"Do it," Jake sighed. "Oh yes, do it, who gives a damn."
"Ake!" Oy barked from the doorway."Ake!" They both ignored him.
As Callahan reached for the bag, he found himself remembering his final encounter with Barlow, the king vampire - the Type One, in Callahan's own parlance - who had come to the little town of 'Salem's Lot. Found himself remembering how he'd confronted Barlow in Mark Petrie's house, with Mark's parents lying lifeless on the floor at the vampire's feet, their skulls crushed and their oh-so-rational brains turned to jelly.
While you fall, I'll let you whisper the name ofmyking, Black Thirteen whispered.The Crimson King.
As Callahan watched his hands grasp the bag - whatever had been there before, NOTHING BUT STRIKES AT MID-WORLD LANES was now printed on the side - he thought of how his crucifix had first glared with some otherworldly light, driving Barlow back...and then had begun to darken again.
"Open it!" Jake said eagerly. "Open it, I want to see it!"
Oy was barking steadily now. Down the hall someone yelled "Shut that dog up!" and was likewise ignored.
Callahan slipped the ghostwood box from the bag - the box that had spent such a blessedly quiet time hidden beneath the pulpit of his church in Calla Bryn Sturgis. Now he would open it. Now he would observe Black Thirteen in all its repellent glory.
And then die. Gratefully.
Ten
Sad to see a man's faith fail,the vampire Kurt Barlow had said, and then he'd plucked Don Callahan's dark and useless cross from his hand. Why had he been able to do that? Because - behold the paradox, consider the riddle - Father Callahanhad failed to throw the cross away himself. Because he had failed to accept that the cross was nothing but one symbol of a far greater power, one that ran like a river beneath the universe, perhaps beneath a thousand universes -
I need no symbol,Callahan thought; and then:Is that why God let me live? Was He giving me a second chance to learn that?
It was possible, he thought as his hands settled on the lid of the box. Second chances were one of God's specialties.
"Folks, you got to shut your dogup. " The querulous voice of a hotel maid, but very distant. Then it said: "Madre de Dios,why's it sodark in here? What's that...what's that...n...n..."
Perhaps she was trying to saynoise. If so, she never finished. Even Oy now seemed resigned to the spell of the humming, singing ball, for he gave up his protests (and his post at the door) to come trotting into the room. Callahan supposed the beast wanted to be at Jake's side when the end came.
The Pere struggled to still his suicidal hands. The thing in the box raised the volume of its idiot's song, and the tips of his fingers twitched in response. Then they stilled again.I have that much of a victory, Callahan thought.
"Ne'mine,I'll do it." The voice of the maid, drugged and avid. "I want to see it.Dios! I want tohold it!"
Jake's arms seemed to weigh a ton, but he forced them to reach out and grab the maid, a middle-aged Hispanic lady who couldn't have weighed more than a hundred and five pounds.
As he had struggled to still his hands, so Callahan now struggled to pray.
God, not my will but Thine. Not the potter but the potter's clay. If I can't do anything else, help me to take it in my arms and jump out the window and destroy the gods-damned thing once and for all. But if it be Your will to help me make it still, instead - to make it go back to sleep - then send me Your strength. And help me to remember...
Drugged by Black Thirteen he might have been, but Jake still hadn't lost his touch. Now he plucked the rest of the thought out of the Pere's mind and spoke it aloud, only changing the word Callahan used to the one Roland had taught them.
"I need no sigul," Jake said. "Not the potter but the potter's clay,and I need no sigul! "
"God," Callahan said. The word was as heavy as a stone, but once it was out of his mouth, the rest of them came easier. "God, if You're still there, if You still hear me, this is Callahan. Please still this thing, Lord. Please send it back to sleep. I ask it in the name of Jesus."
"In the name of the White," Jake said.
"Ite!"Oy yapped.
"Amen," said the maid in a stoned, bemused voice.
For a moment the droning idiot's song from the box rose another notch, and Callahan understood it was hopeless, that not even God Almighty could stand against Black Thirteen.
Then it fell silent.
"God be thanked," he whispered, and realized his entire body was drenched with sweat.
Jake burst into tears and picked up Oy. The chambermaid also began to weep, but had no one to comfort her. As Pere Callahan slid the meshy (and oddly heavy) material of the bowling bag back around the ghostwood box, Jake turned to her and said, "You need to take a nap, sai."
It was the only thing he could think of, and it worked. The maid turned and walked across to the bed. She crawled up on it, pulled her skirt down over her knees, and appeared to fall unconscious.
"Will it stay asleep?" Jake asked Callahan in a low voice. "Because...Pere...that was too close for comfort."
Perhaps, but Callahan's mind suddenly seemed free - freer than it had been in years. Or perhaps it was his heart that had been freed. In any case, his thoughts seemed very clear as he lowered the bowling bag to the folded dry-cleaning bags on top of the safe.
Remembering a conversation in the alley behind Home. He and Frankie Chase and Magruder, out on a smoke-break. The talk had turned to protecting your valuables in New York, especially if you had to go away for awhile, and Magruder had said the safest storage in New York...the absolute safest storage...
"Jake, there's also a bag of plates in the safe."