6
They arrived at the hospital at nine-thirty, and Jimmy Cody was in Matt's room. He looked at Ben, unsmiling, and then his eyes flicked to Mark Petrie with curiosity.
'I've got some bad news for you, Ben. Sue Norton has disappeared.'
'She's a vampire,' Ben said flatly, and Matt grunted from his bed.
'Are you sure of that?' Jimmy asked sharply.
Ben cocked his thumb at Mark Petrie and introduced him. 'Mark here had a little visit from Danny Glick on Saturday night. He can tell you the rest.'
Mark told it from beginning to end, just as he had told Ben earlier.
Matt spoke first when he had finished. 'Ben, there are no words to say how sorry I am.'
'I can give you something if you need it,' Jimmy said.
'I know what medicine I need, Jimmy. I want to move against this Barlow today. Now. Before dark.'
'All right,' Jimmy said. 'I've canceled all my calls. And I phoned the county sheriff s office. McCaslin is gone, too.'
'Maybe that explains this,' Ben said, and took the pistol out of his pocket and dropped it onto Matt's bedside table. It looked strange and out of place in the hospital room.
'Where did you get this?' Jimmy asked, picking it up.
'Out by Susan's car.'
'Then I can guess. McCaslin went to the Norton house sometime after he left us. He got the story on Susan, including the make, model, and license number of her car. Went out cruising some of the back roads, just on the off-chance. And - '
Broken silence in the room. None of them needed it filled.
'Foreman's is still closed,' Jimmy said. 'And a lot of the old men who hang around Crossen's have been complain?ing about the dump. No one has seen Dud Rogers for a week.'
They looked at each other bleakly.
'I spoke with Father Callahan last night,' Matt said. 'He has agreed to go along, providing you two - plus Mark, of course - will stop at this new shop and talk to Straker first.'
'I don't think he'll be talking to anyone today,' Mark said quietly.
'What did you find out about them?' Jimmy asked Matt.
'Anything useful?'
'Well, I think I've put some of the pieces together. Straker must be this thing's human watchdog and body?guard . . . a kind of human familiar. He must have been in town long before Barlow appeared. There were certain rites to be performed, in propitiation of the Dark Father. Even Barlow has his Master, you see.' He looked at them somberly. 'I rather suspect no one will ever find a trace of Ralphie Glick. I think he was Barlow's ticket of admission. Straker took him and sacrificed him.'
'Bastard,' Jimmy said distantly.
'And Danny Glick?' Ben asked.
'Straker bled him first,' Matt said. 'His Master's gift. First blood for the faithful servant. Later, Barlow would have taken over that job himself. But Straker performed another service for his Master before Barlow ever arrived. Do any of you know what?'
For a moment there was silence, and then Mark said quite distinctly, 'The dog that man found on the cemetery gate.'
'What?' Jimmy said. 'Why? Why would he do that?'
'The white eyes,' Mark said, and then looked questioningly at Matt, who was nodding with some surprise.
'All last night I nodded over these books, not knowing we had a scholar in our midst.' The boy blushed a little. 'What Mark says is exactly right. According to several of the standard references on folklore and the supernatural, one way to frighten a vampire away is to paint white 'angel eyes' over the real eyes of a black dog. Win's Doc was all black except for two white patches. Win used to call them his headlights - they were directly over his eyes. He let the dog run at night. Straker must have spotted it, killed it, and then hung it on the cemetery gate.'
'And how about this Barlow?' Jimmy asked. 'How did he get to town?'
Matt shrugged. 'I have no way of telling. I think that we must assume, in line with the legends, that he is old . . . very old. He may have changed his name a dozen times, or a thousand. He may have been a native of almost every country in the world at one time or another, although I suspect his origins may have been Romanian or Magyar or Hungarian. It doesn't really matter how he got to town anyway . . . although I wouldn't be surprised to find out Larry Crockett had a hand in it. He's here. That's the important thing.
