Salem's Lot - Stephen King [195]
‘Was he strong when last you saw him?’ she demanded, peering at them. The tears magnified the gimlet lack of compromise in her eyes.
‘Yes,’ Mark said, remembering Callahan in his mother’s kitchen, holding his cross aloft.
‘And are you about his work now?’
‘Yes,’ Mark said again.
‘Then be about it,’ she snapped at them. ‘What are you waiting for?’ And she left them, walking down the center aisle in her black dress, the solitary mourner at a funeral that hadn’t been held here.
47
Eva’s again-and at the last. It was ten minutes after six. The sun hung over the western pines, peering out of the broken clouds like blood.
Ben drove into the parking lot and looked curiously up at his room. The shade was not drawn and he could see his typewriter standing sentinel, and beside it, his pile of manuscript and the glass globe paperweight on top of it. It seemed amazing that he could see all those things from here, see them clearly, as if everything in the world was sane and normal and ordered.
He let his eyes drop to the back porch. The rocking chairs where he and Susan had shared their first kiss stood side by side, unchanged. The door which gave ingress to the kitchen stood open, as Mark had left it.
‘I can’t,’ Mark muttered. ‘I just can’t.’ His eyes were wide and white. He had drawn up his knees and was now crouched on the seat.
‘It’s got to be both of us,’ Ben said. He held out two of the ampoules filled with holy water. Mark twitched away from them in horror, as if touching them would admit poison through his skin. ‘Come on,’ Ben said. He had no arguments left. ‘Come on, come on.’
‘No.’
‘Mark?’
‘No!’
‘Mark, I need you. You and me, that’s all that’s left.’
‘I’ve done enough!’ Mark cried. ‘I can’t do any more! ‘Can’t you understand I can’t look at him?’
‘Mark, it has to be the two of us. Don’t you know that?’
Mark took the ampoules and curled them slowly against his chest. ‘Oh boy,’ he whispered. ‘Oh boy, oh boy.’ He looked at Ben and nodded. The movement of his head was jerky and agonized. ‘Okay,’ he said.
‘Where’s the hammer?’ he asked as they got out.
‘Jimmy had it.’
‘Okay.’
They walked up the porch steps in the strengthening wind. The sun glared red through the clouds, dyeing everything. Inside, in the kitchen, the stink of death was palpable and wet, pressing against them like granite. The cellar door stood open.
‘I’m so scared,’ Mark said, shuddering.
‘You better be. Where’s that flashlight?’
‘In the cellar. I left it when… ’
‘Okay.’ They stood at the mouth of the cellar. As Mark had said, the stairs looked intact in the sunset light. ‘Follow me,’ Ben said.
48
Ben thought quite easily: I’m going to my death.
The thought came naturally, and there was no fear or regret in it. Inward-turning emotions were lost under the overwhelming atmosphere of evil that hung over this place. As he slipped and scraped his way down the board Mark had set up to get out of the cellar, all he felt was an unnatural glacial calm. He saw that his hands were glowing, as if wreathed in ghost gloves. It did not surprise him.
Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream. Who had said that? Matt? Matt was dead. Susan was dead. Miranda was dead. Wallace Stevens was dead, too. I wouldn’t look at that, if I were you. But he had looked. That’s what you looked like when it was over. Like something smashed and broken that had been filled with different-colored fluids. It wasn’t so bad. Not so bad as his death. Jimmy had been carrying McCaslin’s pistol; it would still be in his coat pocket. He would take it, and if sunset came before they could get to Barlow… first the boy, and then himself. Not good, but better than his death.
He dropped to the cellar floor and then helped Mark down. The boy’s eyes flashed to the dark, curled thing on the floor and then skipped away.
‘I can’t look at that,’ he said huskily.
‘That’s all right.’
Mark turned away and Ben knelt down. He swept away a number of the lethal