the old woman’s fears. She wanted to know if he got moonstruck in drink. It was meant in the simple, country way: was he affected by the phases of the moon?
“It’s the migraine, you must have heard of it,” he told her. “Headaches, that’s what it is, Mrs. Briggs.”
She wanted to bring him tea, for she could sense his loneliness and fear. It was a bizarre coincidence that she should then ask if his headaches had anything to do with his work.
“Dear God, I hope not,” he said, knowing he was wrong. “I hope to God it hasn’t.”
When she was gone, he lay back on the hard mattress, and curiously, sleep was not long in coming. The shock had exhausted him, he guessed. It would serve where the booze had failed. He drifted into grim dreams, almost surfacing to wakefulness a number of times.
There had been the unmistakable reek of evil over the town, an ancient and powerful evil. Imaginings, Ruane tried to tell himself when he was near waking. Half-drunken imaginings. Which anyway were not the concern of a priest the Church had dismissed. Let those whose duty it was to fight them take on the devils. He had his own to contend with.
Ruane slept.
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