Crucified

by Michael Slade

  Damascus was not the end for the True Cross. The legend is that during the Fourth Crusade, in 1204, knights sacked the city of Constantinople—now Istanbul—and seized one of the pieces brought from Jerusalem by Constantine's mother, Empress Helena. That piece was broken up and distributed among the crusaders, and so many bits of the relic were bequeathed to the Catholic churches and monasteries of Europe that the Protestant John Calvin later joked, "Collected together, they would make a big shipload. Yet the gospel testifies that a single man was able to carry it."

  This modern-day crusade, however, was far more crucial.

  If the Judas relics were what they were purported to be, they would be the most earthshaking find in the two-thousand-year history of Christendom.

  Even more sacred than the True Cross.

  If he succeeded in his crusade, the Secret Cardinal would undoubtedly qualify for sainthood.

  Divine inspiration.

  But if the relics were as false as all those pieces of the True Cross from Constantinople, they would bring the Holy See crumbling down.

  Again, the phone in his cassock vibrated.

  "Yes?" he whispered.

  Nothing.

  Only ragged breathing.

  Then . . .

  Barely audible . . .

  "Father .. . Help . . . I need an exorcist. . ."

  BRONZE MICE BOWL

  ENGLAND

  Daniel Defoe took his inspiration for Robinson Crusoe from the coastline of southeast England. But lucky Crusoe was cast ashore on the sands of the warm Caribbean, not here in the chilly English Channel with shingle as a beach.

  Thank God for high tide and a dip in the seabed created by the cliff's tumbling. Wyatt struck the bottom feet first, but not hard enough to fracture his legs and spine. He was able to claw his way to the surface and cling to the chalk until the tide ebbed, exposing the shore at the foot of the cliff. His arm hurