SALEM'S_LOT_玖贝云文库

'SALEM'S LOT

Hodder & Stoughton

First published in the USA by Doubleday & Company Inc in 1975. First published in Great Britain by New

Grateful acknowledgements are made to the following for permission to include copyright selections.

First stanza from 'The Return of the Exile' and one Haiku from the book of Poems, by Georae Seferis.

English Translation (c) Rex Warner 1960. Published by Little, Brown and Company in association with

Atlantic Monthly Press and Bodley Head, Ltd.

Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and Faber & Faber, Ltd.

Reprinted by permission of Viking Press, Inc., and Brandt and Brandt.

rights reserved. Used by permission of Warner Bros. Music.

New English Library Paperback Edition 1977

Twenty-third impression 1992

The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or

actual happenings,

The right of Stephen King to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance

with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it Shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired

Out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than

that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the

subsequent purchaser.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or

mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without either

the prior permission in writing from the publisher or a licence, permitting restricted copying in the United

Kingdom such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London

WC 1 P 9HE.

Printed and bound in Great Britain for Hodder and Stoughton Paperbacks, a division of Hodder and

Stoughton Ltd., Mill Road, Dunton Green, Sevenoaks, Kent TN13 2YA (Editorial Office: 47 Bedford Square,

London WClB 3DP) by Cox & Wyman Ltd., Reading, Barks. Photoset by Rowland Photosetting Ltd, Bury St

Edmunds, Suffolk.

For Naomi Rachel King

' . . . promises to keep.'

CONTENTS

Prologue

PART I: The Marsten House

PART II: The Emperor of Ice Cream

PART III:The Deserted Village

Epilogue

AUTHOR'S NOTE

No one writes a long novel alone, and I would like to take a moment of your time to thank some of the

people who helped with this one: G. Everett McCutcheon, of Hampden Academy, for his practical

suggestions and encouragement; Dr John Pearson, of Old Town, Maine, medical examiner of Penobscot

County and member in good standing of that most excellent medical speciality, general practice; Father

Renald Hallee, of St John's Catholic Church in Bangor, Maine. And of course my wife, whose criticism is as

tough and unflinching as ever.

Although the towns surrounding 'salem's Lot are very real, 'salem's Lot itself exists wholly in the author's

imagination, and any resemblance between the people who live there and people who live in the real world

is coincidental and unintended.

S. K.

PROLOGUE

Old friend, what are you looking for?

After those many years abroad you come

With images you tended

Under foreign skies

Far away from your own land

George Seferis

1

Almost everyone thought the man and the boy were father and son.

They crossed the country on a rambling southwest line in an old Citroën sedan, keeping mostly to

secondary roads, traveling in fits and starts. They stopped in three places along the way before reaching

their final destination: first in Rhode Island, where the tall man with the black hair worked in a textile mill;

then in Youngstown, Ohio, where he worked for three months on a tractor assembly line; and finally in a

small California town near the Mexican border, where he pumped gas and worked at repairing small foreign

cars with an amount of success that was, to him, surprising and gratifying.

Wherever they stopped, he got a Maine newspaper called the Portland Press-Herald and watched it for

items concerning a small southern Maine town named Jerusalem's Lot and the surrounding area. There

were such items from time to time.

He wrote an outline of a novel in motel rooms before they hit Central Falls, Rhode Island, and mailed it to

his agent. He had been a mildly successful novelist a million years before, in a time when the darkness had

not come over his life. The agent took the outline to his last publisher, who expressed polite interest but no

inclination to part with any advance money. 'Please' and 'thank you,' he told the boy as he tore the agent's

letter up, were still free.

He said it without too much bitterness and set about the book anyway.

The boy did not speak much. His face retained a perpetual pinched look, and his eyes were dark - as if

they always scanned some bleak inner horizon. In the diners and gas stations where they stopped along the

way, he was polite and nothing more. He didn't seem to want the tall man out of his sight, and the boy

seemed nervous even when the man left him to use the bathroom. He refused to talk about the town of

Jerusalem's Lot, although the tall man tried to raise the topic from time to time, and he would not look at the

Portland newspapers the man sometimes deliberately left around.

