ONE Pere Don Callahan had once been the Catholic priest of a town, 'salem's Lot had been its name, that no longer existed on any map. He didn't much care. Concepts such as reality had ceased to matter to him. This onetime priest now held a heathen object in his hand, a scrimshaw turtle made of ivory. There was a nick in its beak and a scratch in the shape of a question mark on its back, but otherwise it was a beautiful thing. Beautiful and powerful. He could feel the power in his hand like volts. "How lovely it is," he whispered to the boy who stood with him. "Is it the Turtle Maturin? It is, isn't it?" The boy was Jake Chambers, and he'd come a long loop in order to return almost to his starting-place here in Manhattan. "I don't know," he said. "She calls it the skoldpadda, and it may help us, but it can't kill the harriers that are waiting for us in there." He nodded toward the Dixie Pig, wondering if he meant Susannah or Mia when he used that all-purpose feminine pronoun she. Once he would have said it didn't matter because the two women were so tightly wound together. Now, however, he thought it did matter, or would soon. "Will you?" Jake asked the Pere, meaning Will you stand.