When he had reached his previous resting place, McDougall turned over and lay still.

“Shut it,” Mark said in a strangled voice. “Please shut it.”

Jimmy closed the trap and replaced the hammered lock as well as he could. The image of McDougall’s body, struggling in the wet, rotted leaves like a dazed snake, remained in his mind. He did not think there would ever be a time when it was not within hand’s reach of his memory—even if he lived to be a hundred.

THIRTY-EIGHT

They stood in the rain, trembling, looking at each other. “Next door?” Mark asked.

“Yes. They’d be the logical ones for the McDougalls to attack first.”

They went across, and this time their nostrils picked up the telltale odor of rot in the dooryard. The name below the doorbell was Evans. Jimmy nodded. David Evans and family. He worked as a mechanic in the auto department of Sears in Gates Falls. He had treated him a couple of years ago, for a cyst or something.

This time the bell worked, but there was no response. They found Mrs Evans in bed. The two children were in a bunk bed in a single bedroom, dressed in identical pajamas that featured characters from the Pooh stories. It took longer to find Dave Evans. He had hidden himself away in the unfinished storage space over the small garage.

Jimmy marked a check inside a circle on the front door and the garage door. “We’re doing good,” he said. “Two for two.”

Mark said diffidently, “Could you hold on a minute or two? I’d like to wash my hands.”

“Sure,” Jimmy said. “I’d like that, too. The Evanses won’t mind if we use their bathroom.”

They went inside, and Jimmy sat down in one of the living room chairs and closed his eyes. Soon he heard Mark running water in the bathroom.

On the darkened screen of his eyes he saw the mortician’s table, saw the sheet covering Marjorie Glick’s body start to tremble, saw her hand fall out and begin its delicate toe dance on the air—

He opened his eyes.

This trailer was in nicer condition than the McDougalls’, neater, taken care of. He had never met Mrs Evans, but it seemed she must have taken pride in her home. There was a neat pile of the dead children’s toys in a small storage room, a room that had probably been called the laundry room in the mobile home dealer’s original brochure. Poor kids, he hoped they’d enjoyed the toys while there had still been bright days and sunshine to enjoy them in. There was a tricycle, several large plastic trucks and a play gas station, one of those caterpillars on wheels (there must have been some dandy fights over that), a toy pool table.

He started to look away and then looked back, startled.

Blue chalk.

Three shaded lights in a row.

Men walking around the green table under the bright lights, cueing up, brushing the grains of blue chalk off their fingertips—

“Mark!” he shouted, sitting bolt upright in the chair. “Mark!” And Mark came running with his shirt off, to see what the matter was.

THIRTY-NINE

An old student of Matt’s (class of ’64, A’s in literature, C’s in composition) had dropped by to see him around two-thirty, had commented on the stacks of arcane literature, and had asked Matt if he was studying for a degree in the occult. Matt couldn’t remember if his name was Herbert or Harold.

Matt, who had been reading a book called Strange Disappearanceswhen Herbert-or-Harold walked in, welcomed the interruption. He was waiting for the phone to ring even now, although he knew the others could not safely enter the Brock Street School until after three o’clock. He was desperate to know what had happened to Father Callahan. And the day seemed to be passing with alarming rapidity—he had always heard that time passed slowly in the hospital. He felt slow and foggy, an old man at last.

He began telling Herbert-or-Harold about the town of Momson, Vermont, whose history he had just been reading. He had found it particularly interesting because he thought the story, if true, might be a precursor of the Lot’s fate.

“Everyone disappeared,” he told Herbert-or-Harold, who was listening with polite but not very well masked boredom. “Just a small town in the upcountry of northern Vermont, accessible by Interstate Route 2 and Vermont Route 19. Population of 312 in the census of 1920. In August of 1923 a woman in New York got worried because her sister hadn’t written her for two months. She and her husband took a ride out there, and they were the first to break the story to the newspapers, although I don’t doubt that the locals in the surrounding area had known about the disappearance for some time. The sister and her husband were gone, all right, and so was everyone else in Momson. The houses and the barns were all standing, and in one place supper had been put on the table. The case was rather sensational at the time. I don’t believe that I would care to stay there overnight. The author of this book claims the people in the neighboring townships tell some odd stories…ha’ants and goblins and all that. Several of the outlying barns have hex signs and large crosses painted on them, even to this day. Look, here’s a photograph of the general store and ethyl station and feed-and-grain store—what served in Momson as downtown. What do you suppose ever happened there?”

Herbert-or-Harold looked at the picture politely. Just a little town with a few stores and a few houses. Some of them were falling down, probably from the weight of snow in the winter. Could be any town in the country. Driving through most of them, you wouldn’t know if anyone was alive after eight o’clock when they rolled up the sidewalks. The old man had certainly gone dotty in his old age. Herbert-or-Harold thought about an old aunt of his who had become convinced in the last two years of her life that her daughter had killed her pet parakeet and was feeding it to her in the meat loaf. Old people got funny ideas.

“Very interesting,” he said, looking up. “But I don’t think…Mr Burke? Mr Burke, is something wrong? Are you…nurse! Hey, nurse!”

Matt’s eyes had grown very fixed. One hand gripped the top sheet of the bed. The other was pressed against his chest. His face had gone pallid, and a pulse beat in the center of his forehead.

Too soon, he thought. No, too soon—

Pain, smashing into him in waves, driving him down into darkness. Dimly he thought: Watch that last step, it’s a killer.

Then, falling.

Herbert-or-Harold ran out of the room, knocking over his chair and spilling a pile of books. The nurse was already coming, nearly running herself.

“It’s Mr Burke,” Herbert-or-Harold told her. He was still holding the book, with his index finger inserted at the picture of Momson, Vermont.

The nurse nodded curtly and entered the room. Matt was lying with his head half off the bed, his eyes closed.

“Is he—?” Herbert-or-Harold asked timidly. It was a complete question.

“Yes, I think so,” the nurse answered, at the same time pushing the button that would summon the ECV unit. “You’ll have to leave now.”

She was calm again now that all was known, and had time to regret her lunch, left half-eaten.

FORTY

“But there’s no pool hall in the Lot,” Mark said. “The closest one is over in Gates Falls. Would he go there?”

“No,” Jimmy said. “I’m sure he wouldn’t. But some people have pool tables or billiard tables in their houses.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“There’s something else,” Jimmy said. “I can almost get it.”

He leaned back, closed his eyes, and put his hands over them. There was something else, and in his mind he associated it with plastic. Why plastic? There were plastic toys and plastic utensils for picnics and plastic drop covers to put over your boat when winter came—