by Stephen King
"Listen," Matt said as they went out onto the stoop, "what have you got on the stove for Friday night?"
"I don't know," Ben said. "I thought Susan and I might go to a movie. That's about the long and short of it around here."
"I can think of something else," Matt said. "Perhaps we should form a committee of three and take a drive up to the Marsten House and introduce ourselves to the new squire. On behalf of the town, of course."
"Of course," Ben said. "It would be only common courtesy, wouldn't it?"
"A rustic welcome wagon," Matt agreed.
"I'll mention it to Susan tonight. I think she'll go for it."
"Good."
Matt raised his hand and waved as Ben's Citroen purred away. Ben tooted twice in acknowledgment, and then his taillights disappeared over the hill.
Matt stood on his stoop for almost a full minute after the sound of the car had died away, his hands poked into his jacket pockets, his eyes turned toward the house on the hill.
THREE
There was no play practice Thursday night, and Matt drove over to Dell's around nine o'clock for two or three beers. If that damn snip Jimmy Cody wouldn't prescribe for his insomnia, he would prescribe for himself.
Dell's was sparsely populated on nights when no band played. Matt saw only three people he knew: Weasel Craig, nursing a beer alone in the corner; Floyd Tibbits, with thunderclouds on his brow (he had spoken to Susan three times this week, twice on the phone and once in person, in the Norton living room, and none of the conversations had gone well); and Mike Ryerson, who was sitting in one of the far booths against the wall.
Matt walked over to the bar, where Dell Markey was polishing glasses and watching "Ironside" on a portable TV.
"Hi, Matt. How's it going?"
"Fair. Slow night."
Dell shrugged. "Yeah. They got a couple of motorcycle pictures over to the drive-in in Gates. I can't compete with that. Glass or pitcher?"
"Make it a pitcher."
Dell drew it, cut the foam off, and added another two inches. Matt paid, and after a moment's hesitation, walked over to Mike's booth. Mike had filtered through one of Matt's English classes, like almost all the young people in the Lot, and Matt had enjoyed him. He had done above-average work with an average intelligence because he worked hard and had asked over and over about things he didn't understand until he got them. In addition to that, he had a clear, free-running sense of humor and a pleasant streak of individualism that made him a class favorite.
"Hi, Mike," he said. "Mind if I join you?"
Mike Ryerson looked up and Matt felt shock hit him like a live wire. His first reaction: Drugs. Heavy drugs.
"Sure, Mr Burke. Sit down." His voice was listless. His complexion was a horrid, pasty white, darkening to deep shadows under his eyes. The eyes themselves seemed overlarge and hectic. His hands moved slowly across the table in the tavern's semigloom like ghosts. A glass of beer stood untouched before him.
"How are you doing, Mike?" Matt poured himself a glass of beer, controlling his hands, which wanted to shake.
His life had always been one of sweet evenness, a graph with modulate highs and lows (and even those had sunk to foothills since the death of his mother thirteen years before), and one of the things that disturbed it was the miserable ends some of his students came to. Billy Royko dying in a Vietnam helicopter crash two months before the cease-fire; Sally Greer, one of the brightest and most vivacious girls he had ever had, killed by her drunken boyfriend when she told him she wanted to break up; Gary Coleman, who had gone blind due to some mysterious optic nerve degeneration; Buddy Mayberry's brother Doug, the only good kid in that whole half-bright clan, drowning at Old Orchard Beach; and drugs, the little death. Not all of them who waded into the waters of Lethe found it necessary to take a bath in it, but there were enough--kids who had made dreams their protein.
"Doing?" Mike said slowly. "I don't know, Mr Burke. Not so good."
"What kind of shit are you on, Mike?" Matt asked gently.
Mike looked at him uncomprehendingly.
"Dope," Matt said. "Bennies? Reds? Coke? Or is it--"
"I'm not on dope," Mike said. "I guess I'm sick."
"Is that the truth?"