'Now, here is what you must do: Take a stake when you go. And a gun, in case Straker is still alive. Sheriff McCaslin's revolver will serve the purpose. The stake must pierce the heart or the vampire may rise again. Jimmy, you can check that. When you have staked him you must cut off his head, stuff the mouth with garlic, and turn it face down in the coffin. In most vampire fiction, Hollywood and otherwise, the staked vampire mortifies almost in?stantly into dust. This may not happen in real life. If it doesn't, you must weight the coffin and throw it into ?running water. I would suggest the Royal River. Do you have questions?'
There were none.
'Good. You must each carry a vial of holy water and a bit of the Host. And you must each have Father Callahan hear your confession before you go.'
'I don't think any of us are Catholic,' Ben said.
'I am,' Jimmy said. 'Nonpracticing.'
'Nonetheless, you will make a confession and an act of contrition. Then you go pure, washed in Christ's blood . . . clean blood, not tainted.'
'All right,' Ben said.
'Ben, had you slept with Susan? Forgive me, but - '
'Yes,' he said.
'Then you must pound the stake - first into Barlow, then into her. You are the only person in this little party who has been hurt personally. You will act as her husband. And you mustn't falter. You'll be releasing her.'
'All right,' he said again.
'Above all' - his glance swept all of them - 'you must not look in his eyes! If you do, he'll catch you and turn you against the others, even at the expense of your own life.
Remember Floyd Tibbits! That makes it dangerous to carry a gun, even if it's necessary. Jimmy, you take it, and hang back a little. If you have to examine either Barlow or Susan, give it to Mark.'
'Understood,' Jimmy said.
'Remember to buy garlic. And roses, if you can. Is that little flower shop in Cumberland still open, Jimmy?'
'The Northern Belle? I think so. '
'A white rose for each of you. Tie them in your hair or around your neck. And I'll repeat myself - don't look in his eyes! I could keep you here and tell you a hundred other things, but you better go along. It's ten o'clock already, and Father Callahan may be having second thoughts. My best wishes and my prayers go with you. Praying is quite a trick for an old agnostic like me, too. But I don't think I'm as agnostic as I once was. Was it Carlyle who said that if a man dethrones God in his heart, then Satan must ascend to His position?'
No one answered, and Matt sighed. 'Jimmy, I want a closer look at your neck.'
Jimmy stepped to the bedside and lifted his chin. The wounds were obviously punctures, but they had both scabbed over and seemed to be healing nicely.
'Any pain? Itching?' Matt asked.
'No.'
'You were very lucky,' he said, looking at Jimmy soberly.
'I'm starting to think I was luckier than I'II ever know.' Matt leaned back in his bed. His face looked drawn, the eyes deeply socketed. 'I will take the pill Ben refused, if you please.'
'I'll tell one of the nurses.'
'I'll sleep while you go about your work,' Matt said. 'Later there is another matter . . . well, enough of that.' His eyes shifted to Mark. 'You did a remarkable thing yesterday, boy. Foolish and reckless, but remarkable.'
'She paid for it,' Mark said quietly, and clasped his hands together in front of him. They were trembling.
'Yes, and you may have to pay again. Any of you, or all of you. Don't underestimate him' And now, if you don't mind, I'm very tired. I was reading most of the night. Call me the very minute the work is done.'
They left. In the hall Ben looked at Jimmy and said, 'Did be remind you of anyone?'
'Yes,' Jimmy said. 'Van Helsing.'
7
At quarter past ten, Eva Miller went down cellar to get two jars of corn to take to Mrs Norton who, according to Mabel Werts, was in bed. Eva had spent most of September in a steamy kitchen, toiling over her canning operations, blanching vegetables and putting them up, putting paraffin plugs in the tops of Ball jars to cover homemade jelly. There were well over two hundred glass jars neatly shelved in her spick-and-span dirt-floored basement - canning was one of her great joys. Later in the year, as fall drifted into winter and the holidays neared, she would add mincemeat.
