III
The Night Side of Preaching
“I repeat,” began Jaeger, as I gobbled, “that your second appearance to me is in the nature of an act of Providence. How could you meet my need so aptly twice, with years and a continent in which to be lost? Probabilities against it are millions to one. Yet you’ve come, Cole Wickett, and with your help I’ll blunt the claws of demons.”
I scalded my throat with the coffee. “You promised me the story,” I reminded.
“It will be short. You remember the digging up of a grave. The woman you saw was not dead, nor alive. She was a vampire.”
That word is better known now, but I appreciated its meaning with difficulty. Jaeger’s voice grew sharp:
“You must believe me. You were close to a fearful fate, and to me you owe life and soul—when I defended you from that monster. Let me read from this book.”
He took it from a shelf above the table that served him for desk. It was old and musty, with a faded title in German. “The work of the German, Dorn Augustin Calmet,” he explained, and read from the cover: “A Treatise on the Appearance of Spirits, Vampires, and so on. Written a century ago. And here,” leafing through it, “is the reference you will need. I’ll translate, though my German is rusty.”
He cleared his throat and read: “ ‘They select a pure young lad, and mount him naked on a stallion colt that has never stumbled, and is coal-black with no white hair. The stallion is ridden in and out among the graves, and the grave which he will not cross, despite hard blows, is where the vampire is buried.’ ”
He closed the book. “You begin to see what service you rendered. That part of the country was plagued by what seemed consumption or fever—strong people sickening and dying. Only I, and that wise chaplain, saw that their lives were sapped by a vampire. Other cases have occurred in this country—in Connecticut before the war, and in Rhode Island only two years ago. Men would have scoffed at our claim, and so we acted secretly.”
I accepted the honesty, if not the accuracy, of his tale. “You speak,” I said, “as if I am doing you a similar service.”
“You can if you choose. I saw little of your struggle this night, but enough to know that enchantment cannot touch you.”
My eyes were on the blanket-draped corpse as I said, “You think that one victory begets another.”
“I do.” He leaned forward eagerly, the old book in his hands. “You survived one peril of the unknown. Like one who survives a sickness, you have some immunity.”
I let that hang, too. “You speak as if another combat of the sort is coming.”
“Again you anticipate me. The combat has now begun—here in the Welcome Rock country, from which I thought to stamp all evil worship.”
The story he then told me seems to be fairly well known, at least in that community, which once was called Fearful Rock. Leaving the Union army, he came there as a frontier preacher without pay. Vestiges of an ancient and evil influence clung around a ruined house, and stories about it caused settlers to stay away. After his efforts to exorcise the apparent malevolent spirit, several farmers homesteaded nearby, and the name of the district was changed. Recently, he and the men of his little congregation had built a church.
“That started things again,” he said, and I must have looked my utter stupid amazement, for he smiled sadly.
“If you study the lore of demon-worship, as I have studied it, you would know that the deluded fools must have a church at which to aim their blasphemies. Look at the history of the defilers of the North Berwick Church in Scotland. Look at the story of the Salem witches in a minister’s pasture.”
“Those are only legends,” I suggested, but he shook his head.
“They are true. And the truth is manifest here. I am being crusaded against. Stop and think—I defeated evil beings on their own dunghill. They were overthrown and chased out. But their black hearts, if they have hearts, yearn back to here. This place is their Unholy of Unholies.”
“I see,” I replied, wondering if I did. Then I glanced again at the blanket-covered thing on the carpet. Jaeger saw the direction of my glance.
“I’m coming to poor Peter Dole. It was last Sunday—five days ago. I came early to my little church. The lock was broken, the Bible tipped from the pulpit, various kinds of filth on the benches and in the aisles, and on the walls some charcoal writing. It is not fit to repeat to you, but I recognized the hand.”
“Bad boys?”
“Bad men. I cleaned up the mess, and made a change in my text and sermon. I preached from Twelfth of Revelations, ‘The devil is come unto you, having great wrath; for he knoweth that he hath but a short time.’ I stressed the second clause of the observation.”
“ ‘He hath but a short time,’ ” I repeated.
“Yes. I spoke of the outrage, and said that the enemy gained no victory, but only shame. I read a little further into Revelations, the part where certain people are made to hide among rocks to escape the just wrath of heaven. Then I said that I knew who had written on the walls.” He eyed my empty cup. “More coffee? No?”
I shook my head. He continued.
“Peter Dole came to me after the benediction. It was he whose writing I had recognized. Terrified, he confessed some things I had already made sure of—his membership as a very humble figure in a coven.”
I shook my head, to show that I did not know what a coven was.
“It’s an old-country word. Scotch, maybe. It means a gathering of thirteen witches or wizards or devil-worshippers, twelve rank-and-file, and a chief devil. Maybe that’s where we got the unluckiness of the number thirteen. Peter was of the twelve rank-and-file, and he pleaded for mercy. I referred him to the Lord, and asked who were his mates. He said he’d pray courage into himself to tell me. Tonight he must have been coming to see me. And his comrades beat him to death.”
“One of his comrades has wings, then,” I said.
Jaeger tugged his beard thoughtfully. “I have seen that shape against the full moon before this. Full moon-time is their meeting time, as with the underground cults of old Greece and Rome. The full moon makes wolves howl, and turns weak minds mad. I don’t like the full moon. Anyway, that creature is the chief devil of which I spoke.”
“Chief devil?” I repeated. “I thought that probably—”
“That probably some human leader dressed up for the part?” he finished for me. “Not here, at least. Hark!”
I, too, heard what his ear had caught—the flip-flop of great membranes, and the faraway chatter of strange inhuman jaws.
Then a knock at the door, sharp and furtive.
With shame I remember how I flinched and looked for a way out. Jaeger rose, flipped open a drawer in his worktable, and took out a big cap-and-ball revolver. He walked heavily toward the door.
Pausing with his hand on the knob, he spoke clearly:
“If you seek trouble, your search ends here. Too long have I borne with the ungodly, meekly turning my other cheek. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord, I will repay.”
He opened the door, took one look, and lowered his weapon. A girl came stumbling in.
She wore a dark dress of coarse wool, very full-skirted and high-necked, with edging of white at throat and cuffs. Her brown hair was disarrayed, under a knitted shawl. Her face was cream-white, set with bright, scared eyes.
“Please,” she said, out of breath, “they shouted that I’d find my father with you.” She swallowed, and her lips quivered. “Badly hurt, they said.”
“Sit down, Susan,” bade Jaeger. “He is here, but no more in pain or terror.”
She saw the body then, seemed to recognize it through the blanket. Sitting down, as Jaeger had told her, she grew one shade whiter, but calm.
“I will not cry,” she promised us. “I would even be glad, if I thought the curse was gone from him—”
“Then be glad, Susan,” rejoined Jaeger, “for he repented and died a believer.”
He turned his gaze to me. “Now will be proven, or not proven, my thought that you have strength against wickedness. For the gates of hell are open, and our enemies close in about us.”
The girl Susan and I both turned toward him. He continued, with an impatient note in his voice.
“How can mankind defend himself when he does not take thought? This is Satan’s one night of the year, the wizard’s Christmas.”