Blog-o-ween 2024: Day 21

Lots of ‘Salem’s Lot

Part Two

Chapter 12: Mark

Sunrise: 7:03 AM

Sunset: 6:10 PM

The hand on Susan’s shoulder belongs, not to Straker or any of Barlow’s growing army of undead minions, but to the Lot’s favorite Monster Kid, Mark Petrie. Armed with a three-foot long wooden stake he took from the family wood pile, Mark is on a mission. After seeing Danny Glick at his window, he tells an incredulous Susan, he has decided to kill Barlow. Susan tries her rationality routine on the boy, but Mark is having none of it. They break into the Marsten House, but are soon found and overpowered by Straker.

Mark wakes up in Straker’s arms. The man takes Mark upstairs to the same room that Hubert Marsden committed suicide in. There, Straker proceeds to tie the boy up, promising Mark that later, after he has fed on Susan, Barlow will come up and deal with him. Using an old escapist technique he learned from a book about Houdini, Mark makes his body bigger so that the ropes will be looser when he relaxes. After much work, Mark slips free and lies in wait for Straker. He surprise the man and crushes his skull with the leg of an iron bed. He attempts to save Susan, but Barlow awakens, and it is to late. Susan’s screams fill the air.

Later that night, Mark hears Susan scratching at his bedroom window, begging for him to let her in. She is so…hungry…

Ugh! Poor Susan!

I remember the first time I read ‘Salem’s Lot. The capture of Susan Norton hit me hard. Sure, I was sore at her for all her “Don’t be silly! Vampires? Here?” business, but she was one of the team, you know? She was a Fearless Vampire Hunter — well, almost. Still…she was one of us.

Mark, on the other hand, is one bad mamma-jamma, is he not? Well, he’s a Monster Kid, and us Monster Kids are heroes at heart. It’s just who we are. There’s really no monster too big for us to tackle, and…

All right! So, I’m a coward at heart! Sue me!

One of the things that I like about Mark is his directness. While Ben and Matt try to rationally lay out their beliefs for Susan to pick up and examine at her leisure, Mark just bowls her over. He knows what the truth is, why talk about it further?

“‘What are you doing here?’ Her eyes were moving continually over him, as if she hadn’t been able to take in his actuality yet. 

“‘The same thing you are. Only that stake won’t work. It’s too…’ He groped for a word that checked into his vocabulary through sight and definition but not by use. ‘It’s too flimsy.’ 

“She looked down at her piece of snow fence and actually blushed. ‘Oh, that. Well, I found that in the woods and…and thought someone might fall over it, so I just—’ 

“He cut her adult temporizing short impatiently: ‘You came to kill the vampire, didn’t you?’ 

“‘Wherever did you get that idea? Vampires and things like that?’ 

“‘He said somberly: ‘A vampire tried to get me last night. It almost did, too.’ 

“‘That’s absurd. A big boy like you should know better than to make up—’ 

“‘It was Danny Glick.’  

“She recoiled, her eyes wincing as if he had thrown a mock punch instead of words. She groped out, found his arm, and held it. Their eyes locked. ‘Are you making this up, Mark?’

“‘No,’ he said, and told his story in a few simple sentences. 

“‘And you came here alone?’ She asked when he had finished. ‘You believed it and came up here alone?’ 

“‘Believed it?’ He looked at her, honestly puzzled. ‘Sure I believed it. I saw it, didn’t I?’ 

“There was no response to that, and suddenly she was ashamed of her instant doubt (no, doubt was too kind a word) of Matt’s story and of Ben’s tentative acceptance.”

Like I said: Mark is one bad mamma-jamma.

It’s this mamma-jamma-ness that will serve him well inside the Marsten House. Well, that and one other thing:

“I bet there’s a lot of people lying around in bed today with the curtains closed or the shades drawn, wondering if they’ve got a cold or the flu or something. They feel all weak and fuzzy-headed. They don’t want to eat. The idea of eating makes them want to puke.’ 

“‘How do you know so much?’ 

“‘I read the monster magazines,’ he said, ‘and I go to see the movies when I can. Usually I have to tell my mom I’m going to see Walt Disney. And you can’t trust all of it. Sometimes they just make stuff up so the story will be bloodier.’”

