Chapter 14: Confessions with a Priest Part I "The Land of Nineteen"

A sharp pain rose up Cortana's arm, and she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out. John was gripping her arm, and his other hand was gripping the sheets. He was muttering in his sleep, saying something that sounded like the word no. In the soft moonlight that came from the windows she could see sweat glistening on his face.

"John, wake up," she said, shaking his shoulder. The Spartan bolted upright, hand reaching for a gun that wasn't there, eyes scanning the dark room. "John," she said again and he seemed to calm, and then noticed his right hand still gripping Cortana's shoulder. He let go and there was a dark bruise underneath.

"I'm sorry" he said.

Cortana put her hand on his chest, noted the erratic beating of his heart, and pushed him down gently back onto the bed. "It's okay, just tell me what happened."

"I hurt you."

Cortana looked at the bruise on her arm, shrugged, and then smiled. Even in the dark the smile seemed to have its own light. "This? I'll be fine, and I've been through worse."

"But I wasn't the cause of it."

She ignored this and asked, "You were dreaming weren't you?"

"Yes," he said, and then lied. "About Sam."

Cortana reached up and put a hand on the side of his face. She then leaned forward and kissed him on his forehead. "I'm here," she said. It was all she needed to say.

"I know." Cortana put her head back on his chest and soon was back deep in her dreamless sleep. John did not sleep though, and stared at the ceiling.

…

It was still early morning when they reached the rectory behind Father Callahan's church. Roland was already up, smoking his morning cigarette, and was cleaning both revolvers which were broken down in front of him with an oiled rag. Jake wouldn't be here this morning, he had befriended Benjamin Slightman's son Benny the younger and had requested to stay at their house. Much to Cortana's satisfaction Roland had agreed to this.

"Where are Susannah and Eddie?" she asked and the gunslinger's eyes actually met hers.

"Inside having breakfast. Rosalita, Callahan's housekeeper, has made coffee if you want it."

Cortana smiled, realizing this was the first time she had actually smiled at the gunslinger, "I think I would."

John was still out of his armor, although he said that he planned on running the scheduled maintenance on it that was required in the evening before donning it back on. He was wearing a longed sleeved shirt, as was Cortana. She had told him it was because it was still cold out in the morning, but he knew that the real reason was to cover up the bruise. In her hands Cortana held a small holo-projector that the Master Chief had been carrying in one of the compartments in his MJOLNIR. Certainly not capable of anything fancy, but it would get the job done.

…

They had their coffee with Callahan and were now walking with the man behind the church, Cortana carrying an extra cup. The priest when seeing John for the first time out of his armor commented "You sure are a big fella, even out of all that metal." The Master Chief merely nodded. He had been silent for most of the morning, and Cortana suspected it was because of the dream that he had last night. The only time he had really spoken to her was when they saw the cloud in the sky.

The both of them had been walking for less than twenty minutes towards Callahan's place when Cortana had felt the sudden urge to look up. There in the sky, colored pink by the sun which was just beginning to peak over the horizon, was a cloud shaped like the number nineteen. "John," she had said, "Look up into the sky and tell me what you see."

John looked up for a moment, eyes scanning, and then said one word, "Nineteen." Cortana relaxed, she wasn't going crazy, despite what the rampant voices in her head might be telling her. "I've seen it before, before last night I mean," he said after a long pause.

"Where, and why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't think anything of it at the time. I saw it back in New York when I was sent todash the first time. There were twenty-one books on the table inside the bookstore that Jake's past self went into. After he bought two of the books there were nineteen left."

Cortana frowned. She had seen the number nineteen before hadn't she? But where? Andy, she thought. "I've seen it before too; or rather I've heard it. Two days ago when we first met the representatives from the Calla back in the forest I was alone with Andy for a little while. I asked him what he knew about the Wolves, and he locked up, asked for the password for directive nineteen."

John raised an eyebrow, "And you didn't try to force the information out of him?"

