by K M Stross
“Go on.”
“Then he started bullshitting me about the hat, and my heart slowed down a few beats. I stopped struggling.” Cantrell took another sip of his beer. His hand had begun to shake slightly.
“Why?” Cross asked.
“I expected him to bring up something else,” Cantrell said. “I expected to die right then and there because I thought he knew. The last thing I expected him to bring up was my goddamn hat.”
“What were you expecting?” Cross asked.
Cross set the shaky beer back down on the table. “I thought he knew where I was the night Father Belmont disappeared.”
CHAPTER 9
Cantrell drew in a long, deep breath, extending his chest. He was wearing a faded gray t-shirt that hung loosely on his wiry frame.
“The first time I met Aaron was on a ranch south of Purgatory. It was a small place with about twenty cattle, but three calves were due any day, so a couple Mexicans and I were camping out until it happened. We were like wet nurses, only during the day we scooped up shit. The ranch was owned by Hank Mitchell, a good guy with about fifty years of ranching under his belt but it still wasn’t helping him stay above water. He was losing money, and he was going to sell off his herd as soon as the calves were born.
“Aaron came by on the first afternoon we were out there, and the moment I saw him, I got a chill down my spine. He didn’t wear sunglasses, so he was squinting as he shook our hands. His skin looked wrong. The wrong shade of pink for someone in the sun.
“He told us Sheriff Taylor had given him a ride over. He said he would stay the night with us.
“‘Out here?’ I asked him. Hank wanted us camping out, and he wanted someone awake all night to keep an eye on the pregnant cows cause they’d had complications in the past. We were planning on setting up a tent, rolling out our sleeping bags, then breaking out a bottle of Jack to keep us warm. It was already getting cool, and the sun wasn’t even completely set yet.
“‘Right here,’ Aaron said with a smile.
“I looked at my boys, and they all had big old grins on their faces. Fucking Catholics, through and through. Here was the new hot shit in town decked out in fancy black slacks and black collar shirt ready to bunk down for the night with a bunch of nobodies and the nobodies were giddy as school girls. Took away my thirst for booze right quick.
“We took turns watching the pregnant cows, keeping them near the cattle crushes in case one of them had complications. I don’t know what Aaron was talking with the others about, but I could hear them murmuring inside the barn and laughing, and I didn't want any of it. I wanted to drink. No one else wanted to. They wanted to impress the God boy because apparently, he was really interested in listening to their stories.
“Can’t blame them, I guess. He was probably the only person in the entire country who gave two shits about where they came from. But I was still pretty pissed.
“I got the last watch, at 6 a.m. I’d been lying on my back the whole night, sleeping on and off and when my watch alarm started ringing, I grabbed my bottle of Jack and relieved Nacho. Nacho was beaming like Aaron had snuck in a couple whores while I was sleeping. I didn’t want to go in the barn, and I held out hope that maybe Aaron was getting a little tired—he’d been up all night, after all.
“But nope. He was sitting on top of the steel wooden pen that divided the animals from the feed storage. His hands were clasped together, and he watched me walk in. From where he was sitting, he had a pretty good view of the three cows, so I took a seat next to him. He smelled like really bitter aftershave, the kinda stuff that burns the shit out of your face even if you don’t nick it too much with the razor.
“We didn’t talk at first. I drank my whiskey like it was my fucking job. After about an hour, I glanced at him and saw he was still wide awake, watching the three pregnant cows huddled up near the cattle crushes. Either he wanted me to start talking, or he just didn’t give a shit. And after three hours, I got the feeling he hadn’t been expecting to see me here. Like maybe this was a mission for the Mexicans only.
“The Forgotten. The Lost. Those were the people he loved, so why he didn’t reach out to me is a fucking mystery. I was plenty forgotten in Purgatory. I was pretty lost. Sure, I was a citizen and all, but that didn’t stop people from looking down on me. Aaron set up services in the basement for the Mexicans, so the rest of the townsfolk would be more comfortable. I went to those services too, and I was the only white guy, and I’m sure Aaron knew the reason I came to that service was that I was usually too hung over to make the earlier one.
