"That presumes it knew what they were, which supposes it had been spying on us through Han"s eyes for not a few hours, which a.s.sumes it comprehended us-our language, our technology-in excess of prior evidence."
"Yeah," Davis said. "Still."
"It was an accident," the lieutenant said. "Let it go."
"What makes you so sure you"re all right?"
"I"ve had no indications to the contrary. I appear in control of my own thoughts and actions. I"m aware of no alien presence crowding my mind. While I am thirsty, I have to desire to quench that thirst from one of your arteries."
"Would you be, though? Aware of the thing hiding in you?"
The lieutenant shrugged. "Possibly not. You"re taking a long time to answer my question; you know that."
"I don"t know how I am," Davis said. "No, I can"t feel the thing either, and no, I don"t want to drink your blood. Is that enough?"
" Davis," the lieutenant said, "I will do this. You need to understand that. You are as close to me as anyone, these days, and I will shoot you in the head if I deem it necessary. If I believed the thing were in me, I would turn this gun on myself without a second thought. Am I making myself clear? Let me know it"s over, or let me finish it."
The lieutenant"s face was flushed. "All right," Davis said. He closed his eyes. "All right." He took a deep breath. Another.
When he opened his eyes, he said, "It"s gone."
"You"re positive."
"Yes, sir."
"You cannot be lying to me."
"I know. I"m not."
The end of the pistol wavered, and for a moment, Davis was certain that the lieutenant was unconvinced, that he was going to squeeze the trigger, anyway. He wondered if he"d see the muzzle flash.
Then the pistol lowered and the lieutenant said, "Good man." He holstered the gun and extended his hand. "Come on. There"s a lot we have to do."
Davis caught the lieutenant"s hand and hauled himself to his feet. Behind the lieutenant, he saw the charred place that had been the Shadow, Lee"s torn and blackened form to one side of it. Further back, smoke continued to drift out of the spot in the trees where Han had lain. The lieutenant turned and started walking towards the trees. He did not ask, and Davis did not tell him, what he had seen with his eyes closed. He wasn"t sure how he could have said that the image behind his eyelids was the same as the image in front of them: the unending sky, blue, ravenous.
For Fiona, and with thanks to John Joseph Adams.
One for the Road.
by Stephen King.
Stephen King is the bestselling, award-winning author of many cla.s.sics, such as The Shining, The Dark Tower, The Stand, and The Dead Zone. His novel " Salem "s Lot is one of the cla.s.sics of the vampire genre. His latest novel, Duma Key, was published in early 2008, and a new short fiction collection, Just After Sunset, was released last fall. A new book collecting several stories and novellas of King"s that have been adapted for film, along with commentary by King-Stephen King Goes to the Movies-came out earlier this year. Other projects include editing Best American Short Stories 2007, and writing a pop culture column for Entertainment Weekly.
In his landmark study of horror literature, Danse Macabre, King argued that, in order to be effective, fictional, supernatural monsters must tap into and express in powerful metaphorical terms our actual fears about the real world.
For residents of Maine, one very real worry is that your vehicle will fail you in the snow and you will freeze to death before help arrives. Cla.s.sic folklore imagined the brooding mists of Transylvania as malignant, corporeal beings. Here King does the same for the whiteouts of c.u.mberland.
These vampires are avatars of winter, chilling in every respect.
It was quarter past ten and Herb Tooklander was thinking of closing for the night when the man in the fancy overcoat and the white, staring face burst into Tookey"s Bar, which lies in the northern part of Falmouth. It was the tenth of January, just about the time most folks are learning to live comfortably with all the New Year"s resolutions they broke, and there was one h.e.l.l of a northeaster blowing outside. Six inches had come down before dark and it had been going hard and heavy since then. Twice we had seen Billy Larribee go by high in the cab of the town plow, and the second time Tookey ran him out a beer-an act of pure charity my mother would have called it, and my G.o.d knows she put down enough of Tookey"s beer in her time. Billy told him they were keeping ahead of it on the main road, but the side ones were closed and apt to stay that way until next morning. The radio in Portland was forecasting another foot and a forty-mile-an-hour wind to pile up the drifts.
There was just Tookey and me in the bar, listening to the wind howl around the eaves and watching it dance the fire around on the hearth. "Have one for the road, Booth," Tookey says, "I"m gonna shut her down."
He poured me one and himself one and that"s when the door cracked open and this stranger staggered in, snow up to his shoulders and in his hair, like he had rolled around in confectioner"s sugar. The wind billowed a sand-fine sheet of snow in after him.
"Close the door!" Tookey roars at him. "Was you born in a barn?"
