The Very Best of F & SF v1 (40 page)

A little rustle
ran through the audience.

“I feel,” Sylvia
Pittston said reflectively, “I feel that I know everyone in The Book
personally. In the last five years I have worn out five Bibles, and uncountable
numbers before that. I love the story, and I love the players in that story. I
have walked arm in arm in the lion’s den with Daniel. I stood with David when
he was tempted by Bathsheba as she bathed at the pool. I have been in the fiery
furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. I slew two thousand with Samson
and was blinded with St. Paul on the road to Damascus. I wept with Mary at
Golgotha.”

A soft, shurring
sigh in the audience.

“I have known
and loved them. There is only one—
one
—” she held up a finger—“only one player in the greatest of all
dramas that I do not know. Only
one
who stands outside with his face in the shadow. Only
one
that makes my body
tremble and my spirit quail. I fear him. I don’t know his mind and I fear him.
I fear The Interloper.”

Another sign.
One of the women had put a hand over her mouth as if to stop a sound and was
rocking, rocking.

“The Interloper
who came to Eve as a snake on its belly, grinning and
writhing.
The Interloper who walked among the Children of Israel while Moses was up on
the Mount, who whispered to them to make a golden idol, a golden calf, and to
worship it with foulness and fornication.”

Moans, nods.

“The Interloper!
He stood on the balcony with Jezebel and watched as King Ahaz fell screaming to
his death, and he and she grinned as the dogs gathered and lapped up his life’s
blood. Oh, my little brothers and sisters, watch thou for The Interloper.”

“Yes, O Jesus—”
The man the gunslinger had first noticed coming into town, the one with the
straw hat.

“He’s always
been there, my brothers and sisters. But I don’t know his mind. And you don’t
know his mind. Who could understand the awful darkness that swirls there, the
pride like pylons, the titanic blasphemy, the unholy glee? And the madness! The
cyclopean, gibbering madness that walks and crawls and wriggles through men’s
most awful wants and desires?”

“O Jesus Savior—”

“It was
him
who took our Lord up on
the mountain—”

“Yes—”

“It was
him
that tempted him and
shewed him all the world and the world’s pleasures—”

“Yesss—
“

“It’s
him
that will come back
when Last Times come on the world... and they are coming, my brothers and
sisters, can’t you feel they are?”

“Yesss—”

Rocking and
sobbing, the congregation became a sea; the woman seemed to point at all of
them, none of them.

“It’s
him
that will come as the
Antichrist, to lead men into the flaming bowels of perdition, to the bloody end
of wickedness, as Star Wormwood hangs blazing in the sky, as gall gnaws at the
vitals of the children, as women’s wombs give forth monstrosities, as the works
of men’s hands turn to blood—”

“Ahhh—”

“Ah, God—”

“Gawwwwwwww—”

A woman fell on
the floor, her legs crashing up and down against the wood. One of her shoes
flew off.

“It’s
him
that stands behind
every fleshly pleasure.
.. him!
The Interloper!”

“Yes, Lord!”

A man fell on
his knees, holding his head and braying.

“When you cake a
drink, who holds the bottle?”

“The
Interloper! “

“When you sit
down to a faro or a Watch
Me
table, who turns the cards?”

“The
Interloper! “

“When you riot
in the flesh of another’s body, when you pollute yourself, who are you setting
your soul to?”

“In—”

“The—”

“Oh, Jesus...
Oh—”

“—
loper—”

“—
Aw... Aw... Aw...”

“And who is he?”
She screamed (but calm within, he could sense the calmness, the mastery, the
control, the domination. He thought suddenly, with terror and absolute surety:
he has left a demon in her. She is haunted. He felt the hot ripple of sexual
desire again through his fear. )

The man who was
holding his head crashed and blundered forward.

“I’m in hell!”
He screamed up at her. His face twisted and writhed as if snakes crawled
beneath his skin. “I done fornications! I done gambling! I done weed! I done
sins!
I—” But his voice
rose skyward in a dreadful, hysterical wail that drowned articulation. He held
his head as if it would burst like an overripe cantaloupe at any moment.

The audience
stilled as if a cue had been given, frozen in their half-erotic poses of
ecstasy.

Sylvia Pittston
reached down and grasped his head. The man’s cry ceased as her fingers, strong
and white, unblemished and gentle, worked through his hair. He looked up at her
dumbly.

“Who was with
you in sin?” she asked. Her eyes looked into his, deep enough, gentle enough,
cold enough to drown in.

“The... The
Interloper.”

“Called who?”

“Called Satan.” Raw,
oozing whisper.

“Will you
renounce?”

Eagerly: “Yes!
Yes! Oh, my Jesus Savior!”

She rocked his
head; he stared at her with the blank, shiny eyes of the zealot.

“If he walked
through that door—” she hammered a finger at the vestibule shadows where the
gunslinger stood—“would you renounce him to his face?”

“On my mother’s
name!”

“Do you believe
in the eternal love of Jesus?”

He began to
weep. “Your fucking-a I do—”

“He forgives you
that, Jonson.”

“Praise God,” Jonson
said, still weeping, unaware of what he had said or done.

“I know he
forgives you just as I know he will cast out the unrepentant from his palaces
and into the place of burning darkness.”

