“They’re in those houses,” Mark said tightly. “Right now, in all those houses. Behind the shades. In beds and closets and cellars. Under the floors. Hiding.”

“Take it easy,” Ben said.

The village dropped behind them. Ben turned onto the Brooks Road and they drove past the Marsten House—its shutters still sagging, its lawn a complex maze of knee-high witch grass and goldenrod.

Mark pointed, and Ben looked. A path had been beaten across the grass, beaten white. It cut across the lawn from the road to the porch. Then it was behind them, and he felt a loosening in his chest. The worst had been faced and was behind them.

Far out on the Burns Road, not too far distant from the Harmony Hill graveyard, Ben stopped the car and they got out. They walked into the woods together. The undergrowth snapped harshly, dryly, under their feet. There was a gin-sharp smell of juniper berries and the sound of late locusts. They came out on a small, knoll-like prominence of land that looked down on a slash through the woods where the Central Maine Power lines twinkled in the day’s cool windiness. Some of the trees were beginning to show color.

“The old-timers say this is where it started,” Ben said. “Back in 1951. The wind was blowing from the west. They think maybe a guy got careless with a cigarette. One little cigarette. It took off across the Marshes and no one could stop it.”

He took a package of Pall Malls from his pocket, looked at the emblem thoughtfully— in hoc signo vinces—and then tore the cellophane top off. He lit one and shook out the match. The cigarette tasted surprisingly good, although he had not smoked in months.

“They have their places,” he said. “But they could lose them. A lot of them could be killed…or destroyed. That’s a better word. But not all of them. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Mark said.

“They’re not very bright. If they lose their hiding places, they’ll hide badly the second time. A couple of people just looking in obvious places could do well. Maybe it could be finished in ’salem’s Lot by the time the first snow flew. Maybe it would never be finished. No guarantee, one way or the other. But without…something…to drive them out, to upset them, there would be no chance at all.”

“Yes.”

“It would be ugly and dangerous.”

“I know that.”

“But they say fire purifies,” Ben said reflectively. “Purification should count for something, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Mark said again.

Ben stood up. “We ought to go back.”

He flicked the smoldering cigarette into a pile of dead brush and old brittle leaves. The white ribbon of smoke rose thinly against the green background of junipers for two or three feet, and then was pulled apart by the wind. Twenty feet away, downwind, was a large, jumbled deadfall.

They watched the smoke, transfixed, fascinated.

It thickened. A tongue of flame appeared. A small popping noise issued from the pile of dead brush as twigs caught.

“Tonight they won’t be running sheep or visiting farms,” Ben said softly. “Tonight they’ll be on the run. And tomorrow—”

“You and me,” Mark said, and closed his fist. His face was no longer pale; bright color glowed there. His eyes flashed.

They went back to the road and drove away.

In the small clearing overlooking the power lines, the fire in the brush began to burn more strongly, urged by the autumn wind that blew from the west.

 

October 1972

June 1975

 

 

One for the Road

 

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 hell 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 God 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 chore. 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 back bar, 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 ask 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 on to 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 God 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.