“The townspeople liked having things divided, but when Father Aaron arrived, he started talking about inclusion right off the bat. Father Damien Belmont, who’d been doing services for years and years, let Aaron stir things up a bit. I’m sure the separation set off Old Damien. Damien was a real New Age type of guy—he didn’t like separation anywhere. He wanted everyone to get along all the time and if that meant stepping between a punch, then so be it. And I mean that literally. He was a big sissy in a lot of respects, but he once stepped between two drunk guys in town and the next thing anyone knew, Damien was sitting on the sidewalk with a fat lip. Earned him a hell of a lot of respect.
“I tried to get up early for old Damien’s services. I tried to drink less, but I always had another shot before close. Always poisoned my goddamn liver as much as possible. Back then, I still thought I could still believe in God. I was still afraid of him. And pretty soon, I learned to be afraid of Father Aaron too.
“You see, Aaron made sure I was afraid of God. When I went to confession after the service, I told him I didn’t believe and every Sunday, he gave me the same penance: take Saturday night off. ‘Purify yourself,’ he’d say. I tried it, damned if I did, and every week I failed. Aaron must have known if I succeeded, I would wake up early for old Damien’s service, so he never asked me about it when I showed up on Sundays. He just gave me the same penance over and over.”
Cross stopped him, ordering a fresh round of beers from the waitress, the same one from the previous day, wearing the same outfit. They waited for her to drop off the beers and return to her place at the bar with her pack of cigarettes and her book.
“Take me back to Father Belmont’s disappearance,” Cross said.
Cantrell shifted in the wooden seat. “The night of Old Damien’s disappearance, I was standing outside of Saint Joseph’s church, and it was probably about three in the morning. I’d been drinking with a few other workers from Jesus Ramon’s ranch and didn’t want to go home right away because I knew my neighbors would still be awake. If they saw me stumbling around outside, they’d call the sheriff, and they’d complain that I was causing a disturbance because, well, that’s just how my neighbors were. I fucking hate his jail cells. Never any toilet paper.
“So I made my way toward the church with what was left of my flask, half-expecting to get killed by a coyote somewhere down the road and not really giving a shit either way because right there I didn’t give a shit about my life or what happened, so long as I had a place to lay down for a while.
“When I reached the church and saw the parking lot was empty, I put away the flask and walked inside. I knew Father Belmont kept the church unlocked. So did four of the other Mexicans in town who had stuck around for more than a season. Sometimes, when the weather was nice, and we knew the town would be up and humming too early the next morning on account of it being a weekday, we’d stumble into the church and pass out on the pews. Father Belmont knew exactly what we did there, which was why he kept it open—he didn’t want anyone passing out on the highway and getting run over in the middle of the night just because they drank too much of the sauce. Can you believe that? Hell of a guy.
“I picked a pew near the middle of the chapel and lay down. Okay, maybe I didn’t head right over to the pew. I went over to Father Belmont’s office and checked to see if the door was unlocked so that I could smuggle some church wine. But Father Belmont was kind, not stupid.
&n
bsp; “I never really fell asleep because I was too sweaty from the walk and my head was already starting to smart, so when the light passed over my eyes, I immediately stumbled back and fell onto the floor. I could hear a car’s engine outside shutting off, and I was sure it must have been the sheriff or Father Aaron. The thing is, Aaron wasn’t the sort of type to offer the church’s pews for sleeping off a hangover. I knew it the moment he showed up in town. He was different, holy shit was he different. When people confessed to him, he made them pay. Did you steal something? You’re gonna work off twice the value of whatever you stole. Did you covet your neighbor’s wife? You’re gonna watch her kids so she can have some alone time with the hubby.
“You pass out in his church? Boy oh boy, I don’t even want to think about it. Ten times out of ten, a sober version of myself wouldn’t have even thought of taking the risk of passing out in the church after he arrived. But tonight was different. I was in a fuck-it-all mood and daring myself to take it all the way to its conclusion.
