The Purification Ceremony

by Mark Sullivan

  "Well, the killer went up the stairs and Butch followed, right on his heels. Only Butch tripped and the killer—" Griff shook his head, not believing it. "He spun and cut Butch's throat before he could even get his feet under him. Cut his throat and slashed off part of his ear and the right side of his scalp in one motion. Took it with him."

  My mind reeled with the image of the shrine in the cave.

  "What about the stained-glass window?"

  "I'm coming to that," Griff said. "Just as he cut Butch, Phil threw one of the porch chairs through the front window and jumped through right when Cantrell got the kitchen door open. They both shot at the guy as he went up the last flight to the landing."

  Arnie had left Earl's bedside to come up behind Griff. There was a bleak cast to his skin. "I've never seen anything like it," the doctor said quietly. "Phil and Mike shooting at him from two different angles and neither of them hits him He had that hunk of Butch's long brown hair in one hand and the knife in the other and he went straight at the stained-glass window and dove through it. He landed on the porch roof in the snow, rolled off and kept on running.

  Butch was dead by the time I got to him."

  He hung his head.

  Griff said to me, "But what happened to you?"

  "You better get the others," I said.

  An hour later, I'd gotten into real clothes. Arnie had cleaned and redressed the bite wound on my arm. He'd given me a mouthful of antibiotics and some painkillers. My back and leg muscles were stiff and my left arm and cheek throbbed, but I was clear-headed.

  They were gathered around me in the great room, silent. The chaotic despair I'd stumbled into was gone, replaced by a new and jaundiced view of the world, a view shaded by a nervous vigilance; and I knew they knew that nothing I would say would change that. It would likely make it worse, for they would be thinking—why did she live and the others die? And I would not have an explanation.

  I told them how I'd come to guess at the position of the camp on the island at the confluence of the Sticks and the Dream, how I'd gone upstream to the Sticks in the waders, how I'd crossed to the island, entered the cave and found this photograph and another like it on a macabre altar. Before I could continue, Lenore interrupted. "Who is she?"

  "Who cares?" Phil snorted. "Who's the motherfucker in the wolf's hat?"

  "He wouldn't tell me who he was," I replied. "He just kept asking me, 'Know my name? Know my name?' When I asked him if he was James or Ronny Metcalfe, he just laughed."

  Theresa's head turned into Nelson's shoulder and she whimpered. "He's crazy. He's going to kill us all. And we don't even know why."

  Beside her on the couch, Sheila was rocking gently back and forth, a handkerchief pressed to her mouth, her eyes shifting from me to the photograph and back. Cantrell leaned against the fieldstone mantelpiece, his body stiff, his expression narrow and hard. Kurant was watching both of them, but especially Sheila. The fire in the hearth flared for a second and illuminated the writer's red hair, which had the sudden and terrifying effect of triggering in me the memory of the cave and the killer's rants. And the horror of the cause of these murders was laid out before me in broad stroke and sickening detail.

  "Diana?" Griff said, gently shaking my shoulder. "What's the matter? Arnie was asking you what happened in the cave after you found the photograph."

  Stunned, I stammered, "I-I know who t-the killer is and w-why he's here."

  Phil's head shot forward like a snapping turtle's after a frog. "You know who . . . ? I thought you said . . . fuck it . . . who?"

  I gestured at Cantrell, "Ask Mike."

  The outfitter came off the mantelpiece braced for a fight.

  "How in the hell would I know?"

  "I think you do," I said. "Their faces must haunt you every night."

  "Don't know what you're talking about, lady," he said. His gaze was a shell built of many layers around a cruel secret.

  I met that cold glare and matched it for almost a minute until Sheila cracked and tore the handkerchief from her mouth. "Stop it, Mike, just stop it! It's over. I won't go on living a lie anymore!"

  She was on her feet, no longer the little, mousy woman. She was red-faced and strung out and nasty.

  "You'll sit down, Sheila," Cantrell growled. "And you'll shut up if you know what's good for you."

  "I won't shut up, eh? Can't shut up anymore. And I won't cover for you neither!" she screamed. She turned to me. "That's Lizzy Ryan in that picture—I'd know her face anywhere. It's been eating at me the past six hours. It's him, then, isn't it? Devlin Ryan out there?"