When the book was written, they were living in a beach cottage off the highway, and they both swam in

the Pacific a great deal. It was warmer than the Atlantic, and friendlier. It held no memories. The boy began

to get very brown,

Although they were living well enough to eat three square meals a day and keep a solid roof over their

heads, the man had begun to feel depressed and doubtful about the life they were living. He was tutoring the

boy, and he did not seem to be losing anything in the way of education (the boy was bright and easy about

books, as the tall man had been himself), but he didn't think that blotting 'salem's Lot out was doing the boy

any good. Sometimes at night he screamed in his sleep and thrashed the blankets onto the floor.

A letter came from New York. The tall man's agent said that Random House was offering $12,000 in

advance, and a book club sale was almost certain. Was it okay?

It was.

The man quit his job at the gas station, and he and the boy crossed the border.

2

Los Zapatos, which means 'the shoes' (a name that secretly pleased the man to no end), was a small village

not far from the ocean. It was fairly free of tourists. There was no good road, no ocean view (you had to go

five miles further west to get that), and no historical points of interest. Also, the local cantina was infested

with cockroaches and the only whore was a fifty-year-old grandmother.

With the States behind them, an almost unearthly quiet dropped over their lives. Few planes went

overhead, there were no turnpikes, and no one owned a power lawn mower (or cared to have one) for a

hundred miles. They had a radio, but even that was noise without meaning; the news broadcasts were all in

Spanish, which the boy began to pick up but which remained - and always would - gibberish to the man. All

the music seemed to consist of opera. At night they sometimes got a pop music station from Monterey made

frantic with the accents of Wolfman Jack but it faded in and out. The only motor within hearing distance was

a quaint old Rototiller owned by a local farmer. When the wind was right, its irregular burping noise would

come to their ears faintly, like an uneasy spirit. They drew their water from the well by hand.

Once or twice a month (not always together) they attended mass at the small church in town. Neither of

them understood the ceremony, but they went all the same. The man found himself sometimes drowsing in

the suffocating heat to the steady, familiar rhythms and the voices which gave them tongue. One Sunday the

boy came out onto the rickety back porch where the man had begun work on a new novel and told him

hesitantly that he had spoken to the priest about being taken into the church. The man nodded and asked

him if he had enough Spanish to take instruction. The boy said he didn't think it would be a problem.

The man made a forty-mile trip once a week to get the Portland, Maine, paper, which was always at least

a week old and was sometimes yellowed with dog urine. Two weeks after the boy had told him of his

intentions, he found a featured story about 'salem's Lot and a Vermont town called Momson. The tall man's

name was mentioned in the course of the story.

He left the paper around with no particular hope that the boy would pick it up. The article made him

uneasy for a number of reasons. It was not over in 'salem's Lot yet, it seemed.

The boy came to him a day later with the paper in his hand, folded open to expose the headline: 'Ghost

Town in Maine?'

'I'm scared,' he said.

'I am, too,' the tall man answered.

3

GHOST TOWN IN MAINE?

By John Lewis

Press-Herald Features Editor

JERUSALEM'S LOT - Jerusalem's Lot is a small town east of Cumberland and twenty miles north of

Portland. It is not the first town in American history to just dry up and blow away, and will probably not be the

last, but it is one of the strangest. Ghost towns are common in the American Southwest, where communities

grew up almost overnight around rich gold and silver lodes and then disappeared almost as rapidly when the

veins of ore played out, leaving empty stores and hotels and saloons to rot emptily in desert silence.

In New England the only counterpart to the mysterious emptying of Jerusalem's Lot, or 'salem's Lot as the

natives often refer to it, seems to be a small town in Vermont called Momson. During the summer of 1923,

Momson apparently just dried up and blew away, and all 312 residents went with it. The houses and few

small business buildings in the town's center still stand, but since that summer fifty-two years ago, they have

been uninhabited. In some cases the furnishings had been removed, but in most the houses were still

furnished, as if in the middle of daily life some great wind had blown all the people away. In one house the

table had been set for the evening meal, complete with a centerpiece of long-wilted flowers. In another the

covers had been turned down neatly in an upstairs bedroom as if for sleep. In the local mercantile store, a

rotted bolt of cotton cloth was found on the counter and a price of $1.22 rung up on the cash register.

