Riordan lay the letter on his desk and watched dust motes swirl in the winter sunlight piercing the rectory office window. Disbelief, fascination, and curiosity spilled into his mental blender, which pureed them so that he experienced them all at once. More than a dozen years into the twenty-first century, he thought, and things have come to the point that we are turning to a rite wreathed in the obscurant mists of the Middle Ages. In all his years in the priesthood, he’d never witnessed an exorcism except in a movie theater, watching Linda Blair vomit pea soup. Many priests his age regarded the ritual as an embarrassment; yet he had to admit that he was eager to see one performed. The bishop’s word choice had caught his eye: an “infestation.” He pictured the circuit-riding Father Banderas as a kind of spiritual Orkin man, traveling from parish to parish to exterminate demonic termites.
That evening, after dinner, he showed the letter to Father Hugo and the Old Priest. The dimly lit room, with its heavy antique table and sideboard, lent an atmosphere appropriate to the subject.
“Have either of you been to an exorcism?”
Father Hugo shook his head; the Old Priest nodded.
“Once, many years ago,” he said. “It was very frightening. A young man was possessed. I remember him screaming obscenities when the exorcist commanded the wicked spirit to leave him. He had superhuman strength. It took three of us to hold him down. He raved like one gone mad, but the demon was driven from him. It howled when it left.” The Old Priest squinted at Riordan through his thick reading glasses. “Do I observe skepticism on your face?”
Riordan answered with a noncommittal shrug. In his new role as a snitch, he thought, he might be more effective at ejecting demons than thousand-year-old incantations. But so far, he’d heard nothing worth reporting, only dreary recitations of quotidian sins. I missed Mass twice without a serious reason … I masturbated five times since my last confession … I was unfaithful to my wife, Father … I took the Lord’s name in vain many times. Sometimes he felt terrible, deceiving his parishioners into believing they were confessing to a true priest; sometimes he trembled, knowing that every time he said Mass he was compounding his sin. But whenever his resolve began to falter, all he had to do was call on Delores Quiroga to offer what little comfort he could; all he had to do was walk into the parish office and look at the desk where Domingo used to sit, and feel the aching presence of his absence.
Father Hugo bowed his head over the letter. “It says this is to be an Exorcismo Magno—”
“I looked that up. It’s rarely done,” Riordan said. “It means a ‘Great Exorcism’—”
“I know what the words mean,” Father Hugo said peevishly. “But what is it?”
“An exorcism of a place or an area, not of a person,” Riordan replied as he thought, I do not believe that we are seriously talking about this.
“I see. Maybe when this Father Calixto is finished here, he can go north of the border. Plenty of demons there, Padre Tim. A treasury of demons.”
“What are you getting at, Padre Hugo?”
“The savages who did what they did to our poor Domingo, how did they get to be so powerful? Selling their poison north of the border.” Father Hugo’s voice swelled as he went on: “There is something wrong with a country where everybody cannot get through a week or a day without sticking needles in their arms or smoking their crack pipes.”
“If you’re looking for an argument, you’ll get none from me on that point,” Riordan said. “Except that it’s not everybody.”
“Flan! I have flan left over,” announced Maria, barreling in from the kitchen. “Who wants flan for dessert?”
“Why is it always flan? Flan, flan, flan every night?” Father Hugo, apparently frustrated by Riordan’s dodge, needed someone to fight with. “Can you make nothing but flan?”
Maria assumed an injured look. “Pardon me, Padre. I beg your pardon for asking your wishes.”
“Oh, very well. Since there is only flan, I will have flan.”
“Flan all around, María,” said Riordan.
She bustled out and back in and slapped the custard on the table and bustled out again.
“You never answered my question,” the Old Priest said.
“What question?”
“Was that skepticism on your face?”
“All right. Yes.”
The Old Priest paused to dip his spoon into the flan. “I know what I saw and heard that day.”