  "I didn't know it when I was in the cave. But I think so now."

  "Then God have mercy on our souls," Sheila wailed, and she collapsed into her chair and wept. Her husband did

  not move to comfort her. No one moved to comfort her.

  "Devlin? Lizzy? Someone gonna explain what's going on?" Earl demanded blearily from his cot.

  I said to Cantrell. "Are you going to be a man and tell them, or will I?"

  For a moment the outfitter hesitated; then Phil stepped up in front of him, his massive paws balled into a fist. "My man Butch is on ice out there. I been shot through the arm. You don't start talking soon, I'll know why not."

  Cantrell shot a look of pure hatred at me, then said stiffly, "My name's not Cantrell. That's Sheila's maiden name. My real name's Teague, Mike Teague. The woman in the picture is Lizzy Ryan."

  Griff gasped. "Teague? You mean like the guide Teague? The one who was with the hunter in Michigan who shot . . ."

  "Yeah, the one who shot Lizzy Ryan in her backyard while she was hanging clothes," Cantrell said, finishing his thought. "Not guilty as charged."

  "You fucking loser" Phil said. He turned and flung his arm out in disgust.

  There was a moment of stunned silence, then Nelson demanded, "How could you?"

  "How could I what?" Cantrell snarled. "How could I have let Dilton shoot her? I see it in my head ten, twenty, sometimes a hundred times a day, and I'm telling you it was a deer's tail flickering in the sunlight. Not a mitten. It was a mistake! An accident! Jury said so."

  Cantrell slammed his fist into his palm. "But I was still branded. Dilton, he goes back to his job in Chicago, says he won't hunt again, no problem. But for me it's a big problem. The state took my guide's license. I couldn't make payments on our lodge. We lost it. We moved up to Ontario and lived with Sheila's sister. I pushed a broom at night for five long years, waiting for my Canadian citizenship to clear. Then this deal come up through one of Sheila's cousins and we bid on it, because guiding deer is what I know how to do, what I love to do, because it was my last hope of getting myself free of that one mistake. That one stinking mistake in the woods."

  His voice trailed off and he slumped into a chair and held his face in his hands. He began to shake. Sheila went over to him and held him around the shoulders. He whimpered to her, "You don't know how much I wished I'd thought it was a mitten and not a deer's tail. You just don't know, Sheila."

  "Yes, I do, Mike. 'Course I do."

  I gazed into the fire, could not watch them, because I knew how they felt; I understood what it was to be empty and alone and tormented by a terrible secret.

  I shook myself from my trance, only to notice that Kurant had been taking notes. His face was flushed and his eyes darted around the room. He saw me watching him, scratched his head and said, "Still doesn't explain how this guy Ryan got here."

  "You think you're so clever," I said sharply. "You're as much at fault for this as the Cantrells."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "You know just what I mean," I snapped. I explained how Ryan had captured me and made me smoke from his pipe. I told them everything that he'd said in the cave. "In one of his crazed moments he said he'd been visited by a messenger, a messenger with hair like fire."

  "Yeah," Kurant said warily. "So?"

  "So at first I thought it was just ravings. But just now, when I saw the fire light up your
hair, I thought: What if he was telling the truth? What if someone did track him to the high desert of northern Mexico, someone who knew that the Teagues were back in business, someone who might goad him to come north, an ironic antagonist for a dramatic story he was working on about the culture of trophy hunting."

  Every eye in the room was focused on the reporter.

  "What about it, man?" Phil threatened.

  Kurant tried to remain stoic, but the corner of his mouth twitched.

  "You lousy piece of dung!" Arnie said.

  "Four people are dead!" Griff cried.

  "My husband's paralyzed!" Lenore seethed.

  "And Don's wife's a widow with a little baby and she don't even know it yet," Theresa added. The loathing in her voice was liquid.

  "I'm not the one who's at fault here!" Kurant yelled, leaping to his feet. He pointed at Cantrell. "He's the one who helped kill a defenseless woman. Not me. He's the one who got off scot-free. He's the one who made a mockery of that woman's death. Did you know she was pregnant— Lizzy Ryan?"

  "No!" Sheila cried. "No, that's not true."

