More exotic fare: Syringes, dripping clear solutions of sinister intents. Little silver silos of liquid nitrogen. Piano wire.
“You see, my point is, I suppose…” He turned around, sharp white teeth gleaming in the dark. “I fear Job’s lessons are undervalued.”
The Father turned. Before him, Allen Myers—an usher at St. Andrew the Apostle’s and dairy farmer by trade, blessed in the worldly riches of land, beasts, and children—lay strapped to a table of darkly stained oak. Sweat beaded across his broad forehead. Tears leaked from bloodshot blue eyes. Tightly fastened leather straps bound his wrists to the table, rendering his fingertips the bluish-white of bloodless flesh. Saliva burbled around the ball gag between his teeth.
“Gahd, Gahd,” he sobbed. “Wha’ have I done to deserve thif?”
“Shhh, shhh.” Father McCullers ran the bony spindles of his fingers across his face, gently wiping away his tears. “The wages of sin are death, my child.”
The priest rested his thumb against Myers’ right eye and pressed, feeling the vitreous mass depress as the man screamed against his gag. Father McCullers licked his lips as he drove deeper, savoring the gel-filled orb warping around his thumb, then released his eye and returned to the workbench.
“But perhaps you do deserve a more proper explanation. You’re a man of faith, are you not? God-fearing? Rich in the blessings of the Lord?”
Myers nodded vigorously, sobbing, as if he might escape captivity on the virtue of his good works alone.
“Of course you are, my child. You’re a good man. But is it for nothing that you are God-fearing? After all, the faith of ‘good’ men is a shallow faith indeed. Where is your faith in the face of pain? In the face of loss? When have you anointed yourself in ash in the depths of your sorrow, all your blessings reduced to dust, still faithful to He who takes away?”
Myers howled like a wounded animal.
“You see, this is my point about Job. We forget all too often the breadth of His creations, I fear. The day, and the night. The dove, and the Leviathan. Good…” He picked up a pair of pliers, appraising it by the crimson light of the fire burning in its corner hearth. “And evil.”
He turned, eyes invisible in the shifting shadows cast by the fire, save his irises gleaming like a cat’s in the night. A wet, sobbing scream rolled up Myers’ throat, muffled by the gag.
“Behold.” The Father smiled, leaning in with the pliers. “You are vile. I will lay my hand upon thy mouth.”
The man thrashed against his restraints.
* * *
Earlier that morning, Elizabeth Wilson, a stooped and grey-headed woman with tired eyes, took a seat for the first time in the backmost pew of St. Andrew the Apostle’s, a spired temple of rust-colored bricks on Broad Street in Waynesboro. She’d arrived in town only the previous night. Her hands spasmed, not from age, but from a cold rush of adrenaline as she waited for the service to begin.
Fifteen years she’d already waited. Fifteen years since Malcolm had been stolen from her. The call to identify the body had been little more than a formality. The mass of mangled meat they showed her no longer resembled a man. At nights, visions of her husband haunted her, as he’d appeared when the police pulled the sheet away: fleshless, seeping, the details of the face burned away, the familiar curves of his nose and cheeks erased, replaced by a mask of charred, blistered muscle clinging to the skull. She’d vomited on the morgue floor.
After the initial shock, Elizabeth had attempted to adjust to a widow’s life. Her mother had done it before her; now was her turn to bear the cross. Between the despair, the fatigue, and all the practical matters that needed attending, she barely even noticed that Father Henry McCullers, a humble homilist who’d joined the congregation not five years before, transferred to another church less than two weeks after her husband’s death. Years passed. Her life approached something resembling a new normalcy.
Then, five years after Malcom’s passing, a man in Fulton County was found mutilated almost beyond recognition. He’d been found in a shed of unknown construction or ownership, deep in the woods. Howard Bigler, 45, lumberyard owner, family man, devoted attendee at St. Stephen’s in McConnellsburg. Then, four years after that, in Westmoreland County, Daniel Shindledecker, 62, CPA, father of four, grandfather of eight, and faithful parishioner at Our Lady of Grace in Greensburg, discovered in an abandoned mill off a closed road in an empty corner of the county. Elizabeth felt a profound disquiet, a still small voice whispering in her ear.