"I can still access all the information I had when I was an AI, but I still don't know how far my abilities go. I'd rather test it on something else first before I try and hack into Andy."

Cortana was shaken out of her thoughts about the conversation from earlier that morning when the group reached a secluded and shady spot behind the church. Callahan sat down as did the others, forming a small circle. Cortana set the holo-projector in the middle of the circle. "I think we should go first," she said, but Roland shook his head.

"No, I have already heard most of your tale, and have told the others much about it already. We will hear Callahan talk first," he said.

Cortana shot the gunslinger a look, what little good will she had towards him for allowing Jake to stay with a friend completely gone. She turned to John, but there was no help there. He was actually agreeing with Roland.

Callahan scratched the white hair on top of his head, "Well I'll try not to talk the day away, although no promises." He paused for a minute, trying to find a place to begin. "Ya know, like many men in the priesthood of the Holy Roman Catholic Church I had come to believe that good and evil existed only in a symbolic sense. I was wrong though, there are demons out there, embodiments of pure evil. The first demon I came across was the demon drink. I was a drunk, would take nips out of a bottle before mass, and a few more nips after it was over. I moved from parish to parish over several years because of my drinking, although I told myself that my problem was spiritual in nature, not because I liked the whiskey to much do ya kennit? The other priests with whom I sought council seemed to agree with me and that only fed the problem. The second demon I faced was truly pure evil. Alcohol is only evil in excess and to those who cannot stop themselves after a few drinks, but this thing was something far darker and much worse. He was a vampire, and his name was Barlow."

"A vampire?" Cortana said, "Those don't exist." A ridiculous statement, she would think later, considering everything they had seen already. John had raised an eyebrow at this, but said nothing. Roland, Susannah, and Eddie looked unsurprised. If anything their faces showed that they had expected something like this.

"Aye, a vampire. I don't expect you to believe me right away, but it's true. God and the Man Jesus help me it's true," Callahan said.

…

"It had started in a town called Jerusalem's Lot. People were starting to go missing, although only one boy ever showed up dead. A few of the townspeople who had figured out what was going on came to me for help. Of course I didn't believe them at first, evil only exists in a symbolic sense, or so I had convinced myself. In all honesty I thought they were crazy, but the truth always reveals itself in the end. We formed a group, a ka-tet you might call it gunslinger, to hunt the vampire down. At first we only found his victims. They were by all rights dead, no pulse, no breathing, nothing to indicate that they were alive. But when we drove the stakes through their hearts," Callahan paused at this and stared down at the ground. "The screams. Those scream's from Barlow's victims as we drove those stakes through their hearts and into the ground." He brought his hand up to his face and let out a ragged breath before continuing.

"Barlow was old. How old exactly I can't say but I suspect he was one of the originals, one of the handful left in all the worlds. I confronted him myself, alone. He had taken one of the boys of the town after killing his parents. I raised my cross up at him and it glowed a pure white light which pierced into the vampire's skin. In the distraction the child escaped, but eventually the light from the cross faded away, my faith had failed. Barlow plucked the cross out of my hand, and crushed it. At first I thought he was going to kill me but instead he did something much worse. He cut a gash into the side of his throat and forced my mouth to it."

"You drank," Eddie said.

Callahan nodded, "Yes I drank. An alcoholic always drinks. I was unclean; I could feel it inside me. The doors to my own church wouldn't open for me. For years after words the only colors I could see were white, grey, and red. Crimson red. I wasn't a vampire that much I could be thankful for, but I was broken. I ran, like a coward I ran from the town and abandoned all the people in it. Caught the first greyhound bus to New York and got piss ass drunk the first day I arrived. Eventually I sobered up and began working at a soup kitchen for minimum wage. The Home it was called." He then looked at John and Cortana. "It was right by the United Nations building come to think of it."

"A coincidence," John said, although there were festering seeds of doubt in his mind.

"No, it was ka," Roland said and then rolled his fingers Callahan to continue.