  "It is true," Kurant said. "Only six weeks. And the evidence was suppressed at the trial. But I got hold of the autopsy report. I know how brutal this was."

  "It was an accident," Cantrell moaned. "It was all an accident."

  "Yeah, sure it was, Mike," Kurant went on, the passion in his voice rising with each word. "All you hunters are alike, gun-happy nuts who don't give a damn about the rest of us who have to witness your blood sport."

  "That's not true," I said.

  "It is true!" Kurant yelled. "The whole thing's barbaric.” "I looked at Kurant in a new light. "You think you're righting some wrong here, don't you?"

  Kurant adopted an imperious attitude. "I intend to tell the story as it should have been told in the first place.

  Dilton and Teague walked away from a senseless killing and left behind a shattered man."

  "Who's now killing people!" I screamed.

  "I'm not responsible for that," Kurant said flatly. "I just went and talked to Ryan, that's all. I was doing my job, getting his side of the story."

  "His side!" Phil shouted. "You fucknut, I should bust your ass right here, right now."

  "Hoping to dominate me, to feel like you're king of the jungle?" Kurant asked snidely. "I don't think so, Phil."

  My laugh was coarse. "You set him in motion as sure as I'm sitting here."

  Kurant shook his head. "I'll never believe that. I'm not responsible."

  Nelson got up from the couch. "What about when we started finding the bodies, eh? You must have known then.

  You could have warned us."

  Kurant's expression, so arrogant, so sure, wavered. "I didn't know."

  "Bullshit," said Arnie. "You had to have."

  "I didn't."

  "Not even when we started finding feathers and scalps?" I demanded.

  "No, no, I . . . that is . . . " A cold sweat had formed on his upper lip.

  "I mean, I was afraid. I was afraid . . . the

  feathers and everything, 'cause I'd seen that kind of thing before in Mexico . . . but I told myself it was impossible. I mean, it is almost five thousand miles. Impossible, right? You know, I—"

  The flat of Phil's beefy hand caught the reporter flush on the side of the face, sending him crashing to the floor. "You lying sack of shit! You knew and you didn't say nothin'!" he roared. "You helped kill my man Butch just so your story'd be juicier. In 'Nam we would have fragged you for this. You'd already be in the body bag. Fuck it! I'll do ya right now."

  Phil went for the Buck knife, in the sheath on his belt. Nelson and Arnie tackled the huge man high and low. The pediatrician sat on Phil's chest while he struggled. "Don't, Philly, the scumbag's not worth it."

  "Get off me, Doc," Phil pleaded. "For Butch. For Vinny. The hunter would have wanted me to do him."

  "No, he wouldn't have," Arnie said softly. "Vinny was better than that. Your dad was better than that."

  Phil glowered, but finally stopped struggling and dropped the tension from his barrel chest. "Keep him away from me. That's all I'll say."

  Kurant got to his knees. A trickle of blood showed in the corner of his mouth and his cheek was purpled from the blow. He looked warily at Phil. And for a fleeting moment I caught something in that action, a sense of dismay, of knowing deep down that his noble intentions had turned foul and deadly. But the regret was gone in an instant.

  "What do you want from me?" Kurant asked sullenly.

  I wanted an admission of complicity, but I knew we'd never get it. Instead, I said, "If we're to have any hope of stopping him and surviving, we need to know everything about Ryan. Tell us what happened in Mexico."

  Kurant hesitated.

  "Talk," Griff ordered. "Or we'll let Phil have a few minutes with you alone."

  Kurant moved his jaw and swallowed several times, then resigned himself to our demands. He said thickly, "I'd been on this story a couple of weeks and I got a tip that the Teagues were getting back in the business up in Canada under a different name. I went after the story."

  "Couldn't leave us alone, could you?" Cantrell said.

  "I didn't ask you to go back into guiding," Kurant said, the hatred pure and open now. "You did and I followed."

  "Get to Ryan," Arnie commanded.

  "It didn't take long to figure out through court records that they'd changed their name to Cantrell, and from there it took some digging, but I found out they'd leased this estate. I got the history on it and knew the place was a rich vein of story material. So I booked a slot."

  Kurant shifted uncomfortably in the chair and rubbed at the swelling in his lips. "I could use some ice."

