your help.”
“I think maybe you can, too. You’re really coming around nicely, thank
God.”
“Free will,” Jim said.
The priest frowned.
By late afternoon, nearly twenty-four hours after Jim stumbled into the
church, his fever registered only three-tenths of a degree on the
thermometer. His muscles were no longer spasming, his joints did not
hurt any more he was not dizzy, and his chest did not ache when he drew
a deep breath Pain still flared across his face periodically. When he
spoke he did without moving his facial muscles more than absolutely
necessary, because the cracks in his lips and in the corners of his
mouth reopened easily in spite of the prescription cortisone cream that
Father Geary applied every few hours.
He could sit up in bed of his own volition and move about the room with
only minimal help. When his appetite returned, as well, Father Geary
gave him chicken soup, then vanilla ice cream. He ate carefully,
mindful of his split lips, trying to avoid tainting the food with the
taste of his own blood.
“I’m still hungry,” Jim said when he finished.
“Let’s see if you can keep that down first.”
“I’m fine. It was only sunstroke, dehydration.”
“Sunstroke can kill, son. You need more rest.”
When the priest relented a while later and brought him more ice cream
Jim spoke through half clenched teeth and frozen lips: “Why are some
people killers? Not cops, I mean. Not soldiers. Not those who kill in
self defense. The other kind, the murderers. Why do they kill?”
Settling into a straight-backed rocker near the bed, the priest regarded
him with one raised eyebrow. “That’s a peculiar question.”
“Is it? Maybe. Do you have an answer?”
“The simple one is-because there’s evil in them.”
They sat in mutual silence for a minute or so. Jim ate ice cream, and
the rocky priest rocked in his chair. Another twilight crept across the
sky beyond the windows.
Finally Jim said, “Murder, accidents, disease, old age. . . Why did God
make us mortal in the first place? Why do we have to die?”
“Death’s not the end. Or at least that’s what I believe. Death is only
our means of passage, only the train that conveys us to our reward.”
“Heaven, you mean.”
The priest hesitated. “Or the other.”
Jim slept for a couple of hours. When he woke, he saw the priest
standing at the foot of the bed, watching him intently.
“You were talking in your sleep.”
Jim sat up in bed. “Was I? What’d I say?”
” There is an enemy.'”
“That’s all I said?”
“Then you said, It’s coming. It’ll kill us all.'” A shiver of dread
passed through Jim, not because the words had any power of themselves,
and not because he understood them, but because he sensed that on a
subconscious level he knew all too well what he had meant.
He said, “A dream, I guess. A bad dream. That’s all.”
But shortly past three o’clock in the morning, during that second night
in the rectory, he thrashed awake, sat straight up in bed, and heard the
words escaping him again, “It’ll kill us all.” The room was lightless.
He fumbled for the lamp, switched it on.
He was alone.
He looked at the windows. Darkness beyond.
He had the bizarre but unshakable feeling that something hideous and
merciless had been hovering near, something infinitely more savage and
strange than anyone in recorded history had ever seen, dreamed, or
imagined. Trembling, he got out of bed. He was wearing an ill-fitting
pair of the priest’s pajamas. For a moment he just stood there, not
sure what to do.
Then he switched off the light and, barefoot, went to one window, then
the other. He was on the second floor. The night was silent, deep, and
peaceful. If something had been out there, it was gone now.
The following morning, he dressed in his own clothes, which Father Geary
had laundered for him. He spent most of the day in the living room, in
a big easy chair, his feet propped on a hassock, reading magazines and
dozing, while the priest tended to parish business.