Investigators found almost $50.00 in the cash drawer, untouched.

People in the area like to entertain tourists with the story and to hint that the town is haunted - that, they

say, is why it has remained empty ever since. A more likely reason is that Momson is located in a forgotten

corner of the state, far from any main road. There is nothing there that could not be duplicated in a hundred

other towns except, of course, the Mary Celeste-like mystery of its sudden emptiness.

Much the same could be said for Jerusalem's Lot.

In the census of 1970, 'salem's Lot claimed 1,319 inhabitants - a gain of exactly 67 souls in the ten years

since the previous census. It is a sprawling, comfortable township, familiarly called the Lot by its previous

inhabitants, where little of any note ever took place. The only thing the oldsters who regularly gathered in the

park and around the stove in Crossen's Agricultural Market had to talk about was the Fire of '51, when a

carelessly tossed match started one of the largest forest fires in the state's history.

If a man wanted to spin out his retirement in a small country town where everyone minded his own

business and the big event of any given week was apt to be the Ladies' Auxiliary Bake-off, then the Lot

would have been a good choice. Demographically, the census of 1970 showed a pattern familiar both to

rural sociologists and to the long-time resident of any small Maine town: a lot of old folks, quite a few poor

folks, and a lot of young folks who leave the area with their diplomas under their arms, never to return again.

But a little over a year ago, something began to happen in Jerusalem's Lot that was not usual. People

began to drop out of sight. The larger proportion of these, naturally, haven't disappeared in the real sense of

the word at all.

The Lot's former constable, Parkins Gillespie, is living with his sister in Kittery. Charles James, owner of a

gas station across from the drugstore, is now running a repair shop in neighboring Cumberland. Pauline

Dickens has moved to Los Angeles, and Rhoda Curless is working with the St Matthew's Mission in

Portland. The list of 'undisappearances' could go on and on.

What is mystifying about these found people is their unanimous unwillingness - or inability - to talk about

Jerusalem's Lot and what, if anything, might have happened there. Parkins Gillespie simply looked at this

reporter, lit a cigarette, and said, 'I just decided to leave.' Charles James claims he was forced to leave

because his business dried up with the town. Pauline Dickens, who worked as a waitress in the Excellent

Caf6 for years, never answered this reporter's letter of inquiry. And Miss Curless refuses to speak of 'salem's

Lot at all.

Some of the missing can be accounted for by educated guesswork and a little research. Lawrence

Crockett, a local real estate agent who has disappeared with his wife and daughter, has left a number of

questionable business ventures and land deals behind him, including one piece of Portland land speculation

where the Portland Mall and Shopping Center is now under construction. The Royce McDougalls, also

among the missing, had lost their infant son earlier in the year and there was little to hold them in town. They

might be anywhere. Others fit into the same category. According to State Police Chief Peter McFee, 'We've

got tracers out on a great many people from Jerusalem's Lot - but that isn't the only Maine town where

people have dropped out of sight. Royce McDougall, for instance, left owing money to one bank and two

finance companies . . . in my judgment, he was just a fly-by-nighter who decided to get out from under.

Someday this year or next, he'll use one of those credit cards he's got in his wallet and the repossession

men will land on him with both feet. In America missing persons are as natural as cherry pie. We're living in

an automobile-oriented society. People pick up stakes and move on every two or three years. Sometimes

they forget to leave a forwarding address. Especially the deadbeats.'

Yet for all the hardheaded practicality of Captain McFee's words, there are unanswered questions in

Jerusalem's Lot. Henry Petrie, and his wife and son are gone, and Mr Petrie, a Prudential Insurance

Company executive, could hardly be called a deadbeat. The local mortician, the local librarian, and the local

beautician are also in the dead-letter file. The list is of a disquieting length.

In the surrounding towns the whispering campaign that is the beginning of legend has already begun.

