by K M Stross
The sheriff shifted legs, groaning between his lips as he did so. “Not exactly. Of course, the Mexicans like to believe in all that transcendation shit or transcension or whatever it is.”
“Not you?” Cross asked.
“Nah. Father Aaron liked his walks, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he got lost out there. It happens. You leave the town limits at night, and anything can happen. You lose the moon, and you lose direction. No one in Purgatory keeps their lights on at night, on account of the illegals crossing over from Mexico. It wasn’t uncommon for him to spend Thursdays and Fridays alone, especially when it got real hot out, so we never even knew he was missing until the next Sunday.”
“Tell me about this town.”
“This town?” Taylor asked. He looked surprised for a moment. “It’s a small town, always has been. We get people coming and going, but for the most part, the families always stick around. Some of the kids move away. The ranching is a good business around here; labor’s cheap too… that helps.”
“Go on,” Cross said.
Sheriff Taylor shifted legs again, drawing in a thick breath. “There was a bust period right before the Recession. A lot of kids were moving away, and there weren’t a lot of people to work the ranches. Everything’s changed now, but it’s a period I can remember, and a lot of people in the town remember it too. Keeps us humble, especially now when every goddamned politician in Washington is pretending they care about immigration.”
“What about crime?” Cross said. He caught the curious inflection in his voice and continued, “I mean, youth programs. Outreach from Father Aaron. Where I come from in Wisconsin, priests volunteer at jails a lot.”
“Crime?” Sheriff Taylor scratched under his hat, revealing an extended forehead and thinning strands of short silver hair. “I suppose we got it here and there. It changes from year to year, mostly just alcohol-related problems, but you get that in any small town. Father Aaron was pretty tough on the criminals. Made sure I was tough too. He took an Angry Dad approach, and I respected that.”
“I understand Father Damien Belmont was running the church before Father Aaron. Is he available to talk?”
Sheriff Taylor raised an eyebrow, causing the moist skin on his forehead to wrinkle. “Father Belmont’s been gone for some time now, Father.”
“What happened?” Cross asked.
Sheriff Taylor shrugged. “Wish I could tell you. We didn't have any leads, and not a fucking soul in this town could place Damien the night before. Just up and disappeared without a trace.”
“Sounds pretty extraordinary,” Cross said.
Taylor grunted. “Not the word I’d use, Father.”
Cross turned off the recorder and placed it back in his pocket. “Off the record?”
Sheriff Taylor took a long, slow look around the church, stopping at the front doors and watching them for a moment as if expecting someone to suddenly walk in. “Off the record, I think the old man got sick of living here and took off.”
“Why would he do that?” Cross asked.
“Father Belmont was a very unorthodox type of fella,” Sheriff Taylor said. “He liked yoga, and we didn’t have yoga. He liked plays, and we had no theater. He sometimes said during mass that he missed winter and snow and all that shit. It didn’t come as any surprise to anyone in town when news spread that he had missed Sunday Mass. Besides, Father Aaron did such a great job covering for him, and a lot of people figured Father Belmont just asked for a quiet transfer back north where he came from. Father Aaron had no idea either.”
Cross forced another smile. He could smell the sheriff’s breath: stale coffee and something fat-infused. A donut, maybe. “Thanks for being so open, Sheriff. I appreciate it.”
“You need a ride somewhere?” the sheriff asked. “I could take you to the monument in the center of town. Built for Father Aaron.”
“I like to walk when I can.”
Sheriff Taylor laughed. “Must be a priest thing.”
“I’m staying at the Motel Six in town just in case you think of anything else.”
“I’ll be happy to help you out.” He rested his hands on his belt, looking up at the stained tile ceiling. “Boy, it would be nice to have a real church in town again. A good Catholic one. Towns like this weren't meant to be without a church.”
“Where do they go for mass now?”