I"ve never seen a man who looked that scared. He was like a horse that"s spent an afternoon eating fire nettles. His eyes rolled toward Tookey and he said, "My wife-my daughter-" and he collapsed on the floor in a dead faint.
"Holy Joe," Tookey says. "Close the door, Booth, would you?"
I went and shut it, and pushing it against the wind was something of a ch.o.r.e. Tookey was down on one knee holding the fellow"s head up and patting his cheeks. I got over to him and saw right off that it was nasty. His face was fiery red, but there were gray blotches here and there, and when you"ve lived through winters in Maine since the time Woodrow Wilson was President, as I have, you know those gray blotches mean frostbite.
"Fainted," Tookey said. "Get the brandy off the backbar, will you?"
I got it and came back. Tookey had opened the fellow"s coat. He had come around a little; his eyes were half open and he was muttering something too low to catch.
"Pour a capful," Tookey says.
"Just a cap?" I asks him.
"That stuff"s dynamite," Tookey says. "No sense overloading his carb."
I poured out a capful and looked at Tookey. He nodded. "Straight down the hatch."
I poured it down. It was a remarkable thing to watch. The man trembled all over and began to cough. His face got redder. His eyelids, which had been at half-mast, flew up like window shades. I was a bit alarmed, but Tookey only sat him up like a big baby and clapped him on the back.
The man started to retch, and Tookey clapped him again.
"Hold onto it," he says, "that brandy comes dear."
The man coughed some more, but it was diminishing now. I got my first good look at him. City fellow, all right, and from somewhere south of Boston, at a guess. He was wearing kid gloves, expensive but thin. There were probably some more of those grayish-white patches on his hands, and he would be lucky not to lose a finger or two. His coat was fancy, all right; a three-hundred-dollar job if ever I"d seen one. He was wearing tiny little boots that hardly came up over his ankles, and I began to wonder about his toes.
"Better," he said.
"All right," Tookey said. "Can you come over to the fire?"
"My wife and my daughter," he said. "They"re out there... in the storm."
"From the way you came in, I didn"t figure they were at home watching the TV," Tookey said. "You can tell us by the fire as easy as here on the floor. Hook on, Booth."
He got to his feet, but a little groan came out of him and his mouth twisted down in pain. I wondered about his toes again, and I wondered why G.o.d felt he had to make fools from New York City who would try driving around in southern Maine at the height of a northeast blizzard. And I wondered if his wife and his little girl were dressed any warmer than him.
We hiked him across to the fireplace and got him sat down in a rocker that used to be Missus Tookey"s favorite until she pa.s.sed on in "74. It was Missus Tookey that was responsible for most of the place, which had been written up in Down East and the Sunday Telegram and even once in the Sunday supplement of the Boston Globe. It"s really more of a public house than a bar, with its big wooden floor, pegged together rather than nailed, the maple bar, the old barn-raftered ceiling, and the monstrous big fieldstone hearth. Missus Tookey started to get some ideas in her head after the Down East article came out, wanted to start calling the place Tookey"s Inn or Tookey"s Rest, and I admit it has sort of a Colonial ring to it, but I prefer plain old Tookey"s Bar. It"s one thing to get uppish in the summer, when the state"s full of tourists, another thing altogether in the winter, when you and your neighbors have to trade together. And there had been plenty of winter nights, like this one, that Tookey and I had spent all alone together, drinking scotch and water or just a few beers. My own Victoria pa.s.sed on in "73, and Tookey"s was a place to go where there were enough voices to mute the steady ticking of the deathwatch beetle-even if there was just Tookey and me, it was enough. I wouldn"t have felt the same about it if the place had been Tookey"s Rest. It"s crazy but it"s true.
We got this fellow in front of the fire and he got the shakes harder than ever. He hugged onto his knees and his teeth clattered together and a few drops of clear mucus spilled off the end of his nose. I think he was starting to realize that another fifteen minutes out there might have been enough to kill him. It"s not the snow, it"s the wind-chill factor. It steals your heat.
"Where did you go off the road?" Tookey asked him.
"S-six miles s-s-south of h-here," he said.
Tookey and I stared at each other, and all of a sudden I felt cold. Cold all over.
"You sure?" Tookey demanded. "You came six miles through the snow?"
He nodded. "I checked the odometer when we came through t-town. I was following directions... going to see my wife"s s-sister... in c.u.mberland... never been there before... we"re from New Jersey..."
New Jersey. If there"s anyone more purely foolish than a New Yorker it"s a fellow from New Jersey.
"Six miles, you"re sure?" Tookey demanded.
"Pretty sure, yeah. I found the turnoff but it was drifted in... it was..."
