Exorcist Falls Page 5

  Ron’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “And I suppose God told you to sit on the information while that madman impaled girls on meat hooks—”

  “Don’t,” Liz said.

  “—while he mutilated their faces and skinned them alive.”

  “That’s enough, Ron!” Danny snapped.

  Ron spun on him. “And you’re just as bad as the Father here. You’re charged with protecting this city, and all you do is drink yourself into oblivion—”

  “Stop it,” Liz said. She put a hand on Ron’s arm, but he flung it off.

  “—and when I call you for help—the one fucking time I make the mistake of relying on you—you let that idiot of a partner attack my son.”

  Danny’s voice trembled. “Shut up, Ronnie.”

  But Ron laughed, his expression vicious. “Hell, I remember when Liz said we should make you Casey’s godfather. I said to myself, ‘Why not? Danny surely can’t find a way to screw that up.’ Boy, was I ever wrong.”

  Danny looked for a moment like he might lunge at Ron, but before he could, Ron stalked off toward the kitchen, mumbling obscenities.

  Liz said, “Danny, don’t listen—”

  But before she could finish, Danny averted his eyes and said, “I’m gonna check on Carolyn.”

  Leaving the three of us in uncomfortable silence.

  “We’d better go to Casey,” Father Sutherland said.

  We’d started toward the stairs when Liz asked, “How do you know it wasn’t Jack Bittner? The man in the confessional?”

  Sutherland regarded her a long moment. “The man spoke Greek with a very specific dialect called Tsakonian, one that only people in the Peloponnese region still use. Earlier, Danny told us that Officer Bittner was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago. He could hardly have acquired such an accent in that environment.”

  Liz was standing very still, a troubled look on her face. I was about to ask her what was wrong, but before I could, Father Sutherland grasped my shoulder. “We must go to Casey now, Father Crowder. In one way or another, he needs our help.”

  I nodded and started up the stairs, but I cast one backwards glance at Liz, who was staring up at me with a look of dread.

  My skin crawling, I followed Father Sutherland to Casey’s room.

  ¨¨¨

  The next hour passed in a haze of nightmarish vignettes. Because I must record my story quickly, I will forego most of the details and will include only what is essential to my narrative. But imagine if you can…

  ¨¨¨

  Sutherland asks, “Can you tell us your name?”

  “Malephar,” the boy says.

  Sutherland tenses. “Where did you hear that word?”

  No answer.

  “Casey,” Sutherland says, “do you want me to believe you’re possessed by a demon?”

  The boy leers, his light-brown irises darkening, going muddy. Then…spreading. Tiny threadlike tendrils of murk squirm over the whites like fast-growing roots. Soon Casey’s eyes are pure obsidian.

  “How did you do that, Casey?” Sutherland asks.

  “Touch me,” the creature says in a hushed voice.

  Sutherland does not.

  ¨¨¨

  Twenty minutes of questions, holy water, rites, and crosses. The boy alternates between lewd ridicule and enigmatic whispering. At Father Sutherland’s request, the boy speaks in Latin. In ancient Hebrew. In Aramaic. In tongues I’ve never heard before. Even Sutherland looks baffled.

  The boy falls silent and unresponsive.

  ¨¨¨

  Sutherland says to me, “Put your hand on Casey’s forehead.”

  I look uncertainly from the boy to Sutherland and back to the boy. Casey, whose black eyes are now closed, that hideous leer no longer contorting his face, appears to be sleeping. I place a tentative hand on the boy’s forehead, and the black eyes shutter open; a monstrous, chortling laugh gusts out of a mouth that reeks of pestilence, of sulfur, a mouth now lined with daggerlike fangs rather than his mother’s perfectly straight teeth.

  The thing that no longer resembles Casey stares up at me with a look of measureless knowledge. The thing that isn’t Casey says, “You’ll never master your fears, Jason.”

  I resist the urge to bolt from the room, am held in check not only by my desire to impress Sutherland, but by my terror of the thing on the bed.

