up the road like a good boy, now. Get in your truck and go back to town. There's a bus that comes in from Lewiston for Boston at quarter to ten. From Boston you can get a bus to anywhere in the country. That bus stops at Spencer's. You be on it. Because if I ever see you again, I'm going to kill you. She'll be all right now. She's broke in now. She's gonna have to wear pants and long-sleeve blouses for a couple of weeks, but I didn't mark her face. You just want to get out of 'salem's Lot before you clean yourself up and start thinking you are a man again."
And now here he was, walking up this road, about to do just what Reggie Sawyer said. He could go south from Boston...somewhere. He had a little over a thousand dollars saved in the bank. His mother had always said he was a very saving soul. He could wire for the money, live on it until he could get a job and begin the years-long job of forgetting this night--the taste of the gun barrel, the smell of his own shit satcheled in his trousers.
"Hello, Mr Bryant."
Corey gave a stifled scream and stared wildly into the dark, at first seeing nothing. The wind was moving in the trees, making shadows jump and dance across the road. Suddenly his eyes made out a more solid shadow, standing by the stone wall that ran between the road and Carl Smith's back pasture. The shadow had a manlike form, but there was something...something...
"Who are you?"
"A friend who sees much, Mr Bryant."
The form shifted and came from the shadows. In the faint light, Corey saw a middle-aged man with a black mustache and deep, bright eyes.
"You've been ill used, Mr Bryant."
"How do you know my business?"
"I know a great deal. It's my business to know. Smoke?"
"Thanks." He took the offered cigarette gratefully. He put it between his lips. The stranger struck a light, and in the glow of the wooden match he saw that the stranger's cheekbones were high and Slavic, his forehead pale and bony, his dark hair swept straight back. Then the light was gone and Corey was dragging harsh smoke into his lungs. It was a dago cigarette, but any cigarette was better than none. He began to feel a little calmer.
"Who are you?" he asked again.
The stranger laughed, a startlingly rich and full-bodied sound that drifted off on the slight breeze like the smoke of Corey's cigarette.
"Names!" he said. "Oh, the American insistence on names! Let me sell you an auto because I am Bill Smith! Eat at this one! Watch that one on television! My name is Barlow, if that eases you." And he burst into laughter again, his eyes twinkling and shining. Corey felt a smile creep onto his own lips and could scarcely believe it. His troubles seemed distant, unimportant, in comparison to the derisive good humor in those dark eyes.
"You're a foreigner, aren't you?" Corey asked.
"I am from many lands; but to me this country...this town...seems full of foreigners. You see? Eh? Eh?" He burst into that full-throated crow of laughter again, and this time Corey found himself joining in. The laughter escaped his throat under full pressure, rising a bit with delayed hysteria.
"Foreigners, yes," he resumed, "but beautiful, enticing foreigners, bursting with vitality, full-blooded and full of life. Do you know how beautiful the people of your country and your town are, Mr Bryant?"
Corey only chuckled, slightly embarrassed. He did not look away from the stranger's face, however. It held him rapt.
"They have never known hunger or want, the people of this country. It has been two generations since they knew anything close to it, and even then it was like a voice in a distant room. They think they have known sadness, but their sadness is that of a child who has spilled his ice cream on the grass at a birthday party. There is no...how is the English?...attenuation in them. They spill each other's blood with great vigor. Do you believe it? Do you see?"
"Yes," Corey said. Looking into the stranger's eyes, he could see a great many things, all of them wonderful.
"The country is an amazing paradox. In other lands, when a man eats to his fullest day after day, that man becomes fat...sleepy...piggish. But in this land...it seems the more you have the more aggressive you become. You see? Like Mr Sawyer. With so much; yet he begrudges you a few crumbs from his table. Also like a child at a birthday party, who will push away another baby even though he himself can eat no more. Is it not so?"
"Yes," Corey said. Barlow's eyes were so large, and so understanding. It was all a matter of--
"It is all a matter of perspective, is it not?"
"Yes!" Corey exclaimed. The man had put his finger on the right, the exact, the perfect, word. The cigarette dropped unnoticed from his fingers and lay smoldering on the road.
"I might have bypassed such a rustic community as this," the stranger said reflectively. "I might have gone to one of your great and teeming cities. Bah!" He drew himself up suddenly, and his eyes flashed. "What do I know of cities? I should be run over by a hansom crossing the street! I should choke on nasty air! I should come in contact with sleek, stupid dilettantes whose concerns are...what do you say? inimical?...yes, inimical to me. How should a poor rustic like myself deal with the hollow sophistication of a great city...even an American city? No! And no and no! I spit on your cities!"
"Oh yes!" Corey whispered.
"So I have come here, to a town which was first told of to me by a most brilliant man, a former townsman himself, now lamentably deceased. The folk here are still rich and full-blooded, folk who are stuffed with the aggression and darkness so necessary to...there is no English for it. Pokol; vurderlak; eyalik. Do you follow?"
"Yes," Corey whispered.
"The people have not cut off the vitality which flows from their mother, the earth, with a shell of concrete and cement. Their hands are plunged into the very waters of life. They have ripped the life from the earth, whole and beating! Is it not true?"
"Yes!"
The stranger chuckled kindly and put a hand on Corey's shoulder. "You are a good boy. A fine, strong boy. I don't think you want to leave this so-perfect town, do you?"
"No..." Corey whispered, but he was su
ddenly doubtful. Fear was returning. But surely it was unimportant. This man would allow no harm to come to him.
"And so you shall not. Ever again."
Corey stood trembling, rooted to the spot, as Barlow's head inclined toward him.
"And you shall yet have your vengeance on those who would fill themselves while others want."
Corey Bryant sank into a great forgetful river, and that river was time, and its waters were red.
TEN
It was nine o'clock and the Saturday night movie was coming on the hospital TV bolted to the wall when the phone beside Ben's bed rang. It was Susan, and her voice was barely under control.
"Ben, Floyd Tibbits is dead. He died in his cell some time last night. Dr Cody says acute anemia--but I went with Floyd! He had high blood pressure. That's why the Army wouldn't take him!"
"Slow down," Ben said, sitting up.
"There's more. A family named McDougall out in the Bend. A little ten-month-old baby died out there. They took Mrs McDougall away in restraints."
"Have you heard how the baby died?"
"My mother said Mrs Evans came over when she heard Sandra McDougall screaming, and Mrs Evans called old Dr Plowman. Plowman didn't say anything, but Mrs Evans told my mother that she couldn't see a thing wrong with the baby...except it was dead."
"And both Matt and I, the crackpots, just happen to be out of town and out of action," Ben said, more to himself than to Susan. "Almost as if it were planned."
"There's more."
"What?"
"Carl Foreman is missing. And so is the body of Mike Ryerson."
"I think that's it," he heard himself saying. "That has to be it. I'm getting out of here tomorrow."
"Will they let you go so soon?"
"They aren't going to have anything to say about it." He spoke the words absently; his mind had already moved on to another subject. "Have you got a crucifix?"
"Me?" She sounded startled and a little amused. "Gosh, no."
"I'm not joking with you, Susan--I was never more serious. Is there anyplace where you can get one at this hour?"
"Well, there's Marie Boddin. I could walk--"
"No. Stay off the streets. Stay in the house. Make one yourself, even if it only means gluing two sticks together. Leave it by your bed."