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Two months after the newspaper article, the boy was taken into the church. He made his first confession—and confessed everything.
It was a moment he remembered for years after, as though a special small slice had been cut from the cake of time. If nothing fires between two people, such an instant simply falls back into the general wrack of memory.
It proves little, except that perhaps in America even a pig can aspire to immortality.
Dud Rogers could hear the faint putter and cough of Mike Ryerson’s lawn mower down the road. But that sound would soon be blotted out by the crackle of flames.
The Marsten House has looked down on us all for almost fifty years, at all our little peccadilloes and sins and lies. Like an idol.”
As the stranger came closer, Dud understood everything and welcomed it, and when the pain came, it was as sweet as silver, as green as still water at dark fathoms.
After thirty-plus years of teaching, he believed that nobody beat the system or won the game, and only suckers ever thought they were ahead.
Alone. Yes, that’s the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn’t hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym.…
They found themselves listening to the silence, fascinated by it. There did not even seem to be the faint, high hum that comes in utter stillness, the sound of nerve endings idling in neutral. There was only a great dead soundlessness and the beat of blood in their own ears. And yet they both knew, of course. They were not alone.
And all around them, the bestiality of the night rises on tenebrous wings. The vampire’s time has come.
She glanced into the mirror and saw only her bedroom reflected, empty and still. The attic door was locked and the key was in the bottom drawer of the dresser, but it didn’t matter. No need for keys now. They slipped between the door and the jamb like shades.
No matter what noises or dreadful possibilities, no matter how awful the unknown, there was an even worse thing: to look the Gorgon in the face.