  “So much discipline,” the thing says, its voice an ode to suffering, to malice. “So much self-control, yet so much fear. Was it your mother that twisted you so, Jason? Was it the way she walked around the house naked that so transformed the female body into an unknowable goddess? Something to be worshipped and feared?”

  “Don’t listen, Father Crowder,” Sutherland cautions.

  But I listen. Oh, do I ever. I listen with a mixture of horror and self-loathing.

  The thing on the bed goes on, “Something to flagellate yourself to in the small hours of the night. Something to fantasize about while you squirt your pitiful seed onto your pristine white sheets, sheets that grow yellow and crusty and stained with fear sweat. Your foreskin so chafed and red you can see pinpricks of blood as you stare at your emaciated body in the mirror, hating yourself and craving punishment for your fantasies.”

  “Jason!” Sutherland shouts. But I am doubled over beside the bed, weeping.

  Delighted, the thing crows, “You’ve already imagined it haven’t you? Already fantasized about Liz Hartman, a vulnerable woman who needs your help. What will she say when she learns of your pathetic carnal imaginings? Fantasies in which you cease to behave like a castrate and seize her from behind, knead her mounded breasts and thrust your miniscule phallus into her sex as she moans out her want. As if you had the audacity to commit adultery…as if you were man enough to seduce a woman so libidinous.”

  “She’s your mother,” I sob.

  “She’s Casey’s mother,” the thing says, its voice suddenly deepening.

  “And where is Casey?” Sutherland demands.

  “Burning,” the thing says and begins to laugh.

  ¨¨¨

  Forty-five minutes in, the room smells of feral dogs and feces, of spoiled yeast and brimstone.

  The thing on the bed is levitating.

  The hips are three feet off the mattress. The body is splayed, arched like a dome, the chained limbs straining against their bonds. Even the fingertips are several inches above the mattress.

  ¨¨¨

  The thing on the bed thrusts its wrists against the handcuffs again and again, the hands pumping heavenward in spasmodic mockery. It is leering at us, its mouth frozen open in a salacious intaglio. The sound the flesh makes soon becomes a gruesome squelch. Sutherland demands that the thing stop. The thing does not stop. Its staccato jabs persist, the sound becoming wetter. Squishier. I cover my mouth and look away. The thing gloats at my revulsion. Its guttural voice challenges me to look. Sutherland orders the thing to cease its mutilation of Casey’s body, but the thrusts continue, crimson gouts of blood pelting the sheets. I retch at the sound of flensed bones, of pulping meat. I plead for it to stop. But through it all, the thing on the bed grins with rapturous sadism. A smell of sheared copper mingles with the rank odors of sulfur and diarrhea. Soon I can see one of the thing’s wrist bones. I gag.

  ¨¨¨

  Five minutes later Sutherland too is coughing into his handkerchief, yet he is still attempting to recite the passages marked in his Bible.

  “Touch me,” the thing commands.

  The young body has lowered to the bed, but it is now writhing in a most disturbing way. Undulating like windswept water. The bones as malleable as a serpent’s. Black ichor has begun to seep from the thing’s mouth. Its rapier teeth grin savagely through the viscous liquid, which reeks like boiling sewage.

  Sutherland proceeds with his incantation, but the thing shouts, “Touch me, you craven old woman!”

  But Sutherland does not.

  ¨¨¨

  After the endless hour had passed, I sta
ggered out of the room and stood for a long time in the hallway. I felt nauseated. Moving with my hand over my mouth, I gained the nearest bathroom and leaned against the closed door.

  When I’d successfully fended off the urge to vomit, I shambled to the sink and stood panting in front of the ornate, gilded vanity. Clutching the sides of the white basin, I took stock of myself in the mirror and decided I didn’t look nearly as wretched as I felt. In my mind echoed the damning words the thing on the bed had uttered. Father Sutherland termed it clairvoyance, and I supposed that was right. But to me it felt like the worst sort of torture. Laying bare my soul and ridiculing my most private thoughts and deeds in front of a man whose opinion I valued over all others, a man who was like a father to me. How could I face Sutherland again? How could he ever look upon me without embarrassment after learning of the depravity lurking within me?