Tookey grabbed him. In the shifting glow of the fire his face looked pale and strained, older than his sixty-six years by ten. "You made a right turn?"
"Right turn, yeah. My wife-"
"Did you see a sign?"
"Sign?" He looked up at Tookey blankly and wiped the end of his nose. "Of course I did. It was on my instructions. Take Jointner Avenue through Jerusalem"s Lot to the 295 entrance ramp." He looked from Tookey to me and back to Tookey again. Outside, the wind whistled and howled and moaned through the eaves. "Wasn"t that right, mister?"
"The Lot," Tookey said, almost too soft to hear. "Oh my G.o.d."
"What"s wrong?" the man said. His voice was rising. "Wasn"t that right? I mean, the road looked drifted in, but I thought... if there"s a town there, the plows will be out and... and then I..."
He just sort of tailed off.
"Booth," Tookey said to me, low. "Get on the phone. Call the sheriff."
"Sure," this fool from New Jersey says, "that"s right. What"s wrong with you guys, anyway? You look like you saw a ghost."
Tookey said, "No ghosts in the Lot, mister. Did you tell them to stay in the car?"
"Sure I did," he said, sounding injured. "I"m not crazy."
Well, you couldn"t have proved it by me.
"What"s your name?" I asked him. "For the sheriff."
"Lumley," he says. "Gerard Lumley."
He started in with Tookey again, and I went across to the telephone. I picked it up and heard nothing but dead silence. I hit the cutoff b.u.t.tons a couple of times. Still nothing.
I came back. Tookey had poured Gerard Lumley another tot of brandy, and this one was going down him a lot smoother.
"Was he out?" Tookey asked.
"Phone"s dead."
"Hot d.a.m.n," Tookey says, and we look at each other. Outside the wind gusted up, throwing snow against the windows.
Lumley looked from Tookey to me and back again.
"Well, haven"t either of you got a car?" he asked. The anxiety was back in his voice. "They"ve got to run the engine to run the heater. I only had about a quarter of a tank of gas, and it took me an hour and a half to... Look, will you answer me?" He stood up and grabbed Tookey"s shirt.
"Mister," Tookey says, "I think your hand just ran away from your brains, there."
Lumley looked at his hand, at Tookey, then dropped it. "Maine," he hissed. He made it sound like a dirty word about somebody"s mother. "All right," he said. "Where"s the nearest gas station? They must have a tow truck-"
"Nearest gas station is in Falmouth Center," I said. "That"s three miles down the road from here."
"Thanks," he said, a bit sarcastic, and headed for the door, b.u.t.toning his coat.
"Won"t be open, though," I added.
He turned back slowly and looked at us.
"What are you talking about, old man?"
"He"s trying to tell you that the station in the Center belongs to Billy Larribee and Billy"s out driving the plow, you d.a.m.n fool," Tookey says patiently. "Now why don"t you come back here and sit down, before you bust a gut?"
He came back, looking dazed and frightened. "Are you telling me you can"t... that there isn"t...?"
"I ain"t telling you nothing," Tookey says. "You"re doing all the telling, and if you stopped for a minute, we could think this over."
"What"s this town, Jerusalem"s Lot?" he asked. "Why was the road drifted in? And no lights on anywhere?"
I said, "Jerusalem"s Lot burned out two years back."
"And they never rebuilt?" He looked like he didn"t believe it.
"It appears that way," I said, and looked at Tookey. "What are we going to do about this?"
"Can"t leave them out there," he said.
I got closer to him. Lumley had wandered away to look out the window into the snowy night.
"What if they"ve been got at?" I asked.
"That may be," he said. "But we don"t know it for sure. I"ve got my Bible on the shelf. You still wear your Pope"s medal?"
I pulled the crucifix out of my shirt and showed him. I was born and raised Congregational, but most folks who live around the Lot wear something-crucifix, St. Christopher"s medal, rosary, something. Because two years ago, in the span of one dark October month, the Lot went bad. Sometimes, late at night, when there were just a few regulars drawn up around Tookey"s fire, people would talk it over. Talk around it is more like the truth. You see, people in the Lot started to disappear. First a few, then a few more, than a whole slew. The schools closed. The town stood empty for most of a year. Oh, a few people moved in-mostly d.a.m.n fools from out of state like this fine specimen here-drawn by the low property values, I suppose. But they didn"t last. A lot of them moved out a month or two after they"d moved in. The others... well, they disappeared. Then the town burned flat. It was at the end of a long dry fall. They figure it started up by the Marsten House on the hill that overlooked Jointner Avenue, but no one knows how it started, not to this day. It burned out of control for three days. After that, for a time, things were better. And then they started again.