Salem's Lot

8

Father Callahan heard them out, all three, and by the time he was brought up to date, it was a little after eleven-thirty.

They were sitting in the cool and spacious sitting room of the rectory, and the sun flooded in the large front windows in bars that looked thick enough to slice. Watching the dust motes that danced dreamily in the sun shafts, Callahan was reminded of an old cartoon he had seen somewhere. Cleaning woman with a broom is staring in surprise down at the floor; she has swept away part of her shadow. He felt a little like that now. For the second time in twenty-four hours he had been confronted with a stark impossibility-only now the impossibility had corroboration from a writer, a seemingly levelheaded little boy, and a doctor whom the town respected. Still, an impossibility was an impossibility. You couldn’t sweep away your own shadow. Except that it seemed to have happened.

‘This would be much easier to accept if you could have arranged for a thunderstorm and a power failure,’ he said.

‘It’s quite true,’ Jimmy said. ‘I assure you.’ His hand went to his neck.

Father Callahan got up and pulled something out of Jimmy’s black bag-two truncated baseball bats with sharpened points. He turned one of them over in his hands and said, ‘Just a moment, Mrs Smith. This won’t hurt a bit.’

No one laughed.

Callahan put the stakes back, went to the window, and looked out at Jointner Avenue. ‘You are all very persuasive,’ he said. ‘And I suppose I must add one little piece which you now do not have in your possession.’ He turned back to them.

‘There is a sign in the window of the Barlow and Straker Furniture Shop,’ he said. ‘It says, "Closed Until Further Notice." I went down this morning myself promptly at nine o’clock to discuss Mr Burke’s allegations with your mysterious Mr Straker. The shop is locked, front and back.’

‘You have to admit that jibes with what Mark says,’ Ben remarked.

‘Perhaps. And perhaps it’s only chance. Let me ask you again: Are you sure you must have the Catholic Church in this?’

‘Yes,’ Ben said. ‘But we’ll proceed without you if we have to. If it comes to that, I’ll go alone.’

‘No need of that,’ Father Callahan said, rising. ‘Follow me across to the church, gentlemen, and I will hear your confessions.’