When Bigler had been discovered, she wondered if he’d been mutilated by the same hand that had tortured her husband, but she had forced the thought into the depths of her mind, where it festered like an abscess in her soul. By the time of Shindledecker’s discovery, wonder blossomed into conviction, peace had devolved into obsession, and thought demanded to become deed.
In researching these killings, Elizabeth discovered something that stoked the flames smoldering in her breast: at each of the victim’s churches, Father Henry McCullers had invariably arrived a few years before the murder, and left shortly thereafter. Just as he had come and gone from the church where she and Malcolm had been wed, now defiled by a darkness no light could ever illuminate.
By the time she made this discovery and tracked down the priest’s whereabouts, he had already haunted St. Andrew the Apostle’s for three years, more than enough time to have picked out a new victim. Mischief followed McCullers like a shadow, and the time had come for Elizabeth to give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, wound for wound, and burning for burning, so sayeth the Lord.
The familiar drawl of Father McCullers’ voice ripped Elizabeth away from her thoughts as he took the podium to deliver the morning’s homily. The sight of him—gaunt and hollow-cheeked, with eyes like two small coals burning in their sockets—provoked the taste of bile in her throat.
“One day,” McCullers declared, his voice still, devoid of inflection, “there was a man, blameless and upright, who feared God and avoided evil. And on that day, the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord. And Satan came with them.”
Elizabeth recognized the sermon opening. It was the same one Father McCullers had delivered the morning before he had butchered her husband.
“And the Lord asked Satan, ‘where do you come from?’ And Satan answered the Lord, ‘from roaming the earth, patrolling it’—as a master might patrol his fields, perhaps, overseeing the work of his servants.”
Father McCullers paused to cast his gaze upon the crowd. Elizabeth looked away as the spotlight of his eyes passed over her pew.
“What an answer Satan dares to give the Lord! To suggest that while He controls the Heavens, the Adversary stalks His creations, sowing seeds of doubt and chaos in the hearts of men. And yet the Lord does not rebuke him, but instead engages him, asking if Satan has seen this blameless and upright man, most loyal of all His servants.” The Father drummed his fingers against the pulpit, a twitch playing at the corners of his mouth.
“And sharp-tongued Satan dares again to question the Lord, to declare that this man is only loyal for God has blessed him! Were God to revoke these blessings, surely this man would blaspheme Him to His face!”
Elizabeth closed her eyes and took deep, shuddering breaths. She reached a hand into her red leather purse and wrapped her fingers around the handle of her recently purchased Smith & Wesson .38 Special. No. Not yet. Not here. Now was not the time.
“And, amazingly, again God does not rebuke him!” The priest slammed his hand against the podium. “No, instead, the Lord offers this man’s life up to Satan’s control. This man, upright and blameless, is delivered into Satan’s hand by none other than the Lord himself. Why? Why! Why I ask you!”
Sweat shone on the priest's forehead, his breathing ragged with passion.
“But who are we to question the machinations of He who laid the foundations of the earth! He who shut the sea behind doors, who has shown the dawn its place so it might shake the
wicked from the earth!”
Father McCullers paused, his voice still reverberating through the high-ceilinged hall. He scanned the room with his two burning coals, and they came to rest on Elizabeth.
“For what are we, what is our suffering, before His majesty, His knowledge, His infinite wisdom? Indeed, if the Lord sees fit to deliver us into Satan’s hand, it is for reasons that are not ours to question.” He smiled, and she raised her hand to her mouth, fighting back the vomit. “For the fear of the Lord is wisdom, and avoiding evil is understanding.”
Elizabeth rose, stumbled to the doors, ran to the restroom, and released the contents of her stomach into nearest porcelain bowl. She lay against the cool tile of the bathroom floor until she could no longer hear Father McCullers’ voice booming from the pulpit. The homily ended, she returned quietly to her pew and waited, her knee bouncing anxiously, until the time came for confession. She stood in line outside the ornate wooden coffin, silently mouthing familiar prayers for guidance. She clutched her purse to her chest as she crossed the threshold into the confessional and the door shut behind her. The outline of Father McCullers’ face shifted behind the black lace of the confessional screen.
“Bless me Father,” Elizabeth whispered, her voice shaking, “for I have sinned. It has been more than a year since my last confession.”
“Speak, my child.” The Father turned behind the screen. The lights of his eyes flashed in the darkness.
“I have carried hatred in my heart,” Elizabeth said. Tears welled in the corners of her tired eyes and ran through the ravines carved into her wrinkled face. “For years, like a garden, I have tended to it, fed it, let it grow wild in my soul.”
“Refrain from anger,” the priest answered mechanically. “And turn from wrath; it leads only to evil.”
“I have already let myself be led to evil,” Elizabeth responded, her voice raw. She gripped the rosary beads around her neck that had once belonged to her husband. “I have desired vengeance, planned it, longed for it. Plotted foul deeds against one who has wronged me.”
“Did you lay the foundations of the earth?” Father McCullers asked.
Elizabeth didn’t answer, still gripping the rosary.
“No? Then vengeance does not belong to you. It is not for us to weigh the scales of justice. Vengeance belongs to the Lord. Trust in Him, for He tells us that the wicked will know He is the Lord thy God when He lays His vengeance upon them.”
“Is it not possible,” Elizabeth asked, removing her hand from the beads, “that mortal creatures, like you or I, might be the tools He uses to enact that vengeance?”
He laughed hollowly. “Who do you seek vengeance against, my child?”
Elizabeth slipped her hand into her purse. “A man who has wronged me, who has spilled innocent blood. A man who claims to be of the Lord, but acts in service of the Adversary.”
Again she gripped the handle of her pistol, her hand trembling inside her bag.
“The Scripture tells us no blood is innocent, child. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” the Father replied, his eyes burning holes through the screen between them. “Seek your vengeance, so that through your sinning grace may increase? Shall you accept only good from God, and not evil? Is it your place to return what God has seen fit to deliver you?”
The Father placed his hand against the screen and leaned in close, whispering like a breeze through desolate treetops.
“For perhaps you were delivered to the hands of this man who wronged you as Job was delivered to Satan—by the Lord himself.” The white teeth of his smile shone behind the screen. “The faith of good men means nothing. The faith of the suffering means everything. Now, will you anoint yourself in ash, or will you curse God and die?”
Elizabeth didn’t answer, her hand still wrapped around the gun.
“You will be forgiven for your sins of wrath. Say three Our Fathers so that you may grow in the virtue of temperance, and make an Act of Contrition.”
Elizabeth took a shuddering breath, and released the gun. She repeated to herself the same message as before: Not yet. Not here.
“O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee,” Elizabeth repeated, choking on her tears, “and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven, and the pains of hell; but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, Who are good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more and avoid the near occasions of sin. Amen.”
“Amen,” Father McCullers repeated, retreating back into the shadows of the confessional. “Now go in peace.”
* * *
That evening, Allen Myers howled in misery, now eyeless and blind as Samson, as Father McCullers clamped his pliers around the soft and supple tongue. One of Myers arms was now free from his restraints, but it merely hung limply from the table, the bones pressed into dozens of useless fragments. Blood dripped from his fingertips where the nails had once been. A severed foot lay on the floor in a circle of bloody wire, the stump cauterized by liquid nitrogen, though crimson still dripped slowly through the blue and white charring.
The Father could feel the tissue beginning to tear as the fleshy cable that anchored the tongue to the bottom of the mouth protested against the pressure. Blood leaked from Myers’ toothless mouth down his chin. The cable snapped and the tongue became untied, the rudder ripping free of the ship. The priest regarded the twitching pink and purple muscle between the pliers as Myers bellowed in inarticulable anguish, reduced to a quivering mass of suffering.
“Don’t worry, my child,” Father McCullers smiled, letting his tongue drop from the pliers to the dirt. “I’ve done you a great favor. The Scripture tells us the tongue is a world of evil that corrupts the whole body. And so I’ve removed it for you!” He laughed, caressing his victim’s face. “And how your eyes caused you to sin! So I have plucked them for you!”
Myers shook his head back and forth, praying for the Lord to deliver him from this evil, praying for justice, but most of all, praying for death. His lips moved slowly in a pantomime of speech as he pleaded with a silent God.
Seeing this, Father McCullers chortled with glee.
“Praying, even now? Truly, what a blameless and upright man you are.” He patted the side of the disfigured face, tsking his tongue.
So intently focused on his contorted and screeching victim was Father McCullers that he failed to hear tires rolling to a stop on the dirt outside.
From her car, which she had been driving lightless, painstakingly following the priest's tire tracks by the light of the moon, Elizabeth emerged and stood, upright and full of blame, holding the revolver tight in her bony fist. From the shack, she heard Myers weeping and shrieking, his voice stripped of its dignity and humanity. She wondered if Malcolm had sounded the same.
She crept toward the door, blood pounding in her ears, and slowly pushed it open. Father McCullers hovered over a man Elizabeth vaguely recognized as an usher from that morning’s mass. The priest gripped Myers’ face in his hand, staring intently into the twin voids where his eyes had once been.
“Shhh. Shhh,” he said. “All of this can be over. Will you anoint yourself with ash? Or will you curse God and die?”
The man slowly nodded, blood gurgling from his mouth. Elizabeth raised the pistol, aiming through the shadow at the black-robed figure illuminated by the shifting flames.
“Yes, that’s what you want? You blaspheme Him to His face?”
Elizabeth squeezed the trigger. Her gun spoke as if out of a whirlwind.
The bullet entered between Father McCullers’ ribs and exited out the other side, bringing with it a spray of crimson that sizzled on the fire. He slipped from atop the table to the ground, clutching his wound. He turned to Elizabeth, recognition shining in his eyes.
“You?”
She fired again, spinning him round as the bullet caught his shoulder. Again, shattering his kneecap. Again, burying the metal slug deep in his gut. He lay on the ground
, gasping for life as he watched Elizabeth above him.
“Still you have not learned your lesson!” The Father laughed, sending plumes of blood arcing from his mouth. “This is not your judgment to make! Where were you when He stilled the sea’s proud waves? When the morning stars sang in chorus and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” He coughed a scarlet mass onto the front of his robes. “Where were you when He laid the foundations of the earth?”
Elizabeth stepped forward and pushed the barrel of the gun between his teeth.
“Where were you?”
She pulled the trigger.
The Father slumped to the dirt, the back of his head seeping into the earth. A single bullet still rested in the chamber. From the table, Myers trashed, his prayers answered, an angel of death delivered unto him.
But as Elizabeth appraised him, she found him broken beyond repair and past the point of saving, much like herself. But, unlike her, he would die on his own within the hour, and though he’d wished for death intensely this single evening, she had waited for its embrace for fifteen years. Fifteen excruciating years, and she could bear the waiting no longer.
“It is finished.”
She turned away, bowed her head, and placed the barrel to her temple.
“O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee,” Elizabeth whispered, filled by an emptiness deeper than the sources of the sea.
“I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven, and the pains of hell; but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, Who are good and deserving of all my love.”
She could no longer hear Myers’ cries, could feel nothing but the metal pressed against her head.
“I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more and avoid the near occasions of sin.”
She was neither frightened nor dismayed. God would be with her, no matter where she went.
“Amen.”
She pulled the trigger, and went in peace.
THE END
EUCHARIST
By Scot Carpenter
Father Ambrose approached the back door of the orphanage. He wore tan slacks and a flannel shirt, and carried an overcoat over his left arm. He shivered slightly as the night was cold for early spring. Sister Teresa answered his knock and stood in the dark doorway, holding the swaddled infant in her arms.
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