Salem's Lot - Stephen King [105]
‘He says… that he’s my baby again. My own son, at my breast again. And I give him to suck and… and then a feeling of sweetness with an undertone of bitterness, so much like it was before he was weaned but after he was beginning to get teeth and he would nip-oh, this must sound awful. Like one of those psychiatrist things.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘No.’
He knelt beside her and she put her arms around his neck and wept weakly. Her arms were cold. ‘No doctor, Tony, please. I’ll rest today.’
‘All right,’ he said. Giving in to her made him feel uneasy.
‘It’s such a lovely dream, Tony,’ she said, speaking against his throat. The movement of her lips, the muffled hardness of her teeth beneath them, was amazingly sensual. He was getting an erection. ‘I wish I could have it again tonight.’
‘Maybe you will,’ he said, stroking her hair. ‘Maybe you will at that.’
4
‘My God, don’t you look good,’ Ben said.
Against the hospital world of solid whites and anemic greens, Susan Norton looked very good indeed. She was wearing a bright yellow blouse with black vertical stripes and a short blue denim skirt.
‘You, too,’ she said, and crossed the room to him.
He kissed her deeply, and his hand slid to the warm curve of her hip and rubbed.
‘Hey,’ she said, breaking the kiss. ‘They kick you out for that.’
‘Not me.’
‘No, me.’
‘They looked at each other.
‘I love you, Ben.’
‘I love you, too.’
‘If I could jump in with you right now-’
‘Just a second, let me pull back the spread.’
‘How would I explain it to those little candy-stripers?’
‘Tell them you’re giving me the bedpan.’
She shook her head, smiling, and pulled up a chair. ‘A lot has happened in town, Ben.’
He sobered. ‘Like what?’
She hesitated. ‘I hardly know how to tell you, or what I believe myself. I’m mixed up, to say the least.’
‘Well, spill it and let me sort it out.’
‘What’s your condition, Ben?’
‘Mending. Not serious. Matt’s doctor, a guy named Cody-’
‘No. Your mind. How much of this Count Dracula stuff do you believe?’
‘Oh. That. Matt told you everything’
‘Matt’s here in the hospital. One floor up in Intensive Care.’
‘What?’ He was up on his elbows. ‘What’s the matter with him?’
‘Heart attack.’
‘Heart attack!’
‘Dr Cody says his condition is stable. He’s listed as serious, but that’s mandatory for the first forty-eight hours. I was there when it happened.’
‘Tell me everything you remember, Susan.’
The pleasure had gone out of his face. It was watchful, intent, fine-drawn. Lost in the white room and the white sheets and the white hospital johnny, he again struck her as a man drawn to a taut, perhaps fraying edge.
‘You didn’t answer my question, Ben.’
‘About how I took Matt’s story?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let me answer you by saying what you think. You think the Marsten House has buggered my brain to the point where I’m seeing bats in my own belfry, to coin a phrase. Is that a fair estimate?’
‘Yes, I suppose that’s it. But I never thought about it in such… such harsh terms.’
‘I know that, Susan. Let me trace the progression of my thoughts for you, if I can. It may do me some good to sort them out. I can tell from your own face that something has knocked you back a couple of steps. Is that right?’
‘Yes… but I don’t believe, can’t-’
‘Stop a minute. That word can’t blocks up everything. That’s where I was stuck. That absolute, goddamned imperative, word. Can’t. I didn’t believe Matt, Susan, because such things can’t be true. But I couldn’t find a hole in his story any way I looked at it. The most obvious conclusion was that he had jumped the tracks somewhere, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he seem crazy to you?’
‘No. No, but-’
‘Stop.’ He held up his hand. ‘You’re thinking can’t thoughts, aren’t you?’
‘I suppose I am,’ she said.
‘He didn’t seem crazy or irrational to me, either. And we both know that paranoid fantasies or persecution complexes just don’t appear overnight. They grow over a period of time. They need careful watering, care, and feeding. Have you ever heard any talk in town about Matt having a screw loose? Ever heard Matt say that