'Salem's Lot is reputed to be haunted. Sometimes colored lights are reported hovering over the Central

Maine Power lines that bisect the township, and if you suggest that the inhabitants of the Lot have been

carried off by UFOS, no one will laugh. There has been some talk of a 'dark coven' of young people who

were practicing the black mass in town and, perhaps, brought the wrath of God Himself on the namesake of

the Holy Land's holiest city. Others, of a less supernatural bent, remember the young men who 'disappeared'

in the Houston, Texas, area some three years ago only to be discovered in grisly mass graves,

An actual visit to 'salem's Lot makes such talk seem less wild. There is not one business left open. The

last one to go under was Spencer's Sundries and Pharmacy, which closed its doors in January. Crossen's

Agricultural Store, the hardware store, Barlow and Straker's Furniture Shop, the Excellent Café, and even

the Municipal Building are all boarded up. The new grammar school is empty, and so is the tri-town

consolidated high school, built in the Lot in 1967. The school furnishings and the books have been moved to

make-do facilities in Cumberland pending a referendum vote in the other towns of the school district, but it

seems that no children from 'salem's Lot will be in attendance when a new school year begins. There are no

children; only abandoned shops and stores, deserted houses, overgrown lawns, deserted streets, and back

roads.

Some of the other people that the state police would like to locate or at least hear from include John

Groggins, pastor of the Jerusalem's Lot Methodist Church; Father Donald Callahan, Parish priest of St

Andrew's; Mabel Werts, a local widow who was prominent in 'salem's Lot church and social functions; Lester

and Harriet Durham, a local couple who both worked at Gates Mill and Weaving; Eva Miller, who ran a local

boardinghouse. . . .

4

Two months after the newspaper article, the boy was taken into the church. He made his first confession -

and confessed everything.

5

The village priest was an old man with white hair and a face seamed into a net of wrinkles. His eyes peered

out of his sun-beaten face with surprising life and avidity. They were blue eyes, very Irish. When the tall man

arrived at his house, he was sitting on the porch and drinking tea. A man in a city suit stood beside him. The

man's hair was parted in the middle and greased in a manner that reminded the tall man of photograph

portraits from the 1890s.

The man said stiffly, 'I am Jesús de la rey Muñoz. Father Gracon has asked me to interpret, as he has no

English. Father Gracon has done my family a great service which I may not mention. My lips are likewise

sealed in the matter he wishes to discuss. Is it agreeable to you?'

'Yes.' He shook Muñoz's hand and then Gracon's. Gracon replied in Spanish and smiled. He had only five

teeth left in his jaw, but the smile was sunny and glad.

'He asks, Would you like a cup of tea? It is green tea.

Very cooling.'

'That would be lovely.'

When the amenities had passed among them, the priest said, 'The boy is not your son.'

'No.'

'He made a strange confession In fact I have never heard a stranger confession in all my days of the

priesthood.'

'That does not surprise me.'

'He wept,' Father Gracon said, sipping his tea. 'It was a deep and terrible weeping. It came from the cellar

of his soul. Must I ask the question this confession raises in my heart?'

'No,' the tall man said evenly. 'You don't. He is telling the truth.'

Gracon was nodding even before Muñoz translated, and his face had grown grave. He leaned forward

with his hands clasped between his knees and spoke for a long time. Muñoz listened intently, his face

carefully expressionless. When the priest finished, Muñoz said:

'He says there are strange things in the world. Forty years ago a peasant from El Graniones brought him

a lizard that screamed as though it were a woman. He has seen a man with stigmata, the marks of Our

Lord's passion, and this man bled from his hands and feet on Good Friday. He says this is an awful thing, a

dark thing. It is serious for you and the boy. Particularly for the boy. It is eating him up. He says . . . '

Gracon spoke again, briefly.

'He asks if you understand what you have done in this New Jerusalem.'

'Jerusalem's Lot,' the tall man said. 'Yes. I understand.'

Gracon spoke again.

'He asks what you intend to do about it.'

The tall man shook his head Very slowly. 'I don't know.'

Gracon spoke again.

'He says he will pray for you.'

6

A week later he awoke sweating from a nightmare and called out the boy's name.

'I'm going back,' he said.

The boy paled beneath his tan.

