TWO
"A writer came to me," he said. "A man named Ben Mears."
"I think I read one of his books," Eddie said. "Air Dance , it was called. About a man who gets hung for the murder his brother committed?"
Callahan nodded. "That's the one. There was also a teacher named Matthew Burke, and they both believed there was a vampire at work in 'Salem's Lot, the kind who makes other vampires."
"Is there any other kind?" Eddie asked, remembering about a hundred movies at the Majestic and maybe a thousand comic books purchased at (and sometimes stolen from) Dahlie's.
"There is, and we'll get there, but never mind that now. Most of all, there was a boy who believed. He was about the same age as your Jake. They didn't convince me - not at first - but they were convinced, and it was hard to stand against their belief. Also, something-was going on in The Lot, that much was certain. People were disappearing. There was an atmosphere of terror in the town. Impossible to describe it now, sitting here in the sun, but it was there. I had to officiate at the funeral of another boy. His name was Daniel Glick. I doubt he was this vampire's first victim in The Lot, and he certainly wasn't the last, but he was the first one who turned up dead. On the day of Danny Glick's burial, my life changed, somehow. And I'm not talking about the quart of whiskey a day anymore, either. Something changed in my head . I felt it. Like a switch turning. And although I haven't had a drink in years, that switch is still turned."
Susannah thought: That's when you went todash, Father Callahan .
Eddie thought: That's when you went nineteen, pal. Or maybe it's ninety-nine. Or maybe it's both, somehow .
Roland simply listened. His mind was clear of reflection, a perfect receiving machine.
"The writer, Mears, had fallen in love with a town girl named Susan Norton. The vampire took her. I believe he did it partly because he could, and partly to punish Mears for daring to form a group - a ka-tet - that would try to hunt him. We went to the place the vampire had bought, an old wreck called the Marsten House. The thing staying there went by the name of Barlow."
Callahan sat, considering, looking through them and back to those old days. At last he resumed.
"Barlow was gone, but he'd left the woman. And a letter. It was addressed to all of us, but was directed principally to me. The moment I saw her lying there in the cellar of the Marsten House I understood it was all true. The doctor with us listened to her chest and took her blood pressure, though, just to be sure. No heartbeat. Blood pressure zero. But when Ben pounded the stake into her, she came alive. The blood flowed. She screamed, over and over. Her hands... I remembered the shadows of her hands on the wall..."
Eddie's hand gripped Susannah's. They listened in a horrified suspension that was neither belief nor disbelief. This wasn't a talking train powered by malfunctioning computer circuits, nor men and women who had reverted to savagery. This was something akin to the unseen demon that had come to the place where they had drawn Jake. Or the doorkeeper in Dutch Hill.
"What did he say to you in his note, this Barlow?" Roland asked.
"That my faith was weak and I would undo myself. He was right, of course. By then the only thing I really believed in was Bushmill's. I just didn't know it. He did , though. Booze is also a vampire, and maybe it takes one to know one.
"The boy who was with us became convinced that this prince of vampires meant to kill his parents next, or turn them. For revenge. The boy had been taken prisoner, you see, but he escaped and killed the vampire's half-human accomplice, a man named Straker."
Roland nodded, thinking this boy sounded more and more like Jake. "What was his name?"
"Mark Petrie. I went with him to his house, and with all the considerable power my church affords: the cross, the stole, the holy water, and of course the Bible. But I had come to think of these things as symbols, and that was my Achilles' heel. Barlow was there. He had Petrie's parents. And then he had the boy. I held up my cross. It glowed. It hurt him. He screamed." Callahan smiled, recalling that scream of agony. The look of it chilled Eddie's heart. "I told him that if he hurt Mark, I'd destroy him, and at that moment I could have done it. He knew it, too. His response was that before I did, he'd rip the child's throat out. And he could have done it."
"Mexican standoff," Eddie murmured, remembering a day by the Western Sea when he had faced Roland in a strikingly similar situation. "Mexican standoff, baby."
"What happened?" Susannah asked.
Callahan's smile faded. He was rubbing his scarred right hand the way the gunslinger had rubbed his hip, without seeming to realize it. "The vampire made a proposal. He would let the boy go if I'd put down the crucifix I held. We'd face each other unarmed. His faith against mine. I agreed. God help me, I agreed. The boy"
THREE