“Where is it?” Norbert asked.

Gillespie gestured with his thumb toward the stairs. “Jim Cody’s up there.”

“Good deal,” Norbert said. “The guy’s probably jitterbugging by now.” He and the photographer went upstairs.

Parkins Gillespie poured cream into his coffee until it slopped into his saucer, tested it with his thumb, wiped his thumb on his pants, lit another Pall Mall, and said, “How did you get into this, Mr Mears?”

And so Ben and Matt started their little song and dance and none of what they said was precisely a lie, but enough was left unsaid to link them together in a tenuous bond of conspiracy, and enough to make Ben wonder uneasily if he wasn’t in the process of abetting either a harmless bit of kookery or something more serious, something dark. He thought of Matt saying that he had called Ben because he was the only person in ’salem’s Lot who might listen to such a story. Whatever Matt Burke’s mental failings might be, Ben thought, inability to read character was not one of them. And that also made him nervous.

SEVEN

By nine-thirty it was over.

Carl Foreman’s funeral wagon had come and taken Mike Ryerson’s body away, and the fact of his passing left the house with him and belonged to the town. Jimmy Cody had gone back to his office; Norbert and the photographer had gone to Portland to talk with the county M.E.

Parkins Gillespie stood on the stoop for a moment and watched the hearse trundle slowly up the road, a cigarette dangling between his lips. “All the times Mike drove that, I bet he never guessed how soon he’d be ridin’ in the back.” He turned to Ben. “You ain’t leavin’ the Lot just yet, are you? Like you to testify for the coroner’s jury, if that’s okay by you.”

“No, I’m not leaving.”

The constable’s faded blue eyes measured him. “I checked you through with the feds and the Maine State Police R&I in Augusta,” he said. “You’ve got a clean rep.”

“That’s good to know,” Ben said evenly.

“I hear it around that you’re sparkin’ Bill Norton’s girl.”

“Guilty,” Ben said.

“She’s a fine lass,” Parkins said without smiling. The hearse was out of sight now; even the hum of its engine had dwindled to a drone that faded altogether. “Guess she don’t see much of Floyd Tibbits these days.”

“Haven’t you some paperwork to do, Park?” Matt prodded gently.

He sighed and cast the butt of his cigarette away. “Sure do. Duplicate, triplicate, don’t-punch-spindle-or-mutilate. This job’s been more trouble than a she-bitch with crabs the last couple of weeks. Maybe that old Marsten House has got a curse on it.”

Ben and Matt kept poker faces.

“Well, s’long.” He hitched his pants and walked down to his car. He opened the driver’s side door and then turned back to them. “You two ain’t holdin’ nothin’ back on me, are you?”

“Parkins,” Matt said, “there’s nothing to hold back. He’s dead.”

He looked at them a moment longer, the faded eyes sharp and glittering under his hooked brows, and then he sighed. “I suppose,” he said. “But it’s awful goddamn funny. The dog, the Glick boy, then t’other Glick boy, now Mike. That’s a year’s run for a pissant little burg like this one. My old grammy used to say things ran in threes, not fours.”

He got in, started the engine, and backed out of the driveway. A moment later he was gone over the hill, trailing one farewell honk.

Matt let out a gusty sigh. “That’s over.”

“Yes,” Ben said. “I’m beat. Are you?”

“I am, but I feel…weird. You know that word, the way the kids use it?”

“Yes.”

“They’ve got another one: spaced out. Like coming down from an acid trip or speed, when even being normal is crazy.” He scrubbed a hand across his face. “God, you must think I’m a lunatic. It all sounds like a madman’s raving in the daylight, doesn’t it?”

“Yes and no,” Ben said. He put a diffident hand on Matt’s shoulder. “Gillespie is right, you know. There is something going on. And I’m thinking more and more that it has to do with the Marsten House. Other than myself, the people up there are the only new people in town. And I know I haven’t done anything. Is our trip up there tonight still on? The rustic welcome wagon?”

“If you like.”

“I do. You go in and get some sleep. I’ll get in touch with Susan and we’ll drop by this evening.”

“All right.” He paused. “There’s one other thing. It’s been bothering me ever since you mentioned autopsies.”

“What?”

“The laugh I heard—or thought I heard—was a child’s laugh. Horrible and soulless, but still a child’s laugh. Connected to Mike’s story, does that make you think of Danny Glick?”

“Yes, of course it does.”

“Do you know what the embalming procedure is?”

“Not specifically. The blood is drained from the cadaver and replaced with some fluid. They used to use formaldehyde, but I’m sure they’ve got more sophisticated methods now. And the corpse is eviscerated.”

“I wonder if all that was done to Danny?” Matt said, looking at him.

“Do you know Carl Foreman well enough to ask him in confidence?”

“Yes, I think I could find a way to do that.”

“Do it, by all means.”

“I will.”

They looked at each other a moment longer, and the glance that passed between them was friendly but indefinable; on Matt’s part the uneasy defiance of the rational man who has been forced to speak irrationalities, on Ben’s a kind of ill-defined fright of forces he could not understand enough to define.

EIGHT

Eva was ironing and watching Dialing for Dollarswhen he came in. The jackpot was currently up to forty-five dollars, and the emcee was picking telephone numbers out of a large glass drum.

“I heard,” she said as he opened the refrigerator and got a Coke. “Awful. Poor Mike.”

“It’s too bad.” He reached into his breast pocket and fished out the crucifix on its fine-link chain.

“Do they know what—”

“Not yet,” Ben said. “I’m very tired, Mrs Miller. I think I’ll sleep for a while.”

“Of course you should. That upstairs room is hot at midday, even this late in the year. Take the one in the downstairs hall if you like. The sheets are fresh.”

“No, that’s all right. I know all the squeaks in the one upstairs.”

“Yes, a person does get used to their own,” she said matter-of-factly. “Why in the world did Mr Burke want Ralph’s crucifix?”

Ben paused on his way to the stairs, momentarily at a loss. “I think he must have thought Mike Ryerson was a Catholic.”

Eva slipped a new shirt on the end of her ironing board. “He should have known better than that. After all, he had Mike in school. All his people were Lutherans.”

Ben had no answer for that. He went upstairs, pulled his clothes off, and got into bed. Sleep came rapidly and heavily. He did not dream.

NINE

When he woke up, it was quarter past four. His body was beaded with sweat, and he had kicked the upper sheet away. Still, he felt clearheaded again. The events of that early morning seemed to be far away and dim, and Matt Burke’s fancies had lost their urgency. His job for tonight was only to humor him out of them if he could.

TEN

He decided that he would call Susan from Spencer’s and have her meet him there. They could go to the park and he would tell her the whole thing from beginning to end. He could get her opinion on their way out to see Matt, and at Matt’s house she could listen to his version and complete her judgment. Then, on to the Marsten House. The thought caused a ripple of fear in his midsection.

He was so involved in his own thoughts that he never noticed that someone was sitting in his car until the door opened and the tall form accordioned out. For a moment his mind was too stunned to command his body; it was busy boggling at what it first took to be an animated scarecrow. The slanting sun picked the figure out in detail that was sharp and cruel: the old fedora hat pulled low around the ears; the wraparound sunglasses; the ragged overcoat with the collar turned up; the heavy industrial green rubber gloves on the hands.