The smell struck her as soon as she opened the cellar door. 'Gosh'n fishes,' she muttered under her breath, and went down gingerly, as if wading into a polluted pool. Her husband had built the cellar himself, rock-walling it for coolness. Every now and then a muskrat or woodchuck or mink would crawl into one of the wide chinks and die there. That was what must have happened, although she could never recall a stink this strong.
She reached the lower floor and went along the walls, squinting in the faint overhead glow of the two fifty-watt bulbs. Those should be replaced with seventy-fives, she thought. She got her preserves, neatly labeled CORN in her own careful blue script (a slice of red pepper on the top of every one), and continued her inspection, even squeezing into the space behind the huge, multi-duct furnace. Nothing.
She arrived back at the steps leading up to her kitchen and stared around, frowning, hands on hips. The large cellar was much neater since she had hired two of Larry Crockett's boys to build a tool shed behind her house two years ago. There was the furnace, looking like an Impressionist sculpture of the goddess Kali with its score of pipes twisting off in all directions; the storm windows that she would have to get on soon now that October had come and heating was so dear; the tarpaulin-covered pool table that had been Ralph's. She had the felt carefully vacuumed each May, although no one had played on it since Ralph had died in 1959. Nothing much else down here now. A box of paperbacks she had collected for the Cumberland Hospital, a snow shovel with a broken handle, a pegboard with some of Ralph's old tools hanging from it, a trunk containing drapes that were probably all mil?dewed by now.
Still, the stink persisted.
Her eyes fixed on the small half-door that led down to the root cellar, but she wasn't going down there, not today. Besides, the walls of the root cellar were solid concrete. Unlikely that an animal could have gotten in there. Still -
?'Ed?' she called suddenly, for no reason at all. The flat sound of her voice scared her.
The word died in the dimly lit cellar. Now, why had she done that? What in God's name would Ed Craig be doing down here, even if there was a place to hide? Drinking? Offhand, she couldn't think of a more depressing place in town to drink than here in her cellar. More likely he was off in the woods with that good-for-nothing friend of his, Virge Rathbun, guzzling someone's dividend.
Yet she lingered a moment longer, sweeping her gaze around. The rotten stink was awful, just awful. She hoped she wouldn't have to have the place fumigated.
With a last glance at the root cellar door, she went back upstairs.
8
Father Callahan heard them out, all three, and by the time he was brought up to date, it was a little after eleven-thirty.
They were sitting in the cool and spacious sitting room of the rectory, and the sun flooded in the large front windows in bars that looked thick enough to slice. Watching the dust motes that danced dreamily in the sun shafts, Callahan was reminded of an old cartoon he had seen somewhere. Cleaning woman with a broom is staring in surprise down at the floor; she has swept away part of her shadow. He felt a little like that now. For the second time in twenty-four hours he had been confronted with a stark impossibility - only now the impossibility had corroboration from a writer, a seemingly levelheaded little boy, and a doctor whom the town respected. Still, an impossibility was an impossibility.You couldn't sweep away your own shadow. Except that it seemed to have happened.
'This would be much easier to accept if you could have arranged for a thunderstorm and a power failure,' he said.
'It's quite true,' Jimmy said. 'I assure you.' His hand went to his neck.
Father Callahan got up and pulled something out of Jimmy's black bag - two truncated baseball bats with sharpened points. He turned one of them over in his hands and said, 'Just a moment, Mrs Smith. This won't hurt a bit.'
No one laughed.
Callahan put the stakes back, went to the window, and looked out at Jointner Avenue. 'You are all very persuasive,' he said. 'And I suppose I must add one little piece which you now do not have in your possession.' He turned back to them.
'There is a sign in the window of the Barlow and Straker Furniture Shop,' he said. 'It says, "Closed Until Further Notice." I went down this morning myself promptly at nine o'clock to discuss Mr Burke's allegations with your mysterious Mr Straker. The shop is locked, front and back.'