“There’s a church in Winston, about ten miles west. Some go there. The Mexicans pile up in cars and go there. But the townsfolk… not so much. You give these people the opportunity to succumb to sloth, and by God, they'll succumb. It's not their fault, I know. Television. God, that thing's a drug. Especially out here in the middle of nowhere. Only people who don't watch TV all the dang time are those boys out in the hills.”
“Out in the hills?” Cross asked.
Sheriff Taylor waved it away. “Just a bunch of wannabe cowboys camping out and drinking. Don’t worry about it. You’re going to love it in town. It’s a beautiful place. You like staring up at the stars?”
“I love it.”
Taylor smiled. “One clear night in town and you won’t ever want to leave Purgatory. It’s amazing.”
“Well, I’m sure the Vatican is almost finished,” Cross said with a smile. “They wouldn’t have sent me out here to gather research if they weren’t close to a decision. I doubt I’ll be here for an extended stay.”
Taylor reached into his pocket and pulled out his card, handing it over. “Don’t you hesitate to call me if you need anything to help make your stay here more comfortable. And please for the love of the dear Lord, don’t get lost.”
Cross put the card in his pocket and watched the sheriff slowly saunter out of the church. He waited for the door to shut before making his way down the aisle, to the front of the church where both of the reading podiums still sat off to the sides of the pulpit. He shined his flashlight across the carpeting. Even with two years of settled dirt, Cross could still see a visible outline of where the altar once stood in the middle of the faded red carpet. There were no other footprints.
He looked around, stopping at the open door next to the stage-right podium. The drugs weren’t working as well as they usually did to relieve the pressure in his left eye; the corners of his vision had become infected with darkness, making it impossible to see inside the doorway at such a distance. He stepped closer, careful about making any loud movements.
“What are you doing?” he asked quietly. “There’s no one here.”
He pushed the door back and stepped inside. There was a dusty broken window on the far wall of the small cramped room, faded with dirt but still transparent enough to let in the last few rays of dying sunlight. A desk sat in the middle of the room, littered with various paperback and hardcover books that had collected both a fair amount of dust and white bird scat.
The gray metal bookcase in the corner was tall enough to be within inches of the nine-foot ceiling and had two large cabinets at its base. The small locks on the cabinets looked pried off, and the doors were open, the church wine most likely stolen by teenagers long ago. Cross looked down at the cigarette butts scattered across the tiled floor, using his imagination to try and map out a celestial constellation but finding none from memory that fit.
He sat at the desk and lit a cigarette, ashing on the floor and playing his conversation with Sheriff Taylor on the recorder. Rewinding and listening. Rewinding and listening. The sheriff was open enough, not suspicious about Cross’s intentions, although if he dug too deep, he’d know Cross wasn’t who he seemed. If it came to that, Cross would give the sheriff the kind of TV-style lie that the sheriff would most likely eat up: of course the Church wouldn’t verify Cross’s identity… Cross was here unofficially.
The room smelled like mold, so prevalent in the air that the cigarette smoke couldn’t mask it and Cross could taste it on the tip of his tongue. He chain-lit another cigarette, relishing the nicotine in his bloodstream and staring at the used butts on the floor, wondering what kind
of kids had had the guts to break into a church and throw a little party inside the priest’s old office. He felt dizzy, more lightheaded than he usually got from chain-smoking. He tried to focus on his purpose in this church, in Purgatory, but he couldn’t concentrate. The sound of Sheriff Taylor’s thick, deep breaths seemed to echo out into the chapel.
This church. It should have reopened. A priest should have been sent here to take over the parish. That had been Cross’s hope. It would have been easier to lie to another priest. Now he was swimming in uncertainty, not quite sure how to play this in order to get the answers he needed.
Something in the greeting room caught his ears: a quiet muffled cracking noise, the sound of dry wood contracting under cold conditions in the dead of night. He walked back to the front of the church, keeping his right eye focused on the greeting room, trying to discern any out-of-place shadows. The sunlight coming through the windows had dimmed considerably, casting the entire chapel in a wash of orange and red beams.
