“How are you, Constable?” Ben asked.

“Tolerable,” Parkins allowed. He considered a hangnail on the leathery arc of skin that bordered his thumbnail. “Seen you truckin’ back and forth. Looked like the kid was drivin’ up from Railroad Street by hisself this last time. That so?”

“Yes,” Mark said.

“Almost got clipped. Fella goin’ the other way missed you by a whore’s hair.”

“Constable,” Ben said, “we want to tell you what’s been happening around here.”

Parkins Gillespie spat out the stub of his cigarette without raising his hands from the rail of the small covered porch. Without looking at either of them, he said calmly, “I don’t want to hear it.”

They looked at him dumbfounded.

“Nolly didn’t show up today,” Parkins said, still in that calm, conversational voice. “Somehow don’t think he will. He called in late last night and said he’d seen Homer McCaslin’s car out on the Deep Cut Road—I think it was the Deep Cut he said. He never called back in.” Slowly, sadly, like a man under water, he dipped into his shirt pocket and reached another Pall Mall out of it. He rolled it reflectively between his thumb and finger. “These fucking things are going to be the death of me,” he said.

Ben tried again. “The man who took the Marsten House, Gillespie. His name is Barlow. He’s in the basement of Eva Miller’s boardinghouse right now.”

“That so?” Parkins said with no particular surprise. “Vampire, ain’t he? Just like in all the comic books they used to put out twenty years ago.”

Ben said nothing. He felt more and more like a man lost in a great and grinding nightmare where clockwork ran on and on endlessly, unseen, but just below the surface of things.

“I’m leavin’ town,” Parkins said. “Got my stuff all packed up in the back of the car. I left my gun and the bubble and my badge in on the shelf. I’m done with lawin’. Goin’ t’see my sister in Kittery, I am. Figure that’s far enough to be safe.”

Ben heard himself say remotely, “You gutless creep. You cowardly piece of shit. This town is still alive and you’re running out on it.”

“It ain’t alive,” Parkins said, lighting his smoke with a wooden kitchen match. “That’s why hecame here. It’s dead, like him. Has been for twenty years or more. Whole country’s goin’ the same way. Me and Nolly went to a drive-in show up in Falmouth a couple of weeks ago, just before they closed her down for the season. I seen more blood and killin’s in that first Western than I seen both years in Korea. Kids was eatin’ popcorn and cheerin’ ’em on.” He gestured vaguely at the town, now lying unnaturally gilded in the broken rays of the westering sun, like a dream village. “They prob’ly like bein’ vampires. But not me; Nolly’d be in after me tonight. I’m goin’.”

Ben looked at him helplessly.

“You two fellas want to get in that car and hit it out of here,” Parkins said. “This town will go on without us…for a while. Then it won’t matter.”

Yes, Ben thought. Why don’t we do that?

Mark spoke the reason for both of them. “Because he’s bad, mister. He’s really bad. That’s all.”

“Is that so?” Parkins said. He nodded and puffed his Pall Mall. “Well, okay.” He looked up toward the Consolidated High School. “Piss-poor attendance today, from the Lot, anyway. Buses runnin’ late, kids out sick, office phonin’ houses and not gettin’ any answer. The attendance officer called me, and I soothed him some. He’s a funny little baldheaded fella who thinks he knows what he’s doing. Well, the teachers are there, anyway. They come from out of town, mostly. They can teach each other.”

Thinking of Matt, Ben said, “Not all of them are from out of town.”

“It don’t matter,” Parkins said. His eyes dropped to the stakes in Ben’s belt. “You going to try to do that fella up with one of those?”

“Yes.”

“You can have my riot gun if you want it. That gun, it was Nolly’s idea. Nolly liked to go armed, he did. Not even a bank in town so’s he could hope someone would rob it. He’ll make a good vampire though, once he gets the hang of it.”

Mark was looking at him with rising horror, and Ben knew he had to get him away. This was the worst of all.

“Come on,” he said to Mark. “He’s done.”

“I guess that’s it,” Parkins said. His pale, crinkle-caught eyes surveyed the town. “Surely is quiet. I seen Mabel Werts, peekin’ out with her glasses, but I don’t guess there’s much to peek at, today. There’ll be more tonight, likely.”

They went back to the car. It was almost 5:30.

FORTY-SIX

They pulled up in front of St Andrew’s at quarter of six. Lengthening shadows fell from the church across the street to the rectory, covering it like a prophecy. Ben pulled Jimmy’s bag out of the backseat and dumped it out. He found several small ampoules, and dumped their contents out the window, saving the bottles.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re going to put holy water in these,” Ben said. “Come on.”

They went up the walk to the church and climbed the steps. Mark, about to open the middle door, paused and pointed. “Look at that.”

The handle was blackened and pulled slightly out of shape, as if a heavy electric charge had been pushed through it.

“Does that mean anything to you?” Ben asked.

“No. No, but…” Mark shook his head, pushing an unformed thought away. He opened the door and they went in. The church was cool and gray and filled with the endless pregnant pause that all empty altars of faith, white and black, have in common.

The two ranks of pews were split by a wide central aisle, and flanking this, two plaster angels stood cradling bowls of holy water, their calm and sweetly knowing faces bent, as if to catch their own reflections in the still water.

Ben put the ampoules in his pocket. “Bathe your face and hands,” he said.

Mark looked at him, troubled. “That’s sac—sacri—”

“Sacrilege? Not this time. Go ahead.”

They dunked their hands in the still water and then splashed it over their faces, the way a man who has just wakened will splash cold water into his eyes to shock the world back into them.

Ben took the first ampoule out of his pocket and was filling it when a shrill voice cried, “Here! Here now! What are you doing?”

Ben turned around. It was Rhoda Curless, Father Callahan’s housekeeper, who had been sitting in the first pew and twisting a rosary helplessly between her fingers. She was wearing a black dress, and her slip hung below the hem. Her hair was in disarray; she had been pulling her fingers through it.

“Where’s the Father? What are you doing?” Her voice was reedy and thin, close to hysteria.

“Who are you?” Ben asked.

“Mrs Curless. I’m Father Callahan’s housekeeper. Where’s the Father? What are you doing?” Her hands came together and began to war with each other.

“Father Callahan is gone,” Ben said, as gently as he could.

“Oh.” She closed her eyes. “Was he getting after whatever ails this town?”

“Yes,” Ben said.

“I knew it,” she said. “I didn’t have to ask. He’s a strong, good man of the cloth. There were always those who said he’d never be man enough to fill Father Bergeron’s shoes, but he filled ’em. They were too small for him, as it turned out.”

She opened her eyes wide and looked at them. A tear spilled from her left, and ran down her cheek. “He won’t be back, will he?”

“I don’t know,” Ben said.

“They talked about his drinkin’,” she said, as though she hadn’t heard. “Was there ever an Irish priest worth his keep who didn’t tip the bottle? None of that mollycoddlin’ wet-nursin’ church-bingo-prayer-basket for him. He was more’n that!” Her voice rose toward the vaulted ceiling in a hoarse, almost challenging cry. “He was a priest, not some holy alderman!”

Ben and Mark listened without speech or surprise. There was no surprise left on this dream-struck day; there was not even the capacity for it. They no longer saw themselves as doers or avengers or saviors; the day had absorbed them. Helplessly, they were only living.