'You have to admit that jibes with what Mark says,' Ben remarked.
'Perhaps. And perhaps it's only chance. Let me ask you again: Are you sure you must have the Catholic Church in this?'
'Yes,' Ben said. 'But we'll proceed without you if we have to. If it comes to that, I'll go alone.'
'No need of that,' Father Callahan said, rising. 'Follow me across to the church, gentlemen, and I will hear your confessions.'
9
Ben knelt awkwardly in the darkness of the confessional, his mind whirling, his thoughts inchoate. Flicking through them was a succession of surreal images: Susan in the park; Mrs Glick backing away from the makeshift tongue-depressor cross, her mouth an open, writhing wound; Floyd Tibbits coming out of his car in a lurch, dressed like a scarecrow, charging him; Mark Petrie leaning in the window of Susan's car. For the first and only time, the possibility that all of this might be a dream occurred to him, and his tired mind clutched at it eagerly.
His eye fell on something in the corner of the con?fessional, and he picked it up curiously. It was an empty Junior Mints box, fallen from the pocket of some little boy, perhaps. A touch of reality that was undeniable. The cardboard was real and tangible under his fingers. This nightmare was real.
The little sliding door opened. He looked at it but could see nothing beyond. There was a heavy screen in the opening.
'What should I do?' He asked the screen.
'Say, "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."'
'Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,' Ben said his voice sounding strange and heavy in the enclosed space.
'Now tell me your sins.'
'All of them?' Ben asked, appalled.
'Try to be representative,' Callahan said, his voice dry. 'I know we have something to do before dark.'
Thinking hard and trying to keep the Ten Command?ments before him as a kind of sorting screen, Ben began. It didn't become easier as he went along. There was no sense of catharsis - only the dull embarrassment that went with telling a stranger the mean secrets of his life. Yet he could see how this ritual could become compulsive: as bitterly compelling as strained rubbing alcohol for the chronic drinker or the pictures behind the loose board in the bathroom for an adolescent boy. There was something medieval about it, something accursed - a ritual act of regurgitation. He found himself remembering a scene from the Bergman picture The Seventh Seal, where a crowd of ragged penitents proceeds through a town stricken with the black plague. The penitents were scourging themselves with birch branches, making themselves bleed. The hate?fulness of baring himself this way (and perversely, he would not allow himself to lie, although he could have done so quite convincingly) made the day's purpose real in the final sense, and he could almost see the word 'vampire' printed on the black screen of his mind, not in scare movie-poster print, but in small, economical letters that were made to be a woodcut or scratched on a scroll. He felt helpless in the grip of this alien ritual, out of joint with his time. The confessional might have been a direct pipeline to the days when werewolves and incubi and witches were an accepted part of the outer darkness and the church the only beacon of light. For the first time in his life he felt the slow, terrible beat and swell of the ages and saw his life as a dim and glimmering spark in an edifice which, if seen clearly, might drive all men mad. Matt had not told them of Father Callaban's conception of his church as a Force, but Ben would have understood that now. He could feel the Force in this fetid little box, beating in on him, leaving him naked and contemptible. He felt it as no Catholic, raised to con?fession since earliest childhood, could have.
When he stepped out, the fresh air from the open doors struck him thankfully. He wiped at his neck with the palm of his hand and it came away sweaty.
Callahan stepped out. 'You're not done yet,' he said.
Wordlessly, Ben stepped back inside, but did not kneel. Callahan gave him an act of contrition - ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys.
'I don't know that one,' Ben said.
'I'll give you a card with the prayer written on it,' the voice on the other side of the screen said. 'You can say them to yourself while we ride over to Cumberland.'
Ben hesitated a moment. 'Matt was right, you know. When he said it was going to be harder than we thought. We're going to sweat blood before this is over.'
'Yes?' Callahan said - polite or just dubious? Ben couldn't tell. He looked down and saw he was still holding the Junior Mints box. He had crushed it to a shapeless pulp with the convulsive squeezing of his right hand.