“I’m not doubting you, but—”
“I heard you say—I think it was in this very room—I heard you say yourself that what is happening now in Mexico is the work of the devil.”
“It was a figure of speech. Una metáfora.”
“Ah! Ah! Típico! Usted es un típico norteamericano, a slave to rationalism. Satan is not a metaphor. He is real, and he has sent his lieutenants here to infest us. Because Mexico has been faithful, he has singled her out to destroy her faith. Where there is no faith, there is only darkness.”
“I am skeptical,” Riordan said, “that an exorcism is going to spare us from the next massacre.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Riordan expected Father Calixto Banderas to look gaunt, grave, and gray, projecting the austere demeanor of one who wrestled with evil spirits on a regular basis. But the man he met, a week after the delivery of the bishop’s letter, was on the bright side of forty, with a cherubic face and a salesman’s affability. He arrived in a dinged-up SUV, accompanied by a still younger priest, an exorcist trainee, whom Riordan dubbed (but only to himself) “the sorcerer’s apprentice.” His name was Father Franco Sandoval, and he carried the tools of his mentor’s trade: a Bible, a book of exorcist prayers, a gold-plated crucifix, bottles of holy water and anointing oils, and a solid brass staff, its function a mystery.
The guests were shown to their room—the rectory always kept one open for visitors—and then came to dinner. Riordan enjoyed having someone other than Hugo Beltrán and the Old Priest to talk to. Banderas’s hearty appetite was encouraging. The exorcist dove into María’s pollo mole. He volunteered that he’d been trained in his occult art at the Athenaeum Pontificium Regina Apostolorum, in Rome, and told tales about his encounters with tormented souls and the demons who possessed them. So many demons! The need for exorcists was growing all over the world, and there were few places where that need was greater than in Mexico. San Patricio was the first call on his tour of the archdiocese because of the indescribable thing that had happened here. It had been an attack, he opined, on the church herself, on faith itself, and he was certain the heinous act had been committed by men conscripted into Satan’s legions.
Domingo, Riordan thought, would have argued that the attack had been on him. The youthful Father Sandoval—he could not have been past twenty-seven or eight—drew booklets from a briefcase and passed them out to the three parish priests. They contained the prayers and litanies of the Great Exorcism, along with directions as to its performance. Banderas explained that he would recite the invocations; Father Sandoval, joined by Riordan, Father Hugo, and the Old Priest, would deliver the responses.
“I suggest we hold a rehearsal early tomorrow morning,” Banderas said. He mopped up the mole sauce with a tortilla.
Suppressing his proprietary feelings—he didn’t like turning his church over to a priest he considered wet behind the ears—Riordan looked over the service and the stage directions. He noticed that at each of the cardinal points on the compass, a prayer was to be said in a ceremony called the “Conjuración.” The word jumped out at him. In Spanish, it denoted “warding off,” but his mind automatically ran to the English, “conjuring,” which, well, conjured visions of primitive rites, magic spells, the type of superstitious mumbo jumbo Captain Valencia scorned.
“Uh, Father Banderas, can you tell us what is supposed to happen?” he inquired, ironing all incredulousness out of his voice. “What can we expect this Great Exorcism to accomplish?”
“I am happy you asked that,” the exorcist replied, ey
eing an extra chicken thigh in the serving dish. “You will notice nothing, most likely. Nothing will be changed.”
Riordan looked surprised.“Would you mind explaining, then, why we’re going through it?” he asked.
Banderas’s lips turned up so that, with his chubby, spherical face, he looked like a happy emoticon.
“Not at all! Few exorcisms work immediately. Some take weeks, months. Once, in San Luis Potosí, I exorcised a man five times before he was free. And the Great Exorcism? We may have to have three, four, five, six of them before we see any effect.”
“The devil’s minions are numerous,” added Father Sandoval.
The Old Priest bobbed his head in agreement. “They roam the world, seeking the ruin of souls.”