The greeting room was empty. Cross took one more glance at the Visitors book in the greeting room, but it was impossible for him to make sense of the dark signatures now. He pulled the flashlight out and turned it on, watching the beam dim, flickering twice and then disappearing very slowly. He bent his head closer, not surprised that the cursive signatures refused to reveal themselves enough to make out.
“Too dark,” he told himself, walking back to the priest’s office. “Maybe five years ago.”
Maybe. The disease infecting Cross’s eyes—his left eye much more predominantly for the time being—seemed to have its own agenda. Every time he thought he was coming to grips with it, something new happened. The glaucoma seemed to veer off in multiple directions as it saw fit. Different treatments could have different effects, and the disease itself had a seemingly endless supply of surprises for its frustrated host.
Five years ago, the writing would have been clearer, back when the pressure in his left eye wasn’t so great, and his vision hadn’t begun tunneling into darkness. Maybe as early as a year ago, he could have used his right eye to examine the letters until his mind unscrambled the vertical and horizontal lines.
He lit another cigarette and turned the tape recorder on again, listening and committing it all to memory. His mind wandered easily and the cigarette, like the previous ones, made his head feel light.
The office had darkened considerably, and what little light remained came from the fiery orange setting sun that was already on the verge of dipping below the empty hills outside the office window. How long had he been sitting at the desk inside the church?
He could remember sitting down, could remember lighting one cigarette and then another, but for the sun to already be setting… he would have had to been sitting in the chair for hours. His head felt heavy now, and the inside of the church felt like a dream.
“Well the locals think it’s haunted,” Sheriff Taylor’s voice murmured through the small speaker. Cross had remembered the sheriff looking bemused when he’d said it, but on the tape, he sounded serious. “That help?”
“Maybe,” Cross whispered. He shut off the recorder and carefully made his way around the pews, back to the front of the church and outside to the unlit parking lot, surprised to find the sky a dark blue, dark enough that the stars above seemed to shine down like spotlights. They were beautiful, stretching all the way down to the horizon where the edge of the town was visible in the form of dark shadows.
The town must resemble a cross, he thought, fused at the center by a small park that was home to a small landmark to Father Aaron that had probably drained the town’s coffers for an entire year or more. A landmark that required more investigation, but at a later time when the sun could shed light upon the world and chase this curse into the dark corners of his eye sockets.
“In the morning,” Cross said quietly between dry breaths. “Maybe.” Depending on what the medication’s side effects had in store for him tonight. Nightmares? Exhaustion that required 12 hours or more to sleep off? Wrenching stomach cramps? Panic attacks? Impossible to tell. Every night was something different.
He walked slowly, looking up at the stars. He could see Leo clearly, surprised at how bright Regulus was. He closed his left eye to locate Sagittarius and found it before a thin low hanging cloud crept in front of it. The constellations were so clear that Cross was forced to stop on the shoulder and crane his neck upward to take in every direction. He couldn’t help himself. It reminded him of a home in northern Wisconsin, lying on the grass in front of his house and watching the bright satellites pass in front of the constellations.
For a moment, he felt good.
He heard a truck slowing onto the gravelly shoulder of the road first, never really saw it even though it slowed as it came up on the lane heading out of Purgatory. By the time he realized it might actually be stopping for him, it was too late. Someone had already jumped out of the back of the truck bed, darting across the open highway and wrapping one thick, calloused hand tightly around the back of his neck.
“Don’t struggle!” came a man’s voice in his left ear. The other hand pulled Cross’s arm behind his back, pushing him forward into the darkness. His heart sped up, and he felt his head grow light.
This was it, he thought. This was the moment he’d waited so long for, and he hadn’t even had time to grab his knife. Damn it.
The hands pushed him off the shoulder of the highway and onto the bare earth. His face collided hard with the dirt, sending an infuriating sort of pain through his skull.
“Keep your head down,” said the voice. It sounded harsh, spoken between clenched teeth.
