999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [82]
Suddenly a dog began to bark, and then another, and more and more until it seemed as if every dog in town was giving voice.
To fight the unease rising within her like a flood tide, Sister Carole concentrated on the simple manual tasks of closing and locking her window and drawing the curtains.
But the dread remained, a sick, cold certainty that the world was falling into darkness, that the creeping hem of shadow had reached her corner of the globe, and that without some miracle, without some direct intervention by a wrathful God, the coming night hours would wreak an irrevocable change on her life.
She began to pray for that miracle.
* * *
The two remaining sisters decided to keep the convent of St. Anthony’s dark tonight.
And they decided to spend the night together in Carole’s room. They dragged in Bernadette’s mattress, locked the door, and double-draped the window with the bedspread. They lit the room with a single candle and prayed together.
Yet the music of the night filtered through the walls and the doors and the drapes, the muted moan of sirens singing antiphon to their hymns, the muffled pops of gunfire punctuating their psalms, reaching a crescendo shortly after midnight, then tapering off to … silence.
Carole could see that Bernadette was having an especially rough time of it. She cringed with every siren wail, jumped at every shot. She shared Bern’s terror, but she buried it, hid it deep within for her friend’s sake. After all, Carole was older, and she knew she was made of sterner stuff. Bernadette was an innocent, too sensitive even for yesterday’s world, the world before the vampires. How would she survive in the world as it would be after tonight? She’d need help. Carole would provide as much as she could.
But for all the imagined horrors conjured by the night noises, the silence was worse. No human wails of pain and horror had penetrated their sanctum, but imagined cries of human suffering echoed through their minds in the ensuing stillness.
“Dear God, what’s happening out there?” Bernadette said after they’d finished reading aloud the Twenty-third Psalm.
She huddled on her mattress, a blanket thrown over her shoulders. The candle’s flame reflected in her frightened eyes and cast her shadow, high, hunched, and wavering, on the wall behind her.
Carole sat cross-legged on her bed. She leaned back against the wall and fought to keep her eyes open. Exhaustion was a weight on her shoulders, a cloud over her brain, but she knew sleep was out of the question. Not now, not tonight, not until the sun was up. And maybe not even then.
“Easy, Bern—” Carole began, then stopped.
From below, on the first floor of the convent, a faint thumping noise.
“What’s that?” Bernadette said, voice hushed, eyes wide.
“I don’t know.”
Carole grabbed her robe and stepped out into the hall for a better listen.
“Don’t you be leaving me alone, now!” Bernadette said, running after her with the blanket still wrapped around her shoulders.
“Hush,” Carole said. “Listen. It’s the front door. Someone’s knocking. I’m going down to see.”
She hurried down the wide, oak-railed stairway to the front foyer. The knocking was louder here, but still sounded weak. Carole put her eye to the peephole, peered through the sidelights, but saw no one.
But the knocking, weaker still, continued.
“Wh-who’s there?” she said, her words cracking with fear.
“Sister Carole,” came a faint voice through the door. “It’s me … Mary Margaret. I’m hurt.”
Instinctively, Carole reached for the handle, but Bernadette grabbed her arm.
“Wait! It could be a trick!”
She’s right, Carole thought. Then she glanced down and saw blood leaking across the threshold from the other side.
She gasped and pointed at the crimson puddle. “That’s no trick.”
She unlocked the door and pulled it open. Mary Margaret huddled on the welcome mat in a pool of blood.
“Dear sweet Jesus!” Carole cried. “Help me, Bern!”
“What if she’s a vampire?