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By Root 487 0

still warm from her foot. Carrying it, he had gone two steps further and had seen her sprawled legs under the truck’s front wheels, clad in the yellow Wranglers she had pulled on with such careless and laughing ease back at the apartment. It was impossible to believe that the girl who had pulled on those slacks was dead, yet the acceptance was there, in his belly, his mouth, his balls. He had groaned aloud, and that was when the tabloid photographer had snapped his picture for Mabel’s paper. One shoe off, one shoe on. People looking at her bare foot as if they had never seen one before. He had taken two steps away and leaned over and -

‘I’m going to be sick,’ he said.

‘That’s all right.’

Ben stepped behind his Citroën and doubled over, holding on to the door handle. He closed his eyes, feeling darkness wash over him, and in the darkness Susan’s face appeared, smiling at him and looking at him with those lovely deep eyes. He opened his eyes again. It occurred to him that the kid might be lying, or mixed up, or an out-and-out psycho. Yet the thought brought him no hope. The kid was not set up like that. He turned back and looked into the kid’s face and read concern there-nothing else.

‘Come on,’ he said.

The boy got in the car and they drove off. Eva Miller watched them go from the kitchen window, her brow creased. Something bad was happening. She felt it, was filled with it, the same way she had been filled with an obscure and cloudy dread on the day her husband died.

She got up and dialed Loretta Starcher. The phone rang over and over without answer until she put it back in the cradle. Where could she be? Certainly not at the library. It was closed Mondays.

She sat, looking pensively at the telephone. She felt that some great disaster was in the wind - perhaps something as terrible as the fire of ‘51.

At last she picked up the phone again and called Mabel Werts, who was filled with the gossip of the hour and eager for more. The town hadn’t known such a weekend in years.

4

Ben drove aimlessly and without direction as Mark told his story. He told it well, beginning with the night Danny Glick had come to his window and ending with his nocturnal visitor early this morning.

‘Are you sure it was Susan?’ he asked. Mark Petrie nodded.

Ben pulled an abrupt U-turn and accelerated back up Jointner Avenue.

‘Where are you going? To the-’

‘Not there. Not yet.

5

‘Wait. Stop.’

Ben pulled over and they got-out together. They had been driving slowly down the Brooks Road, at the bottom of Marsten’s Hill. The wood-road where Homer McCaslin had spotted Susan’s Vega. They had both caught the glint of sun on metal. They walked up the disused road together, not speaking. There were deep and dusty wheel ruts, and the grass grew high between them. A bird twitted somewhere.

They found the car shortly.

Ben hesitated, then halted. He felt sick to his stomach again. The sweat on his arms was old.

‘Go look,’ he said.

Mark went down to the car and leaned in the driver’s side window. ‘Keys are in it,’ he called back.

Ben began to walk toward the car and his foot kicked something. He looked down and saw a.38 revolver lying in the dust. He kicked it up and turned it over in his hands. It looked very much like a police issue revolver.

‘Whose gun?’ Mark asked, walking toward him. He had Susan’s keys in his hand.

‘I don’t know.’ He checked the safety to be sure it was on, and then put the gun in his pocket.

Mark offered him the keys and Ben took them and walked toward the Vega, feeling like a man in a dream. His hands were shaking and he had to poke twice before he could get the right key into the trunk slot. He twisted it and pulled the back deck up without allowing himself to think.

They looked in together. The trunk held a spare tire, a jack, and nothing else. Ben felt his breath come out in a rush.

‘Now?’ Mark asked.

Ben didn’t answer for a moment. When he felt that his voice would be under control, he said, ‘We’re going to see a friend of mine named Matt Burke, who is in the hospital. He’s been researching vampires.