"I never did no heavy dope in my life," Mike said, and the words seemed to be costing him a dreadful effort. "Just grass, and I ain't had any of that for four months. I'm sick...been sick since Monday, I think it was. I fell asleep out at Harmony Hill Sunday night, see. Never even woke up until Monday morning." He shook his head slowly. "I felt crappy. I've felt crappy ever since. Worse every day, it seems like." He sighed, and the whistle of air seemed to shake his frame like a dead leaf on a November maple.
Matt leaned forward, concerned. "This happened after Danny Glick's funeral?"
"Yeah." Mike looked at him again. "I came back to finish up after everybody went home but that fucking--excuse me, Mr Burke--that Royal Snow never showed up. I waited for him a long time, and that's when I must have started to get sick, because everything after that is...oh, it hurts my head. It's hard to think."
"What do you remember, Mike?"
"Remember?" Mike looked into the golden depths of his beer glass and watched the bubbles detaching themselves from the sides and floating to the surface to release their gas.
"I remember singing," he said. "The sweetest singing I ever heard. And a feeling like...like drowning. Only it was nice. Except for the eyes. The eyes."
He clutched his elbows and shuddered.
"Whose eyes?" Matt asked, leaning forward.
"They were red. Oh, scary eyes."
"Whose?"
"I don't remember. No eyes. I dreamed it all." He pushed it away from himself. Matt could almost see him do it. "I don't remember anything else about Sunday night. I woke up Monday morning on the ground, and at first I couldn't even get up I was so tired. But I finally did. The sun was coming up and I was afraid I'd get a sunburn. So I went down in the woods by the brook. Tired me out. Oh, awful tired. So I went back to sleep. Slept till...oh, four or five o'clock." He offered a papery little chuckle. "I was all covered with leaves when I woke up. I felt a little better, though. I got up and went back to my truck." He passed a slow hand over his face. "I must have finished up with the little Glick boy Sunday night, though. Funny. I don't even remember."
"Finished up?"
"Grave was all filled in, Royal or no Royal. Sods tamped in and all. A good job. Don't remember doing it. Must have been really sick."
"Where did you spend Monday night?"
"At my place. Where else?"
"How did you feel Tuesday morning?"
"I never woke up Tuesday morning. Slept through the whole day. Never woke up until Tuesday night."
"How did you feel then?"
"Terrible. Legs like rubber. I tried to go get a drink of water and almost fell down. I had to go into the kitchen holding on to things. Weak as a kitten." He frowned. "I had a can of stew for my dinner--you know, that Dinty Moore stuff--but I couldn't eat it. Seemed like just looking at it made me feel sick to my stomach. Like when you've got an awful hangover and someone shows you food."
"You didn't eat anything?"
"I tried, but I threw it up. But I felt a little better. I went out and walked around for a while. Then I went back to bed." His fingers traced old beer rings on the table. "I got scared before I went to bed. Just like a little kid afraid of the Allamagoosalum. I went around and made sure all the windows were locked. And I went to sleep with all the lights on."
"And yesterday morning?"
"Hmmm? No...never got up until nine o'clock last night." He offered the papery little chuckle again. "I remember thinking if it kept up I'd be sleeping the clock right around. And that's what you do when you're dead."
Matt regarded him somberly. Floyd Tibbits got up and put a quarter in the juke and began to punch up songs.
"Funny," Mike said. "My bedroom window was open when I got up. I must have done it myself. I had a dream
...someone was at the window and I got up...got up to let him in. Like you'd get up to let in an old friend who was cold or...or hungry."
"Who was it?"
"It was just a dream, Mr Burke."
"But in the dream who was it?"
"I don't know. I was going to try and eat, but the thought of it made me want to puke."
"What did you do?"
"I watched TV until Johnny Carson went off. I felt a lot better. Then I went to bed."
"Did you lock the windows?"
"No."
"And slept all day?"
"I woke up around sundown."
"Weak?"