"There was a man who I worked with there, his name was Lupe Delgado. He became a good friend of mine, helped me when nobody else would. You could say that I loved him. Guess that makes me a faggot doesn't it?" he asked and Cortana shook her head.

"No it doesn't, and it wouldn't matter even if it did." Callahan smiled at her, but it was a fake smile.

"There was a physical attraction though, not the same I would get when seeing a pretty lady walk by, but I thought he was beautiful all the same. I was working in the kitchen washing dishes when I saw it. Lupe was standing in the alleyway, seemed to be in a deep sleep. Biting into his neck was another vampire. Not the same as Barlow though. This one was younger, weaker, and far less cunning. Mosquitoes I came to think of them. I buried a butcher's knife into the creature's head and his body turned to dust, leaving only his clothes which were easy enough to clean up. Lupe never remembered what happened, but he lasted only a few months after that. Began to feel weak, dizzy, and there were sores that appeared on his skin."

"He had AIDS didn't he? Got it from the vampire," Eddie said.

"Yes, AIDS. I suppose that was what it was. At the time they called it something like Gay Immune Deficiency Syndrome although I can't say for sure. All I know for sure is that he died, and I got drunk again right after his funeral," he paused again thinking.

"I left New York after that and spent several years drifting. I don't know if it was Barlow's blood in me or some punishment cast down from the hand of God, but there was something different about the America I was traveling across at the time. Roads that were there one day would be gone the next. You could pull a ten dollar bill out of your pocket and Alexander Hamilton would be on the face of it one day and Aaron Burr the next. Jimmy Carter would be president one week and George Wallace would be president the week after that. I would go to sleep underneath a bed of newspapers beneath a sign that said Shelton Shop Rd. and the next morning it would read Courthouse Rd."

"You were in the land of nineteen my friend," Eddie said at this and Callahan gave him a puzzled look.

"What do you mean by that son?" he said.

"Nothing, never mind," Eddie said and Callahan looked at him for a moment with that same puzzlement on his face before he started speaking again.

"I hunted vampires during those days, the weaker ones anyway. I came to see them everywhere, killed more of them then I could keep count. I even had a system going, work as a day laborer for a few days, get drunk as a skunk, and hunt the mosquitoes in my spare time. That lasted for a while, until I started to get noticed. There would be graffiti on the bathroom walls with my description on it, wanted pet signs too. If I stayed in an area too long there would be more of them, and if I stayed long enough I would see them. They looked like men, at least well enough to where if you passed them in the street you wouldn't bother glancing at them twice. But they're not, far from it. They were the low men, and they were hunting me."

"The can-toi, foot soldiers of The Crimson King," Roland said.

"Aye that's what they were. I managed to stay one step ahead of them for years, although I had to quite killing vampires in order to get them off my trail. One day I woke up in a gutter from a night of drinking covered in piss and mud. I promised to God then that I would quite for good, and I did. Started going to AA meeting in Detroit, even started working at a soup kitchen again. After a while I stopped seeing the graffiti and dog posters calling for my head, and I thought I was safe. One day though in 1983 I got an offer to receive a donation to the soup kitchen in the mail. Of course I couldn't resist, we barely scraped by on the funds that we had. I arrived at a building where I was to meet the people who were donating on the nineteenth floor…" everybody, including John and Cortana, looked at each other when he said this. "It was a trap though; the room I entered into was full of low men and vampires. They didn't want to kill me, just have one of the vampires infect me. I couldn't live with that, not again. I broke free and crashed through one of the windows and out into the clear air. I can still remember hearing my bones crack as I hit the sidewalk. At first there was pain, and then nothing, and then the desert."

"You woke up in a stable didn't you, at a place called the way station," Cortana asked, already knowing the answer.

Callahan's eyes grew wide, "Yes I did. How on earth did you know that?"

"Me and John died as well and wound up there," she said and then felt John's elbow briefly brush her shoulder. It was the most amount of physical comfort he would be capable of giving her in front of other people, but she was still glad for it.

