Salem's Lot - Stephen King [36]
Floyd picked it up. The headline read SATAN WORSHIPERS DESECRATE FLA. CHURCH. He skimmed through it. Apparently a bunch of kids had broken into a Catholic Church in Clewiston, Florida, some time after midnight and had held some sort of unholy rites there. The altar had been desecrated, obscene words had been scrawled on the pews, the confessionals, and the holy font, and splatters of blood had been found on steps leading to the nave. Laboratory analysis had confirmed that although some of the blood was animal (goat’s blood was suggested), most of it was human. The Clewiston police chief admitted there were no immediate leads.
Floyd put the paper down. ‘Devil worshipers in the Lot? Come on, Dell. You’ve been into the cook’s pot.’
‘The kids are going crazy,’ Dell said stubbornly. ‘You see if that ain’t it. Next thing you know, they’ll be doing human sacrifices in Griffen’s pasture. Want a refill on that?’
‘No thanks,’ Floyd said, sliding off his stool. ‘I think I’ll go out and see how Uncle Win’s getting along. He loved that dog.’
‘Give him my best,’ Dell said, stowing his paper back under the bar-Exhibit A for later in the evening. ‘Awful sorry to hear about it.’
Floyd paused halfway to the door and spoke, seemingly to the air. ‘Hung him up on the spikes, did they? By Christ, I’d like to get hold of the kids who did that.’
‘Devil worshipers,’ Dell said. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me a bit. I don’t know what’s got into people these days.’
Floyd left. The Bryant kid put another dime in the juke, and Dick Curless began to sing ‘Bury the Bottle with Me.’
18
7:30 P.M.
‘You be home early,’ Marjorie Glick said to her eldest son, Danny. ‘School tomorrow. I want your brother in bed by quarter past nine.’
Danny shuffled his feet. ‘I don’t see why I have to take him at all.’
‘You don’t,’ Marjorie said with dangerous pleasantness. ‘You can always stay home.’
She turned back to the counter, where she was freshening fish, and Ralphie stuck out his tongue. Danny made a fist and shook it, but his putrid little brother only smiled.
‘We’ll be back,’ he muttered and turned to leave the kitchen, Ralphie in tow.
‘By nine.’
‘Okay, okay.’
In the living room Tony Glick was sitting in front of the TV with his feet up, watching the Red Sox and the Yankees. ‘Where are you going, boys?’
‘Over to see that new kid,’ Danny said. ‘Mark Petrie.’ ‘Yeah,’ Ralphie said. ‘We’re gonna look at his electric trains.’
Danny cast a baleful eye on his brother, but their father noticed neither the pause nor the emphasis. Doug Griffen had just struck out. ‘Be home early,’ he said absently.
Outside, afterlight still lingered in the sky, although sunset had passed. As they crossed the back yard Danny said, ‘I ought to beat the stuff out of you, punko.’
‘I’ll tell,’ Ralphie said smugly. ‘I’ll tell why you really wanted to go.’
‘You creep,’ Danny said hopelessly.
At the back of the mowed yard, a beaten path led down the slope to the woods. The Glick house was on Brock Street, Mark Petrie’s on South Jointner Avenue. The path was a short cut that saved considerable time if you were twelve and nine years old and willing to pick your way across the Crockett Brook stepping stones. Pine needles and twigs crackled under their feet. Somewhere in the woods, a whippoorwill sang, and crickets chirred all around them.
Danny had made the mistake of telling his brother that Mark Petrie had the entire set of Aurora plastic monsters-wolfman, mummy, Dracula, Frankenstein, the mad doctor, and even the Chamber of Horrors. Their mother thought all that stuff was bad news, rotted your brains or something, and Danny’s brother had immediately turned blackmailer. He was putrid, all right.
‘You’re putrid, you know that?’ Danny said.
‘I know,’ Ralphie said proudly. ‘What’s putrid?’
‘It’s when you get green and squishy, like boogers.’
‘Get bent,’ Ralphie said. They were going