* * *
Riordan suspected that most of the parishioners who jammed the church the next day had been drawn in by the novelty. But those whose lives had been ravaged by the violence—Delores Quiroga, the Reyeses, the Díazes, others—came out of desperation, hoping for anything that promised deliverance. As for Riordan himself, he’d reflected on Giotto’s painting of Saint Francis expelling demons from Arezzo the previous night, before he’d gone to bed. It was a purely mythological event; nevertheless, the picture of the Franciscan Order’s founder conducting a mass exorcism swung him from skeptical to indifferent about the ritual. It could not do any harm, even if it did no good.
It began at noon. Booklets had been placed in the pews during the morning rehearsal. Clad in brocade vestments, Fathers Banderas and Sandoval stood front and center on the altar; Riordan, Father Hugo, and the Old Priest, wearing simple surplices, stood off to one side. Banderas bestowed a benign look on the congregation, bundled up against the midwinter chill, and told them to turn to the Litany of the Saints in the booklets. This they did. Then he chanted in a high, melodious voice:
Señor, ten piedad. Lord, have mercy.
Señor, ten piedad, the parishioners answered, raggedly, hesitantly.
Cristo, ten piedad. Christ, have mercy.
Cristo, ten piedad.
San Miguel, Arcángel, ten piedad. Saint Michael, Archangel, have mercy.
Ruega por nosotros. Pray for us.
The assembled voices grew stronger, more certain. On and on it went, through the archangels Gabriel and Raphael, through the prophets and patriarchs, the apostles, evangelists, martyrs, monks, Levites, and female saints, forty-five names altogether: Saint Peter, pray for us.… Saint Anthony, pray for us.… Saint Mary Magdalene, pray for us. The repetition of invocation and response was at once monotonous and entrancing, and not without an ascetic beauty.
From all sin, Banderas sang,
Deliver us, O Lord,
From all evil.
Two hundred voices appealed in unison:
Deliver us, O Lord.
Now it was time for the procession around the church—the Rite of Encirclement. Banderas turned to face north, his back to the congregation, and intoned the first of the “Conjuración” prayers: “Lord, you are our defense and refuge. We ask you to free our Holy Church from the snares of demons. Surround it with the shield of thy strength, and show mercy. Through Christ our Lord.”
“Amen,” Riordan answered with Father Hugo and the Old Priest, their voices merging with the congregation’s. He considered whether he was a slave to rationalism. Maybe this mystical drama was the needed weapon, for evil itself was irrational and could not be overcome with reason.
Banderas picked up the brass staff, and he and the other priests proceeded to the west nave, where more prayers were chanted, then to the east, before they wheeled, precise as a drill team, marched to the center aisle, and faced south. “Listen, Holy Father, do not let your children be deceived by the father of lies,” Banderas intoned, his head bowed, one hand raised. Despite the chill, his forehead glistened. “Retire, Satan, by the sign of the Holy Cross, of our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns forever and ever …
“Amen.”
Led by the exorcist, the priests filed at a solemn pace toward the front doors, there to send the infernal militias back into hell. The parishioners turned to follow them with their eyes, as they might the recession of a bridal party. Riordan’s glance sidled quickly to the people standing nearest the aisle. He tried to read their expressions. Did they believe that the command “Retire, Satan” would liberate them from violence and ruthless terror? Hope it would? Did he? How many graves would he pray over, how many families console between now and when this rite had its desired effect, if it ever did?
“Lord, King of Heaven and Earth,” prayed Banderas, loud enough to create an echo, “strike the powers of hell!” He hammered the floor three times with the staff. “Almighty God, through the intercession of Mary Most Holy and Immaculate, strike and crush the Ancient Serpent!” Again he pounded the staff three times. Riordan’s pragmatic side cried out silently, Not so hard! You’ll crack the tiles! “Creator of all things, strike, crush, and shatter all the hierarchies of the Abyss!” Bang-bang-bang. Ring of brass on stone. “I command thee, Ancient Serpent, depart from the Holy Church of God! Depart from this town! Depart from this diocese!” The members of the congregation were into it now, mesmerized, some swaying to the rhythm of the incantation. “God the Father so commands! God the Son so commands! God the Holy Spirit so commands! Through Christ our Lord …
“Amen!”