“Praise
God
.” The congregation, drained, spoke it
solemnly.

“Just as I know
this Interloper, this Satan, this Lord of Flies and Serpents will be cast down
and crushed... will you crush him if you see him, Jonson?”

“Yes and praise
God!” Jonson wept.

“Will you crush
him if you see him, brothers and sisters?”

“Yess...” Sated.

“If you see him
sashaying down Main St. tomorrow?”

“Praise God...”

The gunslinger,
amused and unsettled at the same time, faded back out the door and headed for
town. The smell of the desert was clear in the air. Almost time to move on.
Almost.

XIII

In bed again.

“She won’t see
you,” Allie said. She sounded frightened. “She doesn’t see anybody. She only
comes out on Sunday evenings to scare the hell out of everybody.”

“How long has
she been here?”

“Twelve years or
so. Let’s not talk about her.”

“Where did she
come from? Which direction?”

“I don’t know.” Lying.

“Allie?”

“I don’t
know!”

“Allie?”

“All right! All
right! She came from the dwellers! From the desert!”

“I thought so.” He
relaxed a little. “Where does she live?”

Her voice
dropped a notch. “If l tell you, will you make love to me?”

“You know the
answer to that.”

She sighed. It
was an old, yellow sound, like turning pages. “She has a house over the knoll
in back of the church. A little shack. It’s where the... the real minister used
to live until he moved out. Is that enough? Are you satisfied?”

“No. Not yet.” And
he rolled on top of her.

XIV

It was the last
day, and he knew it.

The sky was an
ugly, bruised purple, weirdly lit from above with the first fingers of dawn.
Allie moved about like a wraith, lighting lamps, tending the corn fritters that
spluttered in the skillet. He had loved her hard after she had told him what he
had to know, and she sensed the coming end and had given more than she had ever
given, and she had given it with desperation against the coming of dawn, given
it with the tireless energy of sixteen. And she was pale this morning, on the
brink of menopause again.

She served him
without a word. He ate rapidly, chewing, swallowing, chasing each bite with hot
coffee. Allie went to the batwings and stood staring out at the morning, at the
silent battalions of slow-moving clouds.

“It’s going to
dust up today.”

“I’m not
surprised.”

“Are you ever?”
She asked ironically, and turned to watch him get his hat. He clapped it on his
head and brushed past her.

“Sometimes,” he
told her. He only saw her once more alive.

XV

By the time he
reached Sylvia Pittston’s shack, the wind had died utterly and the whole world
seemed to wait. He had been in desert country long enough to know that the
longer the lull, the harder the wind would blow when it finally decided to
start up. A queer, flat light hung over everything.

There was a
large wooden cross nailed to the door of the place, which was leaning and
tired. He rapped and waited. No answer. He rapped again. No answer. He drew
back and kicked in the door with one hard shot of his right boot. A small bolt
on the inside ripped free. The door banged against a haphazardly planked wall
and scared rats into skittering flight. Sylvia Pittston sat in the hall, sat in
a mammoth darkwood rocker, and looked at him calmly with those great and dark
eyes. The stormlight fell on her cheeks in terrifying half-tones. She wore a
shawl. The rocker made tiny squeaking noises.

They looked at
each other for a long, clockless moment.

“You will never
catch him,” she said. “You walk in the way of evil.”

“He came to you,”
the gunslinger said.

“And to my bed.
He spoke to me in the Tongue. He—”

“He screwed you.”

She did not
flinch. “You walk an evil way, gunslinger. You stand in shadows. You stood in
the shadows of the holy place last night. Did you think I couldn’t see you?”

“Why did he heal
the weed-eater?”

“He was an angel
of God. He said so.”

“I hope he
smiled when he said it.”

She drew her lip
back from her teeth in an unconsciously feral gesture. “He told me you would
follow. He told me what to do. He said you are the Antichrist.”

The gunslinger
shook his head. “He didn’t say that.”

She smiled up at
him lazily. “He said you would want to bed me. Do you?”

“Yes.”

“The price is
your life, gunslinger. He has got me with child... the child of an angel. If
you invade me—” She let the lazy smile complete her thought. At the same time
she gestured with her huge, mountainous thighs. They stretched beneath her
garment like pure marble slabs. The effect was dizzying.

The gunslinger
dropped his hands to the butts of his pistols. “You have a demon, woman. I can
remove it.”

The effect was
instantaneous. She recoiled against the chair, and a weasel look flashed on her
face. “Don’t touch me! Don’t come near me! You dare not touch the Bride of God!”

“Blow it out,” the
gunslinger said, grinning. He stepped toward her.

The flesh on the
huge frame quaked. Her face had become a caricature of crazed terror, and she
stabbed the sign of the Eye at him with pronged fingers.

“The desert,” the
gunslinger said. “What after the desert?”

“You’ll never
catch him! Never! Never! You’ll burn! He told me so!”

“I’ll catch him,”
the gunslinger said. “We both know it. What is beyond the desert?”

“No!”

“Answer me!”

“No!”

He slid forward,
dropped to his knees, and grabbed her thighs. Her legs locked like a vise. She
made strange, lustful keening noises.

“The demon, then,”
he said.

“No—”

He pried the
legs apart and unholstered one of his guns.

“No! No! No!”
Her breath came in short, savage grunts.