The gunslinger - Stephen King [26]
“Ahhh—”
“Ah, God—”
“Gawwwwwwww—”
A woman fell on the floor, her legs crashing up and down against the wood. One of her shoes flew off.
“It’s him that stands behind every fleshly pleasure . . . him who made the machines with LaMerk stamped on them, him! The Interloper!”
LaMerk, the gunslinger thought. Or maybe she said LeMark. The word had some vague resonance for him, but nothing he could put his finger on. Nonetheless, he filed it away in his memory, which was capacious.
“Yes, Lord!” they were screaming.
A man fell on his knees, holding his head and braying.
“When you take a drink, who holds the bottle?”
“The Interloper!”
“When you sit down to a faro or a Watch Me table, who turns the cards?”
“The Interloper!”
“When you riot in the flesh of another’s body, when you pollute yourself with your solitary hand, to whom do you sell your soul?”
“In—”
“ter—”
“Oh, Jesus . . . Oh—”
“—loper—”
“Aw . . . Aw . . . Aw . . .”
“And who is he?” she cried. But calm within, he could sense the calmness, the mastery, the control and domination. He thought suddenly, with terror and absolute surety, that the man who called himself Walter had left a demon in her. She was haunted. He felt the hot ripple of sexual desire again through his fear, and thought this was somehow like the word the man in black had left in Allie’s mind like a loaded trap.
The man who was holding his head crashed and blundered forward.
“I’m in hell!” he screamed up at her. His face twisted and writhed as if snakes crawled beneath his skin. “I done fornications! I done gambling! I done weed! I done sins! I—” But his voice rose skyward in a dreadful, hysterical wail that drowned articulation. He held his head as if it would burst like an overripe cantaloupe at any moment.
The audience stilled as if a cue had been given, frozen in their half-erotic poses of ecstasy.
Sylvia Pittston reached down and grasped his head. The man’s cry ceased as her fingers, strong and white, unblemished and gentle, worked through his hair. He looked up at her dumbly.
“Who was with you in sin?” she asked. Her eyes looked into his, deep enough, gentle enough, cold enough to drown in.
“The . . . The Interloper.”
“Called who?”
“Called Lord High Satan.” Raw, oozing whisper.
“Will you renounce?”
Eagerly: “Yes! Yes! Oh, my Jesus Savior!”
She rocked his head; he stared at her with the blank, shiny eyes of the zealot. “If he walked through that door”—she hammered a finger at the vestibule shadows where the gunslinger stood—“would you renounce him to his face?”
“On my mother’s name!”
“Do you believe in the eternal love of Jesus?”
He began to weep. “You’re fucking-A I do—”
“He forgives you that, Jonson.”
“Praise God,” Jonson said, still weeping.
“I know he forgives you just as I know he will cast out the unrepentant from his palaces and into the place of burning darkness beyond the end of End-World.”
“Praise God.” The congregation, drained, spoke it solemnly.
“Just as I know this Interloper, this Satan, this Lord of Flies and Serpents, will be cast down and crushed . . . will you crush him if you see him, Jonson?”
“Yes and praise God!” Jonson wept. “Wit’ bote feet!”
“Will you crush him if you see him, brothers and sisters?”
“Yess . . .” Sated.
“If you see him sashaying down Main Street tomorrow?”
“Praise God . . .”
The gunslinger faded back out the door and headed for town. The smell of the desert was clear in the air. Almost time to move on.
Almost.
XIII
In bed again.
“She won’t see you,” Allie said. She sounded frightened. “She doesn’t see anybody. She only comes out on Sunday evenings to scare the hell out of everybody.”
“How long has she been here?”
“Twelve years. Or maybe only two. Time’s funny, as thou knows. Let’s not talk about her.”
“Where did she come from? Which direction?”
“I don’t know.” Lying.
“Allie?”
“I don’t know!