The boy is gone, like an eddy of dark water.
Barlow seems to grow taller. His hair, swept back from his brow in the European manner, seems to float around his skull. He's wearing a dark suit and a bright red tie, impeccably knotted, and to Callahan he seems part of the darkness that surrounds him. Mark Petrie's parents lie dead at his feet, their skulls crushed.
"Fulfill your part of the bargain, shaman."
But why should he? Why not drive him off, settle for a draw this night ? Or kill him outright ? Something is wrong with the idea, terribly wrong, but he cannot pick out just what it is. Nor will any of the buzzwords that have helped him in previous moments of crisis be of any help to him here. This isn't anomie, lack of empathy, or the existential grief of the twentieth century; this is a vampire. And -
And his cross, which had been glowing fiercely, is growing dark.
Fear leaps into his belly like a confusion of hot wires. Barlow is walking toward him across the Petrie kitchen, and Callahan can see the things fangs very clearly because Barlow is smiling. It is a winner's smile.
Callahan takes a step backward. Then two. Then his bu**ocks strike the edge of the table, and the table pushes back against the wall, and then there is nowhere left to go.
"Sad to see a man's faith fail , " says Barlow, and reaches out .
Why should he not reach out? The cross Callahan is holding up is now dark. Now it's nothing but a piece of plaster, a cheap piece of rick-rack his mother bought in a Dublin souvenir shop, probably at a scalper's price. The power it had sent ramming up his arm, enough spiritual voltage to smash down walls and shatter stone, is gone.
Barlow plucks it from his fingers. Callahan cries out miserably, the cry of a child who suddenly realizes the bogeyman has been real all along, waiting patiently in the closet for its chance. And now comes a sound that will haunt him for the rest of his life, from New York and the secret highways of America to the AA meetings in Topeka where he finally sobered up to the final stop in Detroit to his life here, in Calla Bryn Sturgis. He will remember that sound when his forehead is scarred and he fully expects to be killed. He will remember it when he is killed. The sound is two dry snaps as Barlow breaks the arms of the cross, and the meaningless thump as he throws what remains on the floor. And he'll also remember the cosmically ludicrous thought which came, even as Barlow reached for him : God, I need a drink.
FOUR
The Pere looked at Roland, Eddie, and Susannah with the eyes of one who is remembering the absolute worst moment of his life. "You hear all sorts of sayings and slogans in Alcoholics Anonymous. There's one that recurs to me whenever I think of that night. Of Barlow taking hold of my shoulders."
"What?" Eddie asked.
"Be careful what you pray for," Callahan said. "Because you just might get it."
"You got your drink," Roland said.
"Oh yes," Callahan said. "I got my drink."
FIVE
Barlow's hands are strong, implacable. As Callahan is drawn forward, he suddenly understands what is going to happen. Not death. Death would be a mercy compared to this.
No, please no, he tries to say, but nothing comes out of his mouth but one small, whipped moan .
"Now, priest," the vampire whispers.
Callahan's mouth is pressed against the reeking flesh of the vampires cold throat. There is no anomie, no social dysfunction, no ethical or racial ramifications. Only the stink of death and one vein, open and pulsing with Barlow's dead, infected blood. No sense of existential bss, no postmodern grief for the death of the American value system, not even the religio-psychological guilt of Western man. Only the effort to hold his breath forever, or twist his head away, or both. He cannot. He holds on for what seems like aeons, smearing the blood across his cheeks and forehead and chin like warpaint. To no avail. In the end he does what all alcoholics must do once the booze has taken them by the ears: he drinks.
Strike three. You're out.
SIX
"The boy got away. There was that much. And Barlow let me go. Killing me wouldn't have been any fun, would it? No, the fun was in letting me live.