  "Forget about it," Phil said. "Keep talkin' or I'm goin' for my blade."

  "All right, all right, no need to prove what a man you are," Kurant sniped. "I tracked Ryan through the Anthropology Department at Michigan State and they said he'd quit the year after the trial and gone back to live with the Huichol Indians in northern Mexico. I guess from the insurance settlement he could afford to do that. Can't cost anything to live down there.

  "I speak pretty good Spanish, so I went down in June as a kind of whatever-happened-to-Ryan sort of thing. Took me about a week, but I finally found the village where he'd lived in the Sierra for the first couple of years after Lizzy's murder."

  "Her accidental death," Sheila said, glaring.

  "Her murder," Kurant replied.

  "What did the people say about Ryan?" I asked, remembering how upset he had become when he talked about being thrown out of the community.

  "That's the thing," Kurant said. "The Huichol were incredibly friendly, welcomed me into their homes, fed me, but when I mentioned Ryan, they got these clouds on their faces and they'd politely ask me to leave. I finally got one old woman to open up. I'd read Ryan's dissertation on the Huichol, so I understood some of what she was talking about, but a lot of it went over my head. Basically, they have this religion based on deer, corn and Peyote."

  "Some religion," Theresa sniffed.

  "It's very ritualistic," Kurant went on, ignoring her. "The deer is one of their gods and the Peyote allows them to talk to their gods and obtain visions. It's real weird, complex stuff, like I said, and I don't claim to understand it all. But from what I can gather, Ryan had gone native and was training to become what they call a Mara'akame in the religion."

  "Like a witch doctor or something?" Lenore asked.

  "No, not like a witch doctor, like a shaman," Kurant said condescendingly. 'These shamans are more spiritual guides and leaders than voodoo men, from what I could gather. Becoming one's not easy. Takes years, according to the old woman, and most of the people who try aren't up to the training."

  "Was that what happened to Ryan, he wasn't up to the training?" Griff asked.

  Kurant nodded. "The old woman said he was willing enough, but there was something about 'his heart being spoiled for it.' She said the shaman who was
teaching him refused to continue after Ryan started screwing around with Datura. That's what they call Jimsonweed, a real powerful psychotropic that has some bad side effects. Ryan left all pissed off and moved to a settlement higher in the Sierra, a community of what the old lady called 'sorcerers.' "

  "Give me a break," Arnie scoffed.

  "I'm just telling you what she said," Kurant replied in a huff. "To the Huichol this stuff is real. They believe sorcerers are failed shamans, people who have acquired some powers but who haven't demonstrated the strength and knowledge to control that power for good. They're like a kid whose father gives him a Corvette for his first car. An accident waiting to happen."

  I shuddered at that last statement. I hadn't told them about my encounter with the wolves yet. I wanted to hear everything before I did.

  "Did you see Devlin in the mountains?" Sheila asked.

  Kurant's expression turned grim. "Took me two days to get up there on horseback with this kid Ramon that the old woman had set me up with. Ramon didn't like the idea of going up there, but I paid him enough, so he did it. It was real wild, jumbled terrain, you know? Boulders and walls of red clay and flats choked with purple cholla cactus. What you'd expect in the desert, not the mountains. Two days of riding and we came to this ruin of a town. Dusty. Mangy dogs ruling the streets. Fifteen, maybe twenty people living in it. Ryan had set up house in the wreckage of a two-room mud hovel set flush against the bottom of a cliff, just beyond an abandoned adobe church. There were a couple of chickens roosting in the thorn brush and they flushed when Ryan came out."

  Kurant hesitated. "He wasn't what I expected."

  "How's that?" It was the first time Cantrell had looked up from his hands or spoken since Kurant began his story.

  "Well, he'd . . . he'd aged a lot from the pictures I'd seen of him at the time of your trial. Grayer certainly. Skin blasted by the sun. His eyes were almost opaque.

  And he was dressed in this ceremonial outfit, what the Huichol call the dress of the Peyoteros, the pilgrims who travel on sacred missions in search of Peyote: bleached baggy pants and a shirt made out of flour-sack cloth, sandals and a bright red blanket around his shoulders and this domed straw hat with brilliant yarn tassels of blue and yellow and red hanging down from the brim."