“Yesss—”
“It’shimthat will return 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 and none of them.
“It’shimthat will come as the Antichrist, a crimson king with bloody eyes, to lead men into the flaming bowels of perdition, to the bloody end of wickedness, as Star Wormword 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’shimthat stands behind every fleshly pleasure... him who made the machines with LaMerk stamped on them,him!The Interloper!”
LaMerk,the gunslinger thought.Or maybe she said LeMark.The word had some vague resonance for him, but nothing he could put his finger on. Nonetheless, he filed it away in his memory, which was capacious.
“Yes, Lord!” they were screaming.
A man fell on his knees, holding his head and braying.
“When you take 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 with your solitary hand, to whom do you sell your soul?”
“In—”
“ter—”
“Oh, Jesus... Oh—”
“—loper—”
“Aw... Aw... Aw...”
“And who is he?” she cried. But calm within, he could sense the calmness, the mastery, the control and domination. He thought suddenly, with terror and absolute surety, that the man who called himself Walter had left a demon in her. She was haunted. He felt the hot ripple of sexual desire again through his fear, and thought this was somehow like the word the man in black had left in Allie’s mind like a loaded trap.
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 donesins!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.”