"I hope to tell." He passed a hand over his face. "I feel so low!" he cried out in a breaking voice. "It's just the flu or something, isn't it, Mr Burke? I'm not really sick, am I?"
"I don't know," Matt said.
"I thought a few beers would cheer me up, but I can't drink it. I took one sip and it like to gag me. The last week...it all seems like a bad dream. And I'm scared. I'm awful scared." He put his thin hands to his face and Matt saw that he was crying.
"Mike?"
No response.
"Mike." Gently, he pulled Mike's hands away from his face. "I want you to come home with me tonight. I want you to sleep in my guest room. Will you do that?"
"All right. I don't care." He wiped his sleeve across his eyes with lethargic slowness.
"And tomorrow I want you to come see Dr Cody with me."
"All right."
"Come on. Let's go."
He thought of calling Ben Mears and didn't.
FOUR
When Matt knocked on the door, Mike Ryerson said, "Come in."
Matt came in with a pair of pajamas. "These are going to be a little big--"
"That's all right, Mr Burke. I sleep in my skivvies."
He was standing in his shorts now, and Matt saw that his entire body was horribly pale. His ribs stood out in circular ridges.
"Turn your head, Mike. This way."
Mike turned his head obediently.
"Mike, where did you get those marks?"
Mike's hand touched his throat below the angle of the jaw. "I don't know."
Matt stood restively. Then he went to the window. The catch was securely fastened, yet he rattled it back and forth with hands that were distraught. Beyond, the dark pressed against the glass heavily. "Call me in the night if you want anything. Anything. Even if you have a bad dream. Will you do that, Mike?"
"Yes."
"I mean it. Anything. I'm right down the hall."
"I will."
Hesitating, feeling there were other things he should do, he went out.
FIVE
He didn't sleep at all, and the only thing now that kept him from calling Ben Mears was knowing that everyone at Eva's would be in bed. The boardinghouse was filled with old men, and when the phone rang late at night, it meant that someone had died.
He lay restively, watching the luminous hands of his alarm clock move from eleven-thirty to twelve. The house was preternaturally silent--perhaps because his ears were consciously attuned to catch the slightest noise. The house was an old one and built solidly, and its settling groans had mostly ceased long before. There were no sounds but the clock and the faint passage of the wind outside. No cars passed on Taggart Stream Road late on week nights.
What you're thinking is madness.
But step by step he had been forced backward toward belief. Of course, being a literary man, it had been the first thing that had come to mind when Jimmy Cody had thumbnailed Danny Glick's case. He and Cody had laughed over it. Maybe this was his punishment for laughing.
Scratches? Those marks weren't scratches. They were punctures.
One was taught that such things could not be; that things like Coleridge's "Cristabel" or Bram Stoker's evil fairy tale were only the warp and woof of fantasy. Of course monsters existed; they were the men with their fingers on the thermonuclear triggers in six countries, the hijackers, the mass murderers, the child molesters. But not this. One knows better. The mark of the devil on a woman's breast is only a mole, the man who came back from the dead and stood at his wife's door dressed in the cerements of the grave was only suffering from locomotor ataxia, the bogeyman who gibbers and capers in the corner of a child's bedroom is only a heap of blankets. Some clergymen had proclaimed that even God, that venerable white warlock, was dead.
He was bled almost white.
No sound from up the hall. Matt thought: He is sleeping like the stones himself. Well, why not? Why had he invited Mike back to the house, if not for a good night's sleep, uninterrupted by...by bad dreams? He got out of bed and turned on the lamp and went to the window. From here one could just see the rooftop of the Marsten House, frosted in moonlight.
I'm frightened.
But it was worse than that; he was dead scared. His mind ran over the old protections for an unmentionable disease: garlic, holy wafer and water, crucifix, rose, running water. He had none of the holy things. He was a nonpracticing Methodist, and privately thought that John Groggins was the asshole of the Western world.
The only religious object in the house was--
Softly yet clearly in the silent house the words came, spoken in Mike Ryerson's voice, spoken in the dead accents of sleep: "Yes. Come in."
