There was one sheet inside, rich vellum like the envelope, and they crowded around. Jimmy focused his flashlight on the page, which was closely written in an elegant, spider-thin hand. They read it together, Mark a little more slowly than the others.
October 4.
My Dear Young Friends,
How lovely of you to have stopped by!
I am never averse to company; it has been one of my great joys in a long and often lonely life. Had you come in the evening, I should have welcomed you in person with the greatest of pleasure. However, since I suspected you might choose to arrive during daylight hours, I thought it best to be out.
I have left you a small token of my appreciation; someone very near and dear to one of you is now in the place where I occupied my days until I decided that other quarters might be more congenial. She is very lovely, Mr Mears—very
toothsome,
if I may be permitted a small
bon mot.
I have no further need of her and so I have left her for you to—how is your idiom?—to warm up for the main event. To whet your appetites, if you like. Let us see how well you like the appetizer to the main course you contemplate, shall we?
Master Petrie, you have robbed me of the most faithful and resourceful servant I have ever known. You have caused me, in an indirect fashion, to take part in his ruination; have caused my own appetites to betray me. You sneaked up behind him, doubtless. I am going to enjoy dealing with you. Your parents first, I think. Tonight…or tomorrow night…or the next. And then you. But you shall enter my church as choirboy
castratum.
And Father Callahan—have they persuaded you to come? I thought so. I have observed you at some length since I arrived in Jerusalem’s Lot…much as a good chess player will study the games of his opposition, am I correct? The Catholic Church is not the oldest of my opponents, though! I was old when it was young, when its members hid in the catacombs of Rome and painted fishes on their chests so they could tell one from another. I was strong when this simpering club of bread-eaters and wine-drinkers who venerate the sheep-savior was weak. My rites were old when the rites of your church were unconceived. Yet I do not underestimate. I am wise in the ways of goodness as well as those of evil. I am not jaded.
And I will best you.
How?
you say. Does not Callahan bear the symbol of White? Does not Callahan move in the day as well as the night? Are there not charms and potions, both Christian and pagan, which my so-good friend Matthew Burke has informed me and my compatriots of? Yes, yes, and yes. But I have lived longer than you. I am crafty. I am not the serpent, but the father of serpents.
Still, you say, this is not enough. And it is not. In the end, “Father” Callahan, you will undo yourself. Your faith in the White is weak and soft. Your talk of love is presumption. Only when you speak of the bottle are you informed.
My good, good friends—Mr Mears; Mr Cody; Master Petrie; Father Callahan—enjoy your stay. The Médoc is excellent, procured for me especially by the late owner of this house, whose personal company I was never able to enjoy. Please be my guests if you still have a taste for wine after you have finished the work at hand. We will meet again, in person, and I shall convey my felicitations to each of you at that time in a more personal way.
Until then, adieu.
BARLOW.
Trembling, Ben let the letter fall to the table. He looked at the others. Mark stood with his hands clenched into fists, his mouth frozen in the twist of someone who has bitten something rotten; Jimmy, his oddly boyish face drawn and pale; Father Donald Callahan, his eyes alight, his mouth drawn down in a trembling bow.
And one by one, they looked up at him.
“Come on,” he said.
They went around the corner together.
FOURTEEN
Parkins Gillespie was standing on the front step of the brick Municipal Building, looking through his high-powered Zeiss binoculars when Nolly Gardener drove up in the town’s police car and got out, hitching up his belt and picking out his seat at the same time.
“What’s up, Park?” he asked, walking up the steps.
Parkins gave him the glasses wordlessly and flicked one callused thumb at the Marsten House.
Nolly looked. He saw that old Packard, and parked in front of it, a new tan Buick. The gain on the binoculars wasn’t quite high enough to pick off the plate number. He lowered his glasses. “That’s Doc Cody’s car, ain’t it?”
“Yes, I believe it is.” Parkins inserted a Pall Mall between his lips and scratched a kitchen match on the brick wall behind him.
“I never seen a car up there except that Packard.”
“Yes, that’s so,” Parkins said meditatively.
“Think we ought to go up there and have a look?” Nolly spoke with a marked lack of his usual enthusiasm. He had been a lawman for five years and was still entranced with his own position.
“No,” Parkins said, “I believe we’ll just leave her alone.” He took his watch out of his vest and clicked up the scrolled silver cover like a trainman checking an express. Just 3:41. He checked his watch against the clock on the town hall and then tucked it back into place.
“How’d all that come out with Floyd Tibbits and the little McDougall baby?” Nolly asked.
“Dunno.”
“Oh,” Nolly said, momentarily nonplussed. Parkins was always taciturn, but this was a new high for him. He looked through the glasses again: no change.
“Town seems quiet today,” Nolly volunteered.
“Yes,” Parkins said. He looked across Jointner Avenue and the park with his faded blue eyes. Both the avenue and the park were deserted. They had been deserted most of the day. There was a remarkable lack of mothers strolling babies or idlers around the War Memorial.
“Funny things been happening,” Nolly ventured.
“Yes,” Parkins said, considering.
As a last gasp, Nolly fell back on the one bit of conversational bait that Parkins had never failed to rise to: the weather. “Clouding up,” he said. “Be rain by tonight.”
Parkins studied the sky. There were mackerel scales directly overhead and a building bar of clouds to the southwest. “Yes,” he said, and threw the stub of his cigarette away.
“Park, you feelin’ all right?”
Parkins Gillespie considered it.
“Nope,” he said.
“Well, what in hell’s the matter?”
“I believe,” Gillespie said, “that I’m scared shitless.”
“What?” Nolly floundered. “Of what?”
“Dunno,” Parkins said, and took his binoculars back. He began to scan the Marsten House again while Nolly stood speechless beside him.
FIFTEEN
Beyond the table where the letter had been propped, the cellar made an L-turn, and they were now in what once had been a wine cellar. Hubert Marsten must have been a bootlegger indeed, Ben thought. There were small and medium casks covered with dust and cobwebs. One wall was covered with a crisscrossed wine rack, and ancient magnums still peered forth from some of the diamond-shaped pigeonholes. Some of them had exploded, and where sparkling burgundy had once waited for some discerning palate, the spider now made his home. Others had undoubtedly turned to vinegar; that sharp odor drifted in the air, mingled with that of slow corruption.
“No,” Ben said, speaking quietly, as a man speaks a fact. “I can’t.”
“You must,” Father Callahan said. “I’m not telling you it will be easy, or for the best. Only that you must.”
“I can’t!” Ben cried, and this time the words echoed in the cellar.
In the center, on a raised dais and spotlighted by Jimmy’s flashlight, Susan Norton lay still. She was covered from shoulders to feet in a drift of simple white linen, and when they reached her, none of them had been able to speak. Wonder had swallowed words.