“But the moment those doors opened, the coward in me had second thoughts. I ducked under the pew, watching the feet of one guy coming down the middle aisle. When he passed me, and I was sure he was alone, I risked poking my head out to get a better look. It was Old Damien—I was sure of it because he was wearing his black robe he wore to the county hospital and I could see the bald spot on the crown of his head.
“He stopped in front of the altar, made a sign of the cross, and then disappeared into the hallway leading to the basement. I looked around once more, then got up and quietly made my way to the hallway. I don’t know exactly why I followed him—it was mysterious, and I was drunk, and that seemed like a good enough reason at the time. Once I heard his footsteps down in the basement, I carefully clutched the staircase banister so I wouldn’t fall and made my way down the stairs. I knew enough about sneaking around to keep close to the wall where my weight wouldn’t make the planks creak, but even then I felt like my boots were making enough noise to wake the dead.
“But by the time I made it to the foot of the stairs, Father Belmont was already at the other end of the basement. He was standing by the desk that he used for his Wednesday night Bible study, glancing at the rear staircase like he was expecting someone to walk down, even though that’s been closed off since before I can remember.
“When I saw him walk into the small hallway leading to the out-of-order staircase, I ducked behind the extra stacks of chairs next to one of the pillars. I wanted to step out and just tell him right up front what I was doing there, but when he turned around, he looked so goddamn scared that I couldn’t do it. It was nearly pitch-black except for the moonlight coming in through the windows, but I could hear him breathing like he’d just run a race and his hands couldn’t stop wiping the sweat from his forehead.
“He walked over to the other side again, stopping at one of the closed doors, the one next to the play area for the younger kids. He’d passed the light switches twice now, and both times he didn’t touch them, but he had a small flashlight, and he turned it on after he bumped right into one of the pillars. I peeked out from between two of the stacks of chairs, and I could see a few of the kids’ pictures on the door and recognized the drawings of Father Aaron. It was easy to tell because all of the kids liked to draw Damien’s bald spot, so the full head of hair on the shitty drawings was a dead giveaway that it was Father Aaron’s office. The light from the flashlight shook.
“He unlocked the door and went inside. He went inside Father Aaron’s room! Something was seriously wrong. That wasn’t Old Damien. Old Damien was all about people’s personal space. I was about to chance a run for the stairs when he came back out with a stack of papers. He went over to one of the folding tables set up next to the kids’ play area, where Aaron usually set out coffee and doughnuts after the Mexican service. Old Damien’s breathing was getting faster, and he kept looking around like he was expecting someone to show up at any minute.
“Like he fucking knew he was running out of time.
“Something caught my eye on the other side of the room, near the opening that led to the out-of-order staircase. I didn’t recognize him at first because he kept close to the wall, ducking under the windows to stay in the shadows. When he crept closer, I noticed the black robe he was wearing, and I didn’t need to see his face to know it was Father Aaron. I could tell just by the way he was walking. Aaron walked like he was floating. When he moved up and down the aisles, you could have sworn he could walk on water.
“Father Belmont didn’t see him right away, or maybe he did, but he just had to finish reading whatever it was on those papers like he couldn’t take his eyes off them until every single word was inside his brain. When Father Aaron stepped behind him and wrapped two hands around his shoulders, old Damien didn’t seem all that surprised. He was crying, and the light bouncing off the white paper illuminated his face, but I don’t remember it doing the same to Aaron.
“‘Is nothing sacred in this church, Father?’ Aaron asked. He kept his hands on old Damien’s shoulders so he couldn’t turn around. ‘Can I not even be granted privacy within the confines of this most holy of places, blah blah blah?’
“Old Damien wheeled around fast enough to catch Father Aaron off-guard. He held up the flashlight to Father Aaron, and I swear to God the shadow behind him was a different shape. There was something attached to the outline of Aaron that didn’t really exist. Wings. I swear it. I was drunk, but I wasn’t fucking delirious.