'Can you come with me?' the man asked.

'Do you love me?'

'Yes. God, yes.'

The boy began to weep, and the tall man held him.

7

Still, there was no sleep for him. Faces lurked in the shadows, swirling up at him like faces obscured in

snow, and when the wind blew an overhanging tree limb against the roof, he jumped.

Jerusalem's Lot.

He closed his eyes and put his arm across them and it all began to come back. He could almost see the

glass paperweight, the kind that will make a tiny blizzard when you shake it.

'Salem's Lot . . .

Part One

THE MARSTEN HOUSE

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and

katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills holding

darkness within; it had stood for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued

upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the

wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

Shirley Jackson

The Haunting of Hill House

Chapter One

BEN (I)

1

By the time he had passed Portland going north on the turnpike, Ben Mears had begun to feel a not

unpleasurable tingle of excitement in his belly. It was September 5, 1975, and summer was enjoying her

final grand fling. The trees were bursting with green, the sky was a high, soft blue, and just over the

Falmouth town line he saw two boys walking a road parallel to the expressway with fishing rods settled on

their shoulders like carbines.

He switched to the travel lane, stowed to the minimum turnpike speed, and began to look for anything that

would jog his memory. There was nothing at first, and he tried to caution himself against almost sure

disappointment. You were seven then. That's twenty-five years of water under the bridge. Places change.

Like people.

In those days the four-lane 295 hadn't existed. If you wanted to go to Portland from the Lot, you went out

Route 12 to Falmouth and then got on Number 1. Time had marched on.

Stop that shit.

But it was hard to stop. It was hard to stop when -

A big BSA cycle with jacked handlebars suddenly roared past him in the passing lane, a kid in a T-shirt

driving, a girl in a red cloth jacket and huge mirror-lensed sunglasses riding pillion behind him. They cut in a

little too quickly and he overreacted, jamming on his brakes and laying both hands on the horn. The BSA

sped up, belching blue smoke from its exhaust, and the girl jabbed her middle finger back at him.

He resumed speed, wishing for a cigarette. His hands were trembling slightly. The BSA was almost out of

sight now, moving fast. The kids. The goddamned kids. Memories tried to crowd in on him, memories of a

more recent vintage. He pushed them away. He hadn't been on a motorcycle in two years. He planned

never to ride on one again.

A flash of red caught his eye off to the left, and when, he glanced that way, he felt a burst of pleasure and

recognition. A large red barn stood on a hill far across a rising field of timothy and clover, a barn with a

cupola painted white - even at this distance he could see the sungleam on the weather vane atop that

cupola. It had been there then, and was still here now. It looked exactly the same. Maybe it was going to be

all right after all. Then the trees blotted it out.

As the turnpike entered Cumberland, more and more things began to seem familiar. He passed over the

Royal River, where they had fished for steelies and pickerel as boys. Past a brief, flickering view of

Cumberland Village through the trees. In the distance the Cumberland water tower with its huge slogan

painted across the side: 'Keep Maine Green.' Aunt Cindy had always said someone should print 'Bring

Money' underneath that.

His original sense of excitement grew and he began to speed up, watching for the sign. It came twinkling

up out of the distance in reflectorized green five miles later:

ROUTE 12 JERUSALEM'S LOT

CUMBERLAND CUMBERLAND CTR

A sudden blackness came over him, dousing his good spirits like sand on fire. He had been subject to these

since (his mind tried to speak Miranda's name and he would not let it) the bad time and was used to fending

them off, but this one swept over him with a savage power that was dismaying.

What was he doing, coming back to a town where he had lived for four years as a boy, trying to recapture

something that was irrevocably lost? What magic could he expect to recapture by walking roads that he had

once walked as a boy and were probably asphalted and straightened and logged off and littered with tourist

beer cans? The magic was gone, both white and black. It had all gone down the chutes on that night when

the motorcycle bad gone out of control and then there was the yellow moving van, growing and growing, his

wife Miranda's scream, cut off with sudden finality when -

The exit came up on his right, and for a moment he considered driving right past it, continuing on to

Chamberlain or Lewiston, stopping for lunch, and then turning around and going back. But back where?