"Did you see him, the dark man?" Callahan asked, his breaths becoming shallow.

"Yes,"

"Did you see his eyes?"

"No, they were hidden underneath his hood."

"You should be thankful to God then. I saw them, dear God I saw them. Right before he pushed me through the door. He gave me black thirteen before he did, said that if he did not kill the gunslinger under the mountains, at the edge of the western sea, or in Lud, then that thing surely would. The Manni found me in a cave just outside of the Calla and would later tell me that I had been comatose for five days."

"And now black thirteen is in your church," Roland said mildly. He had already begun to light another cigarette.

"Yes and its come alive. It has already tried to reach out to me, and I can hear the chimes coming from it at night," Callahan said and then attempted to steady himself. Eventually his breathing became normal again.

"We shall see it then, before the Spartan tells his tale." Roland stood as did Callahan. Eddie and Susannah remain sitting.

"You said that black thirteen was too dangerous to use," John said standing as well.

"It is, but we might now have a choice. Not when the rose, the only thing currently holding all of existence together is in danger. If there is another way we will use that, but I doubt there is."

Cortana stood as well but John shook his head and said, "Stay here. If this thing is dangerous I don't want you going in."

"And what about you Chief, are you just going to go waltzing into danger? Again I might add," she said, crossing her arms and fighting a wince caused by the bruise on her shoulder.

John's eyes glanced at her shoulder as she did this and he said, "I've already put you in enough danger."

…

They passed a fountain of holy water as they walked into the church. Callahan dipped his hand inside and crossed himself, but the Spartan and the gunslinger ignored it. They came to a room in the back of the church, and the fresh scent of pine from the wooden walls filled the air.

"It's here," Callahan whispered, prying a floorboard up from the floor. There was a black wooden chest inside with the markings of a rose, a stone, and a door on top of it.

There was a strange pulling on John's chest when the priest showed them the chest, and then it moved to his arms. There were bells, they were calling to him, and he heard voices coming from the chest.

(Use it. Use it and keep her safe) they said. His arm twitched forward and although the movement was to subtle for the priest to notice, Roland did. The gunslinger put his arm in front of John's and although the two men did not touch it was enough to keep the Spartan from reaching out. The voices and the bells stopped.

"Will you take it?" Callahan asked, his voice beyond hopeful.

"Only if there is no other choice," Roland said.

…

They were rising inside of her, the voices, not two minutes since John and Roland had followed Callahan inside the church. Out of the corner of her vision she saw a great Crimson Red eye, unblinking. If Cortana tried to look at the eye it would disappear, but it was always there, watching, calling out to her. She tried to fight the voices, push them down as she had before, but it was no use. They were not just coming from inside her head this time, but also from the church, from black thirteen. The voices flooded over her mind and screamed in their fury.

(The Gunslinger is the truth. Roland is the truth.)

(The Prisoner is the truth. Eddie is the truth)

(The Lady of Shadows is the truth. Susannah is the truth.)

(The Priest is the truth. Callahan is the truth.)

(The Warrior is the truth. John 117 is the truth.)

(The Intellect is the truth. You are the truth.)

(Death is the truth. Jake is the truth.)

(Nineteen is the truth. Nineteen is the truth. Nineteen is the truth. Nineteen is the truth.)

"Cortana!" Susannah shouted. Eddie had grabbed Cortana's shoulders and she was lying on the ground.

"What happened?" she said weakly, attempting to bring her mind back into focus.

"You started shaking and mumbling, fell down on the ground," Eddie said. "I'll go get the others." He started to stand up when Cortana grabbed him by the collar.

"No you can't tell him, he can't know. He just got me back, he can't know I'm still broken," Cortana said, "Promise me you won't tell him Eddie."

Eddie looked unsure and then nodded, "Alright, but if this happens again I will. You have my word on that."

"Cortana," Susannah said. "Your eyes, they're red."

She was right, Cortana's vision was red, as if a blood vessel had broken in both eyes. She blinked hard, and then again, before her vision returned to normal.