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By Root 596 0

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 hatefulness 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 confession 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.

10

It was nearing one o’clock when they all got in Jimmy Cody’s large Buick and set off. None of them spoke. Father Donald Callahan was wearing his full gown, a surplice, and a white stole bordered with purple. He had given them each a small tube of water from the Holy Font, and had blessed them each with the sign of the cross. He held a small silver pyx on his lap which contained several pieces of the Host.

They stopped at Jimmy’s Cumberland office first, and Jimmy left the motor idling while he went inside. When he came out, he was wearing a baggy sport coat that concealed the bulge of McCaslin’s revolver and carrying an ordinary Craftsman hammer in his right hand.

Ben looked at it with some fascination and saw from the tail of his eye that Mark and Callahan were also staring. The hammer had a blue steel head and a perforated rubber handgrip.

‘Ugly, isn’t it?’ Jimmy remarked.

Ben thought of using that hammer on Susan, using it to ram a stake between her breasts, and felt his stomach flip over slowly, like an airplane doing a slow roll.

‘Yes,’ he said, and moistened his lips. ‘It’s ugly, all right.’

They drove to the Cumberland Stop and Shop. Ben and Jimmy went into the supermarket and picked up all the garlic that was displayed along the vegetable counter-twelve boxes of the whitish-gray bulbs. The check-out girl raised her eyebrows and said, ‘Glad I ain’t going on a long ride with you boys t’night.’

Going out, Ben said idly, ‘I wonder what the basis of garlic’s effectiveness against them is? Something in the Bible, or an ancient curse, or-’

‘I suspect it’s an allergy,’ Jimmy said.

‘Allergy?’

Callahan caught the last of it and asked for a repetition as they drove toward the Northern Belle Flower Shop.

‘Oh yes, I agree with Dr Cody,’ he said. ‘Probably is an allergy… if it works