  I splashed cold water on my face and decided I looked presentable, if a trifle unkempt. The welts on my face, coupled with the damp hair darkening my forehead, added five years to my appearance. I reached into my pocket, found a stick of spearmint gum and popped it into my mouth, wanting my breath to be inoffensive should I bump into Liz.

  So my surprise was great when I opened the door and beheld her standing in the hallway.

  I smiled weakly and said something about not feeling well.

  She nodded, studying my face in a way that both excited me and made me nervous. “I passed Father Sutherland on the way up. He said he needed to discuss Casey, but that he wanted you to be there too.”

  I nodded, made toward the stairs.

  “Don’t go,” she said, a hand on my chest.

  Gazing down at her, I felt suddenly weightless.

  “I know you’re not used to this sort of thing,” she said, “and I want you to know it’s okay for you to be scared.”

  I decided clairvoyance might run in her family.

  She moved closer to me, our faces perhaps eighteen inches apart in the dim hallway. “I want to thank you for coming tonight. You’ve been very brave, especially for someone so young.”

  I’m afraid my tone was churlish. “I’m not that young.”

  “Don’t be angry,” she said, smiling. “I think you’re more mature than my husband in most ways. You have a much better personality.”

  “Mrs. Hartman…”

  “Liz,” she said. “You’re more handsome too. Please don’t think badly of me for saying that.”

  My mouth worked for a moment, my throat emitting a dusty click.

  “I’ve never cheated on Ron,” she said, and there was a fervent, imploring look in her green eyes. “He’s stepped outside the marriage. Lots of times, I’m sure.” She grunted bitterly. “He doesn’t make much of an effort to conceal it anymore. Like it’s his right as a man or something. The breadwinner enjoying his dalliances.” Her eyes brimmed with tears.

  “He’s an idiot,” I said.

  She wiped her eyes, sniffed. “Thanks for saying that.”

  “It’s true, Liz. He… he doesn’t know what he has.”

  She looked at me wryly. “And what is that? A woman who married for money? Who deluded herself into thinking she really loved a man who wasn’t all that nice to her even when they were dating?”

  “You mustn’t be so hard on yourself. There must have been other reasons—”

  “He bought me things,” she said flatly. “Took me to nice restaurants. I acted like it was a fairy-tale romance. But it was only him buying me off, date by date.” She shook her head. “And I liked it. How’s that for shallow?”

  “At least you see him for what he is now.”

  Her face clouded.

  I mistook her expression for offense. “I’m sorry for being so forward.”

  As though I hadn’t spoken, she said, “Ron was born in Greece, near Mount Parnon. His parents met when his dad visited the region to explore the caves. He was an anthropology professor at Northwestern. He met Ron’s mother there. They married and remained in Greece until Ron was nine. He spoke their language as fluently as English.”

  I could feel my pulse throbbing in my temples. “He still speaks it?”

  “I asked him to say a few words when we were dating, and he did with little trouble then. Now…” She shrugged, a deep indentation between her brows.

  “Do you know where he was during the killings?”

  “I thought I did.”

  “I won’t let him hurt you,” I said.

  She gazed deeply into my eyes then, and I felt my hands closing on the crooks of her elbows, drawing her toward me. The swells of her breasts pushed against my robe, the subtle, delirious smell of her deodorant drifting up to me.

  I might have kissed her then. Would have kissed her had it not been for the flawlessness of her lips, which my eyes happened upon at that moment. They were a deep pink, sculpted and full. Her son had the same lips, had nearly all of her features.

  Casey.

  I let go of her arms, angry with myself for doing so, but even angrier for having forgotten about Casey. He was the reason I had come tonight. Not to commit adultery. Maybe Liz needed to be kissed at that moment, and I just happened to be the man into whose arms she’d landed. Maybe she viewed me as a protector, a sanctuary from the horror that had gripped her family.

  I suppose it was precisely this notion that forbade me from doing what I so longed to do. I couldn’t take advantage of her need now. Later, I told myself. If given the opportunity. She was the kind of woman you could give up the priesthood for, a woman so warm and good and lovely you doubted God would blame you much.

