Salem's Lot

“I will, if you can drive the stake. Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

Jimmy crawled in, holding his breath against the stench, and pulled out Sandy McDougall. Mark used the hammer quickly and mercifully. Roy McDougall was more difficult. He had been a strong man, in the prime of his life, and his thrashings and buckings were like a maddened horse. The predatory lungings of his bared teeth were frightening. A square strike on the wrist could sever the hand completely. Mark made two false starts; one nick in the shoulder and one stroke that dug a shallow cha

In panicky desperation, Jimmy threw himself across Roy McDougall’s stomach and thighs and yelled: “Quick! Hit him now!”

Mark brought the stake down and smashed it into the flesh with one heavy blow from the hammer. For a moment McDougall’s thrashings intensified, tossing Jimmy off as if he were a piece of chaff, and then he trembled all over and lay still. One of his hands closed tightly, clutching a useless fistful of leaves, and they both watched it, fascinated, until it loosened.

“Let’s drag them back inside there,” Jimmy said.

“Shouldn’t we take them to the river—?”

“We’ll leave the stakes in them. I think that will do it; they’re only Undead, and their hearts are destroyed. And if we have to take time to do that with each of them, we’ll never get done.”

They dragged them back into the crawl space, and Jimmy drove a strong twig through the hasp of the broken lock to hold it shut.

They stood in the rain again, soaked and bloody. “We’ll have to get rid of the bodies eventually,” Jimmy said. “I’m not going to jail for this if I can help it.”

“The next trailer?” Mark asked.

“Yes. They would be the logical ones for the McDougalls to attack first.”

They went across, and this time their nostrils picked up the telltale odor of rot even in the dooryard. Not even the steady autumn rain could lay it.

The name below the doorbell was Evans. Jimmy nodded. Yes, the husband’s name was David Evans. He worked in the auto department of Grant’s in Gates Falls. He had treated him a couple years ago. A cyst, or something.

This time the bell worked, but there was no response. They found Mrs Evans in bed, white and still, and dispatched her. The white sheets were drenched. The two children were in a single bedroom, both dressed in pajamas. Jimmy used his stethoscope and found nothing. The stakes did their work, and now he found using them little different from using a scalpel or a bone-saw. Even horror had its limits.

Mark found David Evans, hidden away in the unfinished storage space over their small garage. He was dressed in neat mechanic’s greens and his mouth was crusted with blood that had dried in two streams from the corners of his mouth. Perhaps his children’s blood.

“Let’s put them all up here,” Jimmy said.

They did, checking the road carefully for cars before carrying each sheet-wrapped body across the space between the house and garage. When the town hall noon whistle went off, sending its shriek up to the gray, membranous sky, they both jumped and then looked at each other sheepishly.

Mark looked at his red-gloved hands with loathing. “Can we use the shower?” he asked Jimmy. “I feel…you know…”

“Yes,” Jimmy said. “I want to call Ben, anyway. We—” He snapped his fingers. “The phone’s out at your house. Christ, why didn’t I think of that? As soon as we clean up, we’d better go back.”

They went inside, and Jimmy sat down in one of the living room chairs and closed his eyes. Soon he heard Mark ru

On the darkened screen of his eyes he saw Randy McDougall twisting and writhing on the wet leaves, saw the stake falling, saw his stomach swell with gas—

He opened his eyes.

This trailer was in nicer condition than the McDougalls’, neater. He had never known Mrs Evans, but it seemed she must have taken pride in her home. There was a neat pile of the dead children’s toys in a small storage room, a room that had probably been called the laundry room in the mobile home dealer’s original brochure. Poor kids, he hoped they’d enjoyed the toys while there had still been bright days and sunshine to enjoy them in, before they arrived at their final quarters—the shoddy upstairs of a half-finished second-story garage. There was a tricycle, several large trucks and a play gas station, one of those caterpillars on wheels (there must have been some dandy fights over that!), a toy pool table—

Blue chalk.

Three shaded lights in a row.

Men walking around the green table under the bright lights, cueing up, brushing the grains of blue chalk off their fingertips—

“That’s it!” he shouted, sitting bolt upright in the chair, and Mark came ru

In this section, Jimmy enters Eva’s basement to confirm that Barlow is hiding there. In the novel, he opens the cellar door and steps down, and, as the published text says, “the screams began.” In the original manuscript, this part is exactly the same, but the reason the screams begin is completely different:

Jimmy told himself he would only go to the foot of the stairs; he could use his lighter and see if the pool table was still there. He went down slowly, using the railing, breathing through his mouth to cut the smell. At the bottom, he flicked the wheel of the Zippo and the lighter flamed. He saw the pool table.

And he saw the rats.

The cellar was full of them. Every inch of floor space and shelf space was covered by the squirming bodies. They had tumbled whole rows of Eva’s carefully-made preserves on the floor and they had smashed, leaving rich, splattered deposits of food. They were not eating now; they had been waiting for him…or for someone. Sarlinov’s daytime guards. And at the flash of light, they attacked, wave after wave of them.

He screamed a warning to Mark and then turned to go back up the steps. A half-dozen huge dump rats that had been crouched on the small utility shelf hung over the steps threw themselves at his face, biting and clawing for purchase. He dropped the lighter and screamed again, this time not in warning but in pain and terror.

Rats crawled across his shoes and swarmed up his legs toward his waist, their sharp teeth and claws sinking through the cloth of his trousers and into flesh.

He staggered up two steps, beating at them with his hands. One of them snuffled through his hair and peered over Jimmy’s forehead and into his eyes; the nose wriggled, and the rodent teeth flashed as he slashed at Jimmy’s eyes.

Jimmy felt a great, flaring pain. He struck the rat away. His right foot slipped through the hole between two of the unbacked stairs and he fell forward, sealing his doom. Pain bloomed and he heard the muffled snap as his right ankle twisted, then broke.

I’ve had it, he thought. But like this…oh, God!

“Mark, run!” he screamed. “Get Ben! Get—”

A rat squirmed into his mouth, back feet digging at his chin. He bit at it, tore at it, and the rat squealed and writhed. The fetid taste of it filled his mouth. He ripped it away, beat more of them off, and began to crawl up the stairs.

Mark went to the door and saw something coming painfully up the steps on its hands and knees. It was brown and writhing with feet and tails and eyes. He saw a flash of something that looked like Jimmy’s shirt.

He went down two steps and held out his hand. A rat jumped on it and crawled up his arm like lightning, black eyes glaring. He struck it off.

The brown, writhing thing heaved itself to its feet and Mark screamed and put his hands to his temples. Jimmy Cody’s face was shredding before his eyes. One eye socket was dark and lightless; a rat was spread-eagled across his left cheek, chewing at his ear. They were crawling in and out of his shirt and now two brown rivers of them were moving up to where Mark stood. In a moment they would be on him.