Home? That was a laugh. If there was a home, it had been here. Even if it had only been four years, it was

his.

He signaled, slowed the Citroën, and went up the ramp. Toward the top, where the turnpike ramp joined

Route 12 (which became Jointner Avenue closer to town), he glanced up toward the horizon. What he saw

there made him jam the brakes on with both feet. The Citroën shuddered to a stop and stalled.

The trees, mostly pine and spruce, rose in gentle slopes toward the east, seeming to almost crowd

against the sky at the limit of vision. From here the town was not visible. Only the trees, and, in the distance,

where those trees rose against the sky, the peaked, gabled roof of the Marsten House.

He gazed at it, fascinated. Warring emotions crossed his face with kaleidoscopic swiftness.

'Still here,' he murmured aloud. 'By God.'

He looked down at his arms. They had broken out in goose flesh.

2

He deliberately skirted town, crossing into Cumberland and then coming back into 'salem's Lot from the

west, taking the Burns Road. He was amazed by how little things had changed out here. There were a few

new houses he didn't remember, there was a tavern called Dell's just over the town line, and a pair of fresh

gravel quarries. A good deal of the hardwood had been pulped over. But the old tin sign pointing the way to

the town dump was still there, and the road itself was still unpaved, full of chuckholes and washboards, and

he could see Schoolyard Hill through the slash in the trees where the Central Maine Power pylons ran on a

northwest to southeast line. The Griffen farm was still there, although the barn had been enlarged. He

wondered if they still bottled and sold their own milk. The logo had been a smiling cow under the name

brand: 'Sunshine Milk from the Griffen Farms!' He smiled. He had splashed a lot of that milk on his corn

flakes at Aunt Cindy's house.

He turned left onto the Brooks Road, passed the wrought-iron gates and the low fieldstone wall

surrounding Harmony Hill Cemetery, and then went down the steep grade and started up the far side - the

side known as Marsten's Hill.

At the top, the trees fell away on both sides of the road. On the right, you could look right down into the

town proper - Ben's first view of it. On the left, the Marsten House. He pulled over and got out of the car.

It was just the same. There was no difference, not at all. He might have last seen it yesterday.

The witch grass grew wild and tall in the front yard, obscuring the old, frost-heaved flagstones that led to

the porch. Chirring crickets sang in it, and he could see grasshoppers jumping in erratic parabolas.

The house itself looked toward town. it was huge and rambling and sagging, its windows haphazardly

boarded shut, giving it that sinister look of all old houses that have been empty for a long time. The paint had

been weathered away, giving the house a uniform gray look. Windstorms had ripped many of the shingles

off, and a heavy snowfall had punched in the west corner of the main roof, giving it a slumped, hunched

look. A tattered no-trespassing sign was nailed to the right-hand newel post.

He felt a strong urge to walk up that overgrown path, past the crickets and hoppers that would jump

around his shoes, climb the porch, peek between the haphazard boards into the hallway or the front room.

Perhaps try the front door. If it was unlocked, go in.

He swallowed and stared up at the house, almost hypnotized. It stared back at him with idiot indifference.

You walked down the hall, smelling wet plaster and rotting wallpaper, and mice would skitter in the walls.

There would still be a lot of junk lying around, and you might pick something up, a paperweight maybe, and

put it in your pocket. Then, at the end of the hall, instead of going through into the kitchen, you could turn left

and go up the stairs, your feet gritting in the plaster dust which had sifted down from the ceiling over the

years. There were fourteen steps, exactly fourteen. But the top one was smaller, out of proportion, as if it

had been adde to avoi the evil number. At the top of the stairs you stand on the landing, looking down the

hall toward a closed door. And if you walk down the hall toward it, watching as if from outside yourself as the

door gets closer and larger, you can reach out your hand and put it on the tarnished silver knob -

He turned away from the house, a straw-dry whistle of air slipping from his mouth. Not yet. Later, perhaps,

but not yet. For now it was enough to know that all of that was still here. It had waited for him. He put his

hands on the hood of his car and looked out over the town. He could find out down there who was handling

the Marsten House, and perhaps lease it. The kitchen would make an adequate writing room and he could

bunk down in the front parlor. But he wouldn't allow himself to go upstairs.