“Old Damien must have seen it too because he dropped the flashlight and fell back against the table. I don’t remember exactly how he said it, but he told Aaron that he didn’t belong there. I don’t know what it meant. I was only pretty sure he wasn’t just referring to the church.
“Father Aaron reached for old Damien and drew him real close, close enough that he must have smelled the sweat dripping down Damien’s neck. ‘You don’t belong here, either,’ he said.
“Old Damien managed to pull himself away again like he was imbued with the strength of God. He pushed the table out of the way and ran for the staircase right next to me, but Aaron managed to grab hold of the back of his shirt. He pulled old Damien back into the center of the room, kicking the chairs out of the way.
“Old Damien struggled again, but all of his strength was gone.
“Aaron leaned in close and licked his lips. He started to open his mouth, then closed it. Whatever he had wanted to say had gotten the best of him. He was a thoughtful guy, always pausing before he said something important like he was worried about letting something slip. When he spoke during Mass, he stopped a lot mid-sentence and started over. He’d say something like ‘God doesn’t love…’ and then he’d start over and say ‘God prefers it when you…’
“Old Damien went limp, and Aaron held him up. Aaron told him he’d hear Damien’s sins, and he’d forgive him, just so long as Damien performed a penance.
“That was Aaron in a nutshell, always obsessed with sin like it was dirt that layered on your skin, the kind of black dirt you can only get from working on a ranch all day every day for your entire life. Aaron was always offering ways for people to wash that sin right out, but they had to use a wire scrub brush. Extra-strength Forgiveness, better than soap. But this was the first time I’d ever heard him trying it on Father Belmont.
“ ‘You don’t belong here,’ Damien said again. I could see his legs shaking. I wish I’d have stepped out right there and stopped Aaron. Don’t know what I’d have done—maybe I could have knocked him over with a chair—but God dammit I’m a coward. That was my chance right there, and I didn’t take it because I’m a fucking coward.
“Father Aaron grabbed him by the throat. I wanted to help, I swear I did, but I couldn’t move. I was scared shitless, and I was drunk, and I know that ain’t no excuse but everything was happening too fast for me to even think about doing something and I swear to God, sitting in that basement felt so unreal that I still second-guess it all.
“�
�You shouldn’t have gone through my things,’ Aaron whispered. ‘You should have left well enough alone, Father.’
“Old Damien started sobbing and rested his head against Aaron’s shoulder. He whispered something, but I couldn’t hear it. I didn’t want to hear it, either. Father Belmont was a good man no matter what mistakes he’d made. He never looked down on me the way Aaron did. I don’t know what it was, but he saw something good in me, and it was almost enough to convince me that maybe there really was a God, and maybe there was a plan too, and Father Belmont was part of that plan.
“When he was done whispering, Father Aaron gently pulled him away. ‘I forgive you,’ he said.
“He grabbed Father Belmont by the collar of his shirt and dragged him screaming toward the staircase. And I mean literally dragged the poor bastard—his robe was pulled up so his old belly was showing and the heels of his shoes squeaked along the floor. I ducked out of sight and waited before following them. I couldn’t get too close to those screams… Old Damien, he opened up his pipes like the organ at eight o’clock mass. He never stopped screaming or struggling, even though he started to get winded by the time Aaron had dragged him to the front of the church. Aaron never stumbled or stopped to catch his breath or anything. He just kept pulling, right out the front doors.
“I followed them outside and stopped at the entryway so I could duck into hiding quick enough if Father Aaron turned around. But he never did. He just kept dragging Father Belmont out into the desert, until they both disappeared into the black shadows of the hills on the horizon. And Father Belmont never stopped screaming.”
CHAPTER 10
Cantrell was using his fingers to spin his empty glass, making wet circular patterns on the wooden table. A shadow had fallen over his face.
Cross couldn’t get the images out of his head as if he’d been there that night with Cantrell. “Someone had to have heard. A worker on one of the ranches, maybe. You said Jesus Ramon’s ranch is out in that direction… maybe someone heard or saw something that night.”