Salem's Lot - Stephen King [147]
‘Surely a more stupendous concept than red-tailed boogies or demons with such sensitive noses that they can be banished with one good fart from a constipated churchman,’ Matt said.
‘Stupendous, of course. But impersonal. Merciless. Untouchable. Banishing Freud’s devil is as impossible as Shylock’s bargain to extract a pound of flesh without spilling a drop of blood. The Catholic Church has been forced to reinterpret its whole approach to evil-bombers over Cambodia, the war in Ireland and the Middle East, cop-killings and ghetto riots, the billion smaller evils loosed on the world each day like a plague of gnats. It is in the process of shedding its old medicine-man skin and re-emerging as a socially active, socially conscious body. The inner city rap-center ascendant over the confessional. Communion playing second fiddle to the civil rights movement and urban renewal. The church has been in the process of planting both feet in this world.’
‘Where there are no witches or incubi or vampires,’ Matt said, ‘but only child-beating, incest, and the rape of the environment.’
‘Yes.’
Matt said deliberately, ‘And you hate it, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Callahan said quietly. ‘I think it’s an abomination. It’s the Catholic Church’s way of saying that God isn’t dead, only a little senile. And I guess that’s my answer, isn’t it? What do you want me to do?’
Matt told him.
Callahan thought it over and said, ‘You realize it flies in the face of everything I just told you?’
‘On the contrary, I think it’s your chance to put your church-your church-to the test.’
Callahan took a deep breath. ‘Very well, I agree. On one condition.’
‘What would that be?
‘That all of us who go on this little expedition first go to the shop this Mr Straker is managing. That Mr Mears, as spokesman, should speak to him frankly about all of this. That we all have a chance to observe his reactions. And finally, that he should have, his chance to laugh in our faces.’
Matt was frowning. ‘It would be warning him.’
Callahan shook his head. ‘I believe the warning would be of no avail if the three of us-Mr Mears, Dr Cody, and myself-still agreed that we should move ahead regardless.’
‘All right,’ Matt said. ‘I agree, contingent on the approval of Ben and Jimmy Cody.’
‘Fine.’ Callahan sighed. ‘Will it hurt you if I tell you that I hope this is all in your mind? That I hope this man Straker does laugh in our faces, and with good reason?’
‘Not in the slightest.’
‘I do hope it. I have agreed to more than you know. It frightens me.’
‘I am frightened, too,’ Matt said softly.
3
But walking back to St Andrew’s, he did not feel frightened at all. He felt exhilarated, renewed. For the first time in years he was sober and did not crave a drink.
He went into the rectory, picked up the telephone, and dialed Eva Miller’s boardinghouse. ‘Hello? Mrs Miller? May I speak with Mr Mears?… He’s not. Yes, I see… No, no message. I’ll call tomorrow. Yes, good-by.’ He hung up and went to the window.
Was Mears out there someplace, drinking beer on a country road, or could it be that everything the old schoolteacher had told him was true?
If so… if so…
He could not stay in the house. He went out on the back porch, breathing in the brisk, steely air of October, and looked into the moving darkness. Perhaps it wasn’t all Freud after all. Perhaps a large part of it had to do with the invention of the electric light, which had killed the shadows in men’s minds much more effectively than a stake through a vampire’s heart-and less messily, too.
The evil still went on, but now it went on in the hard, soulless glare of parking-lot fluorescents, of neon tubing, of hundred-watt bulbs by the billions. Generals planned strategic air strikes beneath the no-nonsense glow of alternating current, and it was all out of control, like a kid’s soapbox racer going downhill with no brakes: I was following my orders. Yes, that was true, patently true. We were all soldiers, simply following what was written on our walking papers.