  But for now…there was Casey.

  “We better join the others,” I said.

  Liz nodded, but she looked disappointed. I watched after her as she walked away, the sight of her firm buttocks tantalizing me.

  Coward, I told myself as I followed her down the stairs.

  Chapter Six

  Danny reentered the kitchen where we were all gathered around the outer granite island. At Liz’s questioning look, he said, “Carolyn’s fine. You sure you don’t want her to stay with a neighbor or something? Maybe a friend?”

  Ron glared at him. “And explain the bruises on her face? Have them think I smacked her around or something? No thanks.”

  “It is not your well-being we should be worried about,” Sutherland said.

  Liz looked at Sutherland. “You think she should stay somewhere else?”

  He appeared to consider. The worry lines on his forehead were more pronounced than they’d been earlier. Or perhaps it was just the lighting. “The area of the disturbance appears to be limited to Casey’s physical reach.”

  Danny leaned forward. “You called it a disturbance, Father?”

  Sutherland nodded grimly. “I did.”

  “Does that mean…you’re sure he’s possessed?”

  “I am,” Father Sutherland answered.

  Liz exhaled a shuddering sigh, and I put a comforting hand on the small of her back. It was an involuntary movement, instinct really. But I saw the look on Ron’s face and decided to let go of her. If Liz noticed, she didn’t let on.

  “What will you do?” Liz asked.

  “With your permission,” Father Sutherland said, “we will begin the rites of exorcism.”

  The words hung in the air between all of us, thick as a fog.

  Danny said, “Don’t you guys have to…you know, contact the Vatican or something? Or maybe the local diocese?”

  Father Sutherland regarded Danny gravely. “Not in cases like these, Officer Hartman.”

  Ron arched an eyebrow. “What the hell does that mean?”

  Sutherland hesitated, looking uncharacteristically reticent.

  I said, “If the host’s life is in peril, an experienced priest is given the discretion to take what measures he deems necessary.”

  “You think there’s a demon in my son, Father Sutherland?” Liz asked in a hoarse voice.

  Father Sutherland sighed and nodded.

&nb
sp; “Jesus Christ,” Ron muttered. “Just like the goddamn movies.”

  Sutherland’s face tightened. “I would appreciate your avoiding the utterance of blasphemy until we’re finished.”

  “Amen,” Danny said.

  “And this bears no resemblance to the movies,” Sutherland continued. He paused. “Danny, would you please check on Casey? Make certain there is no change in his condition?”

  “Sure thing,” Danny said, and was off immediately.

  Liz said, “Do we need to sign something, Father Sutherland?”

  “In this day and age, I should probably have you fill out some sort of release form, a disclaimer perhaps. But I fear taking the time to draft a legal document would be to Casey’s detriment.”

  Ron asked, “What do you mean, ‘his detriment’?”

  “I’ve been present at four exorcisms, Mr. Hartman, one of which I believed to be a case of an untreated personality disorder, another a scenario in which a child was play-acting as the result of an unquenchable yearning for attention and her parents’ religious zealotry. In both of those cases, the exorcisms wrought disastrous results. The woman with the personality disorder—she was in her thirties and had for years gone untreated—sank into deeper mental and emotional turmoil and eventually died in an institution. Branding her disorder possession only exacerbated her condition. The child who faked demonic possession injured herself badly, soon became resentful of her parents’ mania, and descended into drug abuse. She overdosed on heroin at the age of nineteen.”

  Liz’s voice was scarcely more than a whisper. “But you think Casey’s situation is different.”

  Father Sutherland nodded. “In the two other instances, the affected parties fulfilled all the conditions of demonic possession. In one case, I assisted the officiating priest. In the second case, I performed the rites myself. In both situations, the victim of the evil spirit made a complete recovery.”

  I felt a rush of relief at Sutherland’s words, but Liz, perhaps cannier than I was, only regarded him with trepidation. “My son’s case is worse, isn’t it?”