Cross listened to the engine shutting off, trying to count the number of footfalls as more men jumped out of the truck. He tried to dig his face out of the dirt, to turn it just a few inches to the right so he could at least count the number of feet with his good eye, but the strong hand dug into his back muscles, pressing into his right shoulder blade hard enough to send shooting pains through the nerves.
Cold metal pressed against the back of Cross’s bare neck. He opened his mouth to take in a deep breath, and his tongue briefly touched the dry ground, sopping up dirt particles that immediately sent his saliva glands into overdrive.
“Get him up,” someone ordered.
Cross let the hand on his back be the guide, determine the pacing as he slowly stood and eventually point him in the correct direction. He could only make out shadows of the men, but there was clearly a truck parked on the other side of the road, its headlamps shining in the direction of the church. There were three men in front of him, standing on the shoulder of the highway.
The middle figure took a step forward, and his features became slightly clearer to Cross: a rough face to match the voice, weathered skin like a good catcher’s mitt and a fat nose, short cropped hair tucked underneath a plain baseball cap.
“You belong here?” the man asked. “You think you belong here? You got papers, huh? You got proof you belong here? Talk fast, or we’re calling the sheriff.”
Before Cross could find a response, he felt the thin square barrel of a gun pressed harder against his neck. “Answer him fast,” the voice said into his left ear.
“I’m from the Church,” Cross said. The night seemed darker now as if the stars had retreated. He could feel his heart beating harder. He wanted to run in front of the bright headlights of the car, to bathe himself in the light. He wanted to be out of the darkness—without the stars, it felt so much more suffocating. He needed the stars.
The man took another step closer. He pulled one arm up quickly and Cross, assuming it was another gun, flinched back into the person standing behind him.
The man turned on his flashlight and shined it on Cross’s face. He immediately glanced over Cross’s shoulder, and Cross felt the gun barrel slowly draw away from his skin.
“What church?” the man asked, keeping the light in Cross’s eyes. It burned, forcing him to squint while the rest of his body was shudd
ering in preparation for an unseen, unexpected blow, begging his eyes to remain open and take in as much as possible. Too see… that was a request that grew more impossible with each passing day. Still, the light was better than the darkness.
“The Catholic Church,” Cross said, drawing in a sharp breath. He could feel his heart beating fast, and for the first time in a long time, he didn’t want to die. Not yet. There was something here in Purgatory that he needed to do. “I’m a fucking priest.”
“Not a spic,” the man with the gun said. His thin, light voice rang like the one of a pre-pubescent boy. “It was the buzz cut.”
The man with the flashlight let his hand drop slightly, turning the blinding beam toward the ground, illuminating Cross’s old black sneakers. “I apologize, Father. We thought you were an alien. You looked like one, looking up at the sky like that. They use the stars.”
Cross pulled on his shirt—it had wrenched awkwardly when he’d been pushed over. “I thought aliens were a New Mexico kind of thing.”
The man—the leader, it seemed—smiled and shook his head. “Illegal aliens. A lot of ‘em got a buzz cut. They like to look up to see which direction they’re going, you know?”
Cross ran a shaky hand over his head, forcing a smile. He fought the urge to punch the man standing in front of him. “No, I don’t know. And when you start losing your hair, a buzz cut’s going to start looking like a really good idea real fast.”
All of the men laughed.
“Ah, you’re not going bald,” the leader of the group said. He took off his cap to reveal faded, inch-long hairs pushed back by his receding forehead. What was left of his hair was longer behind his ears. “This is going bald.”
“Shit,” the man behind Cross said. “I thought he was our first.” He stepped out from behind Cross to join the other three. He was short, thin, with shaggy hair and ears that popped away from his head like pull soda tabs.
“Just shut up,” the bald man said, smoothing back his rogue strands of hair before putting the cap back on. As he did, he brought the flashlight up toward his face and the gray strands of loose hair around his ears reflected in the beam.