A shrill howl rose from a pew in the rear, then broke into a series of rapid, shallow gasps. Goose bumps scurried up the back of Riordan’s neck. He spun and saw a woman on her hands and knees in the aisle—a young woman with thick, frizzy hair that looked like an Afro losing its shape. She attempted to crawl, then fell flat and rolled onto her back, her body jerking once before it went stiff, as if from an electrical shock. He rushed toward her just as another woman, somewhat older, pushed out of the pew and knelt beside her. He did not recognize either of them, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d seen them before, here in the pueblo. The one on the floor was staring blankly at the ceiling; her hands shook spastically while her jaw muscles flexed and her mouth worked back and forth, as if she were grinding something between her teeth.
Father Banderas, recovering from the shock of the woman’s screech, hovered over her for a second. He went down to one knee and laid his crucifix between her breasts and called, “What is your name? Tell me your name!”
Riordan suddenly felt like a character in films of the occult, the one who doesn’t believe in the paranormal until it confronts him.
“In the name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, tell me your name!” Father Banderas commanded.
“What are you doing?” the older woman said. A tough-cookie type, fair-haired and sinewy, with eyes the color of a thundercloud.
“What is your name?”
The prostrate woman came to, propping herself up on her elbows. Her lips moved soundlessly at first; then she croaked, “Miranda.”
“Miranda, I command thee to depart. Depart, accursed one, from this child of God!”
Riordan looked away. People had spilled into the aisle, gawking as if at an auto accident. Some had raised their arms, palms outward, certain they were witnessing a struggle with an evil spirit.
“Depart, Miranda! Why do you still linger here, seducer? I adjure you, specter from hell, to cease your assault on this child of God!”
“Stop it!” said the woman’s companion. “She is having a seizure. She has seizures. Miranda is her name.”
But the exorcist was having none of it. Bowing low, face-to-face with the woman called Miranda, he summoned the spirit to be gone to its abode, a nest of serpents. Miranda stared at him, mouth agape. She was sweating now.
“Crawl with them, those snakes! You might delude man, but God you cannot.”
Riordan saw that he needed to reassert himself. This was his church, after all, these people his parishioners. Another minute of Banderas’s ranting might bring on mass hysteria.
“It is He who casts you out, Miranda,�
� Banderas intoned. “It is He who—”
“Father, please. That’s enough,” he said, gripping the exorcist under one arm, as if to jerk him upright. “She’s right. It’s a seizure.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Her laptop had announced the e-mail’s arrival with a sound like an open bottle shoved underwater. Glug.
Hi, Lisette,
I am definitely coming down after the semester’s over, but I’m indefinite about for how long. I mean that I’ll be there longer than we planned. Can’t say how long. At loose ends right now, really loose, stressed out, because I’ve been asked—Ha! Asked? Told, ordered, commanded—not to come back for the fall term. Been fired, in other words. The U. is cutting back. Budget problems. And my student evals weren’t up to the mark. Did you know that? Teachers, even adjuncts, get evaluated by their students. Guess mine weren’t happy with me. Shit shit shit. Don’t need this right now. I guess I’m not good enough. Haven’t sold a painting in MONTHS!! I’m not tenured, just an adjunct, so they showed me the door.
I’ve been busting my butt to sublease my apt. and put my stuff in storage that needs to be there and figure out what I need to bring to Mexico. You can tell the priest, Tim, that I can start on restorations. I’ve got the materials. So much to do, so little time, so I went off the meds, because they slow me down. Need rocket fuel to get through it all. But I’m OK. Really. I’ll go back on. Promise. You can look out for me, you’re the doctor.
XOXOXO
Pam
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