And flinched.

Two

“A writer came to me,” he said. “A man named Ben Mears.”

“I think I read one of his books,” Eddie said. “ Air Dance,it was called. About a man who gets hung for the murder his brother committed?”

Callahan nodded. “That’s the one. There was also a teacher named Matthew Burke, and they both believed there was a vampire at work in ’Salem’s Lot, the kind who makes other vampires.”

“Is there any other kind?” Eddie asked, remembering about a hundred movies at the Majestic and maybe a thousand comic books purchased at (and sometimes stolen from) Dahlie’s.

“There is, and we’ll get there, but never mind that now. Most of all, there was a boy who believed. He was about the same age as your Jake. They didn’t convince me—not at first—but they were convinced, and it was hard to stand against their belief. Also, something was going on in The Lot, that much was certain. People were disappearing. There was an atmosphere of terror in the town. Impossible to describe it now, sitting here in the sun, but it was there. I had to officiate at the funeral of another boy. His name was Daniel Glick. I doubt he was this vampire’s first victim in The Lot, and he certainly wasn’t the last, but he was the first one who turned up dead. On the day of Danny Glick’s burial, my life changed, somehow. And I’m not talking about the quart of whiskey a day anymore, either. Something changed in my head . I felt it. Like a switch turning. And although I haven’t had a drink in years, that switch is still turned.”

Susannah thought: That’s when you went todash, Father Callahan.

Eddie thought: That’s when you went nineteen, pal. Or maybe it’s ninety-nine. Or maybe it’s both, somehow.

Roland simply listened. His mind was clear of reflection, a perfect receiving machine.

“The writer, Mears, had fallen in love with a town girl named Susan Norton. The vampire took her. I believe he did it partly because he could, and partly to punish Mears for daring to form a group—a ka-tet—that would try to hunt him. We went to the place the vampire had bought, an old wreck called the Marsten House. The thing staying there went by the name of Barlow.”

Callahan sat, considering, looking through them and back to those old days. At last he resumed.