Not unless it had to be done.

He got in his car, started it, and drove down the hill to Jerusalem's Lot.

Chapter Two

SUSAN (I)

1

He was sitting on a bench in the park when he observed the girl watching him. She was a very pretty girl,

and there was a silk scarf tied over her light blond hair. She was currently reading a book, but there was a

sketch pad and what looked like a charcoal pencil beside her. It was Tuesday, September 16, the first day of

school, and the park had magically emptied of the rowdier element. What was left was a scattering of

mothers with infants, a few old men sitting by the war memorial, and this girl sitting in the dappled shade of a

gnarled old elm.

She looked up and saw him. An expression of startlement crossed her face. She looked down at her

book; looked up at him again and started to rise; almost thought better of it; did rise; sat down again.

He got up and walked over, holding his own book, which was a paperback Western. 'Hello,' he said

agreeably. 'Do we know each other?'

'No,' she said. 'That is . . . you're Benjaman Mears, right?'

'Right.' He raised his eyebrows.

She laughed nervously, not looking in his eyes except in a quick flash, to try to read the barometer of his

intentions. She was quite obviously a girl not accustomed to speaking to strange men in the park.

'I thought I was seeing a ghost.' She held up the book in her lap. He saw fleetingly that 'Jerusalem's Lot

Public Library' was stamped on the thickness of pages between covers. The book was Air Dance, his

second novel. She showed him the photograph of himself on the back jacket, a photo that was four years old

now. The face looked boyish and frighteningly serious - the eyes were black diamonds.

'Of such inconsequential beginnings dynasties are begun,' he said, and although it was a joking

throwaway remark, it hung oddly in the air, like prophecy spoken in jest. Behind them, a number of toddlers

were splashing happily in the wading pool and a mother was telling Roddy not to push his sister so high. The

sister went soaring up on her swing regardless, dress flying, trying for the sky. It was a moment he

remembered for years after, as though a special small slice had been cut from the cake of time. If nothing

fires between two people, such an instant simply falls back into the general wrack of memory.

Then she laughed and offered him the book. 'Will you autograph it?'

'A library book?'

'I'll buy it from them and replace it.'

He found a mechanical pencil in his sweater pocket, opened the book to the flyleaf, and asked, 'What's

your name?'

'Susan Norton.'

He wrote quickly, without thinking: For Susan Norton, the prettiest girl in the park. Warm regards, Ben

Mears. He added the date below his signature in slashed notation.

'Now you'll have to steal it,' he said, handing it back.

'Air Dance is out of print, alas.'

'I'll get a copy from one of those book finders in New York.' She hesitated, and this time her glance at his

eyes was a little longer. 'It's an awfully good book.'

'Thanks. When I take it down and look at it, I wonder how it ever got published.'

'Do you take it down often?'

'Yeah, but I'm trying to quit.'

She grinned at him and they both laughed and that made things more natural. Later he would have a

chance to think how easily this had happened, how smoothly. The thought was never a comfortable one. It

conjured up an image of fate, not blind at all but equipped with sentient 20/20 vision and intent on grinding

helpless mortals between the great millstones of the universe to make some unknown bread.

'I read Conway's Daughter, too. I loved that. I suppose you hear that all the time.'

'Remarkably little,' he said honestly. Miranda had also loved Conway's Daughter, but most of his

coffeehouse friends had been noncommittal and most of the critics had clobbered it. Well, that was critics for

you. Plot was out, masturbation in.

'Well, I did.'

'Have you read the new one?'

'Billy Said Keep Going? Not yet. Miss Coogan at the drugstore says it's pretty racy.'

'Hell, it's almost puritanical,' Ben said. 'The language is rough, but when you're writing about uneducated

country boys, you can't . . . look, can I buy you an ice-cream soda or something? I was just getting a hanker

on for one.'

She checked his eyes a third time. Then smiled, warmly.

'Sure. I'd love one. They're great in Spencer's.'

That was the beginning of it.

SALEM'S_LOT

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: