The Acolyte

by Nick Cutter

  The witnesses’ room was the last on the left, next to a broom closet. A Maid knelt at the man’s bedside.

  “Leave us,” I told her. “I need to talk to this man alone.”

  I scanned the clipboard hung off the foot of the bed. Jack Hanratty. Devoted Follower. Sixty-four years old. A retired bookkeeper last employed at a Republic munitions factory.

  Hanratty had been hit broadside by the bomb’s blast. Snarls of shrapnel were embedded in his skin: any other hospital would have teased them out, but at The Healing Hands Centre it was the Lord’s will to expel them . . . or not. The fluids pumped out by his immune system had leaked over the twisted bits of metal, oxidizing them: they’d all gone the fungoid green of coins after a thousand rainstorms.

  I closed the door and locked it. Holding fast to the doorknob, I steeled myself against what I’d have to do next. The trick was to convince yourself that you were only doing your duty—acting for the good of the Republic.

  I pulled up a stool and hiked back the sheets to expose Hanratty’s right foot. Jamming my thumbnail into a wrinkled groove on his big toe, I grasped firmly and applied steady pressure. The toe went white from blood loss. I squeezed so hard that my thumb joint cracked. My nail bit in. Blood squirted.

  Hanratty’s eyelids fluttered.

  “Alice?” he said dazedly. “Alice—that you?”

  I wiped my bloody thumb on my trousers and said, “Who is Alice, Jack?”

  His eyes achieved a temporal clarity. “Who’s asking?”

  “Acolyte Murtag. I’m here to ask a few questions.”

  Hanratty’s eyeballs twitched up and down my body. “My wife. I thought . . .” he hacked weakly. “. . . she’d come to visit . . .”

  Hanratty shifted and all that shrapnel shifted with him: this tortured grinding, metal squalling against bone as his body struggled to eject all that foreign matter.

  When I showed him the police sketch he said, “Yeah, that’s the son of a bitch who did it.”

  “You’re sure? Must’ve been a lot of confusion.”

  “That’s him. Some turbaned fanatic who blew himself up because another cuss told him he’d go to the land of milk and honey to canoodle with virgins if he did.”

  “Tell me how it happened.”

  “Already told the other fellows who came round.”

  “One more time. In light of some new information we’ve received.”

  “I’ll give you the short version. Get your little notepad out and let’s get it ov—”

  Hanratty embarked on a prolonged coughing jag that culminated with him ejecting an oyster of blood-veined phlegm and passing out.

  I wiped the mucous off his chest with a Kleenex and thumbed one of his eyelids open: nobody home. I was set to give his toe another tweak when he switched back on just as abruptly as he’d flicked off.

  “Who are you?” He cast his eyes about, bedeviled. “Where’s the Maid?”

  “I’ve introduced myself . . . sir, we were . . .”—momentarily bedeviled myself—“. . . we were just speaking, weren’t we?”

  Hanratty showed not a whit of comprehension. So far as he was concerned we were meeting for the first time. Evidently Hanratty’s brain seemed to have decayed in a very specific way: it appeared he couldn’t remember this minute from the last. Otherwise he seemed pretty lucid. This was bad for him. But it was good for my interrogation.

  “Who the devil are you?” he asked again.

  I made it up on the fly: “I’m with the Centre. A Maid’s assistant. I’m going to ask you a few questions, some of a personal nature if that’s alright, so the Maids might incorporate them into prayers on your behalf.”

  “Anything that might help. Lord knows I can use it.”

  I flipped to a bare notepad page and took down pertinent details. Middle name: Olen. Children: Ellen and Franklin. Childhood pet: a beagle-hound cross named Bandit.

  There was an old scar on his right knee; I asked how he’d gotten it.

  “You think that’s important?”

  “We believe in being thorough here.”

  “I was splitting logs for the woodstove. Axe stroke.” He made a feeble chopping motion with his hand.

  “This last question is a tough one. The information stays confidential; only me and your Maid will ever know. Mr. Hanratty, tell me the worst mortal sin you ever committed.”

  The old guy looked at me a long time. “What’s the use of that?”

  “The Maid needs to know the offence to offer up a prayer of absolute penitence. To be honest, nothing else is working.”

  Hanratty sucked his teeth and said, “Water.”

  I grabbed the plastic jug beside the bed and guided the straw to his lips. He finished drinking and flopped back onto the pillows, staring up at the ceiling slideshow: bugling angels and sunlight spearing through dark clouds.

  “My wife and I married young: me twenty, she eighteen. You’ve never seen a prettier bride; my heart nearly burst at the sight of her coming down the aisle.” His hand bunched up the sheets. “But there are things you can’t ask from a wife. But not being able to ask doesn’t mean you don’t still crave.”

  He turned his face away and spoke to the wall. “There’s a stretch near Preacher’s Row where you can buy, rent—have a woman for an hour. I didn’t know her name and didn’t want to. I wanted . . . only flesh. She took me to her place. I remember the wallpaper, these shiny bumps in a wacky pattern . . . then one of the bumps skittered up the wall. A boy sat in the front room. Her son: they had the same red hair. She told him she needed to talk to me about a church bake sale. In the bedroom.”

  Hanratty’s voice went throaty. “I didn’t want to see her face so we did it that way. Sad truth was, sometimes I didn’t want to see my wife’s face. I hated myself for loving it so much. We’re in mid-rut and her kid comes in the door. I’m peering into his startled saucer eyes and they’re just flaying me bare and I scream, ‘Get out, you little bastard! Get the hell out!’ and he screams back at me, a tortured yowl like I’m murdering his mother and so she tells him real soft and sweet that she’s okay, she’s okay, just go wait in the front room, baby. The weirdest part is, I don’t know what I feel more shame over: the adultery or the way I screamed at that young boy.”

  “Thank you for that honesty, Mr. Hanratty.”

  “Won’t be able to look that pretty young Maid in the eye again, now that she’ll know that about me.” He crossed himself and said, “Get me through this and I swear I’ll make amends.”

  We talked a bit longer. I was only waiting for him to pass out again, which he did after a while. Then I went to work.

  I patted my pockets and located the plastic devil horns I’d pocketed back at the stationhouse. They were an inch long, weathered-looking as deer antlers. I slicked my hair back, applied a blob of spirit gum to each horn, and affixed them to my forehead. Standing on the stool, I pried open the overhead light fixture and unscrewed the bulb so the contact points touched intermittently: the light flickered on and off. I filled a plastic cup with ice then stuck the index finger of my left hand inside it.

  All Acolytes were instructed on this interrogation method at the Academy; the course was called Coercion Through Satanic Threat. I’d received the highest standing; my instructor said I had a gift for invoking a demonic aspect.

  The technique worked best on suspects whose minds were untethered. Hanratty, on death’s door and suffering from memory lapse, fit the MO.

  A cheap illusion, but if you were a skilled illusionist—if you made a man believe—well, it would make him more candid than any Confessional chair.

  I waited. Before long Hanratty’s eyes trembled. He awoke in Hell. Or this was my hope.

  I let him get a clean look at me, a glimpse of the horns—yes, yes, there it was: an expression of mortal fear. This was when I leaned forward and in a soft moc
king voice said:

  “Jack . . . Olen . . . Hanratty.”

  “Wh-wh-who are you?”

  “I go by many names.”

  The light fritzed and popped; the room lit up then plunged into darkness. Hanratty gulped. Hanratty’s lip quivered. Most crucially, Hanratty believed.

  Plenty of Acolytes would’ve blown the illusion by chortling maniacally or something. But restraint was the key. I smiled the most ghastly smile in my arsenal and said, “Hello, Jack.”

  Hanratty’s eyes rolled wildly in their sockets. The man was petrified. I felt horrible. This was cruelty beyond measure, perpetrated on a sick man. But he knew things I needed to know.

  “What did I do?” he wheezed. “I’ve led a good life.”

  “Oh?” Cocking my head. “Do you think you can hide secrets from me? I know everything about you, Jack Olen Hanratty. I know your wife, Alice, and your children, Ellen and Franklin. I even know about your cur of a childhood dog—what was that mongrel’s name? Ah, yes: Bandit.”

  If there was a doubt left in Hanratty’s fraying mind, I’d erased it. But I needed to go beyond belief to the realm of sheer psychic horror. God help me.

  “I know you got this scar . . .” I pulled my finger from the cup I’d kept hidden and ran that ice-cold digit over his knee “. . . chopping wood for the stove.”

  Hanratty’s chest heaved. He was on the verge of hysteria.

  “I’m a devoted Follower,” he protested. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “You are an adulterer. An adulterer and a whoremonger.”

  That took him over the verge. He sobbed uncontrollably, chest hitching as tears rolled down his face.

  I said: “The truth is, Jack, Hell is overflowing. Every day sinners pour in from all points of the compass. Men like you are on the borderline: one foot in Hell, the other in . . .”—I spat the word out like a bug I’d swallowed—“. . . Heaven.”

  “How? How can I go to Heaven?”

  And there it was. The moment of truth.

  “A person is currently roasting in Hell for the mortal sin of suicide.” I unfolded the sketch and held it up. “This is not that person. You purposefully misidentified the perpetrator and lied under oath about it—didn’t you?”

  “Yes. . . yes.”

  “The person is—” A calculated guess: “Caucasian.”

  Hanratty began to nod uncontrollably. “She was white. A beautiful white girl. Blonde hair, wearing a funny old-looking white hat. She couldn’t have been more than a teenager.”

  That took me a moment to absorb. “So the . . . woman was not a Muslim, as you told investigators. Why did you lie?”

  Hanratty looked helpless. “Followers . . . we don’t do that to ourselves.”

  A predictable wave of exhaustion rocked me: it always did after I’d broken a slew of Commandments to accomplish my ends. Guilt prickled my forehead, a pair of searing white dots where each horn was stuck.

  “You are not an evil man, Jack,” I said softly. “Your motives were pure. And for your honesty you shall surely go to . . .” Spitting the word out again: “Heaven. Now go to sleep.”

  Not surprisingly, he did just that.

  The Heaven-sent Hero

  I awoke at the Harbinger’s Harbour motel. The bedside clock read 10:19 a.m. I was scheduled to meet The Prophet before High Mass.

  I showered quickly. The water was ice-cold. I stepped shivering from the stall and towelled off.

  I sat on the bed and switched on the Republic News Channel. The anchor had a face like a crumpled paper bag.

  “Late last night, a freak fire struck a plant where the wildly popular Hallelujah Energy Boost is packaged,” he droned. “The Lord protects The Prophet and his workers; thus, there were no casualties. Faulty wiring was responsible. Followers who have come to rely on The Prophet’s patented energy formula, fear not: to ensure there are no shortages, the base of operations has moved to a temporary facility. Blessed are those who walk with the Lord. Blessed are those who follow His Prophet.”

  Faulty wiring was how they had decided to spin it, huh? Jesus wept.

  The electrified wrought-iron gates at The Prophet’s compound swung wide. I piloted the car down the crushed gravel lane, recalling that the last time I’d covered this terrain it was to pick up a spoiled young girl whose remains now resided in a Tupperware bin.

  The mansion was majestic. Sunlight gilded the marble colonnades and made them shine like covenant silver. But the courtyard fountain was shut off and the water dotted with bright green algae blooms.

  A peacock staggered from the honeysuckle. Its plumage was in tatters, tail feathers snapped so when it fanned them the sight was ghastly, like a broken pinwheel.

  A robed servant answered my knock. The foyer shone like a Kruggerand mint: everything was gold-flaked, gold-leafed, gold-dusted. Marble staircases descended from either side of the grand entryway, twining together like snakes. Portraits of The Prophet and Immaculate Mother graced each wall; their eyes met in the dead centre of the foyer.

  The servant beckoned me down an arched hallway into a regally appointed room dominated by a mahogany dining table.

  I sat on a padded leather chair, fidgeting anxiously with the whalebone buttons of my duster. Footsteps echoed on the polished tiles. The door opened with the softest click, and I was in the presence of God’s earthly mouthpiece.

  “Acolyte Murtag. My blessings be upon you.”

  It was him. The Bosom of Love. The Heaven-Sent Hero. The Prophet.

  I knelt, head bowed. “Humbled in your presence, Your Grace.”

  “Rise up, my son. Sit.”

  He was taller than he appeared during sermons—but as my seats were on the second tier of Stadium SuperChurch, I’d never seen him this close. He was dressed in his trademark vanilla sharkskin suit and black spats. He tugged on a pair of latex gloves from a box on the table and took my chin in his hands; tilting my face up to meet his own, he inspected my injuries and with a sigh that turned my insides to hot gelatin.

  “You absorbed this trying to protect my daughter?”

  Even the whitest of white lies would reduce me to ash. “Some, yes. Others were received as punishment for not protecting her.”

  He yanked the gloves off. I couldn’t help but notice he wiped his fingertips with a clean handkerchief, which he then smoothed across his chair before sitting down.

  “Chief Exeter told me about your trials,” he said. “Had I known, I would have put a stop to it. But while God’s eyes see everything, mine, alas, do not always. I cannot hold you wholly accountable, as sometimes the Lord chooses to pick a rosebud before it blooms. Tell me what happened, my son. Tell me how.”

  I recounted the evening of the bombing, sparing few details. I finished by saying how the bomber materialized out of nowhere, before anyone understood the threat.

  “Eve had no conception of the danger she was in. It was merciful. It was . . . quick.”

  The Prophet chewed over my story. “The Lord always lived in my daughter’s heart, but too seldom was He reflected in her deeds. What happened was perhaps unavoidable and surely part of the divine plan.”

  The Prophet seemed somehow relieved. The perpetual embarrassments Eve had inflicted upon the Divine Family had come to an abrupt and—if my intuition was correct—not totally unwelcome end.

  A pair of robed men entered silently and spread documents on the tabletop. One handed The Prophet the official stamp, which he wiped with one of a seemingly endless supply of linen handkerchiefs before pressing it to an inkpad. It was impossible to help noting how tired he appeared: every one of his fifty-seven years. While I still believed he’d outlive Methuselah and fulfill his own prophesy, he looked ancient right now.

  “Heavy is the head that wears the crown,” he said with a wan smile. “I will always be thankful to the Lord and the Divine C
ouncil for entrusting me with the spiritual health of New Bethlehem, but some days I pine for the open road, the travelling revival show.”

  The Prophet’s rise from the revival circuit to New Bethlehem’s highest office had been well documented. Years before the Republican regime he’d toured as a faith healer: he and his wife, Effie—later known as The Immaculate Mother—each driving a van, hauling trailers with the makings to throw up a revival tent. They ministered to the working poor in woebegone burgs and hamlets. The Prophet’s sermons were famously soul-quaking. He cut a swath of religious fervour across all the dark and empty spaces of this land, leaving Followers in his wake.

  When word leaked he was in the running for the position of Prophet, opposition was strong. The Divine Council’s usual choices were ex-priests and monsignors; the idea of a scripture-thumping, brimstone-spouting faith healer taking the reins did not sit well with many. Critics claimed there was a healthy dose of the sideshow barker in him: he was a tin-pan man peddling old-time religion. A shark in a sharkskin suit.

  Butchers’ daughters and sharecroppers’ wives from the out-of-the-way places he’d ministered had even stepped uneasily forward to tender accusations of a fleshly nature against him; some even had sons who bore a striking resemblance to The Prophet. But since paternity sciences had long gone the way of the Episcopalians, nothing was ever proven.

  All criticism ceased once The Prophet took office—largely due to the fact the critics themselves ceased to exist. Ruthlessly, all of them were eventually un-born.

  The Prophet smiled at me benevolently and produced a teak smoking pipe from his pocket. He filled the bowl with sweet cherry tobacco, tamped it down, affixed a length of surgical rubber tube to the stem and lit up.

  “Different times back then. A different life altogether. We’d roll in during the dead of night, nail up crossbeams and drape a tent over them, stake it all down and shake a bucket of sawdust over the muddy earth—come sunrise we were ready to speak the Lord’s will. Though it may sound blasphemous, tuning in the Lord is like tuning in a radio station: easier to accomplish in wide open spaces.”