Bad. Mamma. Jamma.

The other thing that serves Mark well is his interest in magic and the exploits of Harry Houdini.

“Hou” now? (Get it? “‘Hou’ now?” Hou! Ah, forget it...)

Believe it or not, there are…and I don’t want this to sound like a pejorative, but…there are younger people out there who don’t know who Harry Houdini was. When I was kid, anyone who didn’t know the name Houdini and what he was famous for was automatically considered to be a narc. We had a whole series of questions to establish kid credentials:

• What was the name of the pitcher in Abbott & Costello’s “Who’s on First?” routine?
• What was Snagglepuss’s catchphrase?
• What was the name of the show hosted by Count Floyd on SCTV?

We had more tests than a witchfinder.

Harry Houdini was born Erik Weisz in Budapest, Hungary, in 1874. His family immigrated to the United States four years later, eventually settling in Appleton, Wisconsin, where his father served as rabbi of the Zion Reform Jewish Congregation. In 1891, Ehrich Weiss (which is what the family changed it to when they arrived in the U.S.—somehow Germanizing the family name was better than the original Hungarian spelling?) became a professional magician, taking the name of the French magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin. He stuck an “I” at the ending and then changed the spelling of his nickname “Ehri”…et voila…Harry Houdini was born!

Houdini kicked around dime museums and sideshows for years. It wasn’t until 1899 that he caught his big break. That was when he met manager Martin Beck in St. Paul, Minnesota. Beck found Houdini’s escape act fascinating, and he told the young performer that that was what he should build his act on. Houdini took Beck’s advice, and within months he was performing at the best (and best-paying) vaudeville stages, in the US and Europe. Houdini’s public acts of escapism — from jails, handcuffs, chains, ropes, and straitjackets — drew gigantic crowds and publicity.

Houdini died in 1926 on (of all days) Halloween. Some claim that his death was caused by appendicitis, while others claim that it was related to an incident that occurred a week or so before his death. At that time, Houdini was confronted by Jocelyn Gordon Whitehead in his dressing room at the Princess Theatre in Montreal, Canada. There, Whitehead asked whether or not it was true that Houdini was not affected by blows to the stomach. When Houdini said that it was true, Whitehead threw and landed several punches to the unprepared Houdini's mid-section. For the next few days, Houdini was in great pain, but carried on performing. In Detroit, he was diagnosed with having acute appendicitis, but he decided to perform that night at Garrick Theatre. He passed out during the show, but was revived and finished his act. He was admitted to Detroit’s Grace Hospital where he died a week later from peritonitis. He was 52.

Sometimes the show shouldn’t go on. Know what I mean?

As he is being strung up by Straker, Mark recalls a book that he had read on the famed magician and his escapism exploits:

“…one of the things the book said he did was hold his breath and tighten his hands into fists when a volunteer from the audience was tying him up. You bulged your thighs and forearms and neck muscles, too. If your muscles were big, you had a little slack when you relaxed them. The trick then was to relax completely, and go at your escape slowly and surely, never letting panic hurry you up. Little by little, your body would give you sweat for grease, and that helped, too.”

Sure enough, wouldn’t you know it, Mark slowly works himself free of his binds. Chalk another one up for Monster Kids everywhere! Sure reading is fun, but it will also help you when you are trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey by the human familiar of an ancient vampire. It's a well-known fact!

Let’s call it a day there, Blog-o-weeners. Sure, we could talk about Susan’s visit to Mark that night, about her mewling insistence that he let her in, about how she’ll kiss him…all over…

…no!…let’s stop now and pick things back up tomorrow. Please read Part 2, Chapter 13: Father Callahan. This is the last chapter of the second part of the novel. Think of it as a rollercoaster ride. At the end of Part 2, we are climbing…climbing…climbing to the top of the last big hill. After that, it’s a long, steep, sharp drop into Part 3. Is there a corkscrew or a loop-the-loop awaiting us? Who knows? We’ll have to wait and see.

And while you’re waiting, please remember that if you decide to sneak into the old, dark house on the hill, you must…