Matt's breath stopped, then whistled out in a soundless scream. He felt faint with fear. His belly seemed to have turned to lead. His testicles had drawn up. What in God's name had been invited into his house?
Stealthily, the sound of the hasp on the guest room window being turned back. Then the grind of wood against wood as the window was forced up.
He could go downstairs. Run, get the Bible from the dresser in the dining room. Run back up, jerk open the door to the guest room, hold the Bible high: In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, I command you to be gone--
But who was in there?
Call me in the night if you want anything.
But I can't, Mike. I'm an old man. I'm afraid.
Night invaded his brain and made it a circus of terrifying images which danced in and out of the shadows. Clown-white faces, huge eyes, sharp teeth, forms that slipped from the shadows with long white hands that reached for...for...
A shuddering groan escaped him, and he put his hands over his face.
I can't. I am afraid.
He could not have risen even if the brass knob on his own door had begun to turn. He was paralyzed with fear and wished crazily that he had never gone out to Dell's that night.
I am afraid.
And in the awful heavy silence of the house, as he sat impotently on his bed with his face in his hands, he heard the high, sweet, evil laugh of a child--
--and then the sucking sounds.
Part Two
The Emperor of Ice Cream
Call the roller of big cigars, The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress As they are used to wear, and let the boys Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.
Take from the dresser of deal, Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet On which she embroidered three fantails once And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.
WALLACE STEVENS
This column has
A hole. Can you see
The Queen of the Dead?
GEORGE SEFERIS
Chapter Eight
Ben (III)
The knocking must have been going on for a long time, because it seemed to echo far down the avenues of sleep as he slowly struggled up to wakefulness. It was dark outside, but when he turned to grasp the clock and bring it to his face, he knocked it onto the floor. He felt disoriented and f
rightened.
"Who is it?" he called out.
"It's Eva, Mr Mears. There's a phone call for you."
He got up, pulled on his pants, and opened the door bare-chested. Eva Miller was in a white terry-cloth robe, and her face was full of the slow vulnerability of a person still two-fifths asleep. They looked at each other nakedly, and he was thinking: Who's sick? Who's died?
"Long-distance?"
"No, it's Matthew Burke."
The knowledge did not relieve him as it should have done. "What time is it?"
"Just after four. Mr Burke sounds very upset."
Ben went downstairs and picked the phone up. "This is Ben, Matt."
Matt was breathing rapidly into the phone, the sound of his respiration coming in harsh little blurts. "Can you come, Ben? Right now?"
"Yes, all right. What's the matter? Are you sick?"
"Not on the phone. Just come."
"Ten minutes."
"Ben?"
"Yes."
"Have you got a crucifix? A St Christopher's medallion? Anything like that?"
"Hell no. I'm--was--a Baptist."
"All right. Come fast."
Ben hung up and went back upstairs quickly. Eva was standing with one hand on the newel post, her face filled with worry and indecision--on one hand wanting to know, on the other, not wanting to mix in the tenant's business.
"Is Mr Burke sick, Mr Mears?"
"He says not. He just asked me...say, you aren't Catholic?"
"My husband was."
"Do you have a crucifix or a rosary or a St Christopher's medallion?"
"Well...my husband's crucifix is in the bedroom...I could..."
"Yes, would you?"
She went up the hall, her furry slippers scuffing at the faded strip of carpet. Ben went into his room, pulled on yesterday's shirt, and slipped his bare feet into a pair of loafers. When he came out again, Eva was standing by his door, holding the crucifix. It caught the light and threw back dim silver.
"Thank you," he said, taking it.
"Did Mr Burke ask you for this?"
"Yes, he did."
She was frowning, more awake now. "He's not Catholic. I don't believe he goes to church."
"He didn't explain to me."
"Oh." She nodded in a charade of understanding and gave him the crucifix. "Please be careful of it. It has great value for me."
"I understand that. I will."
"I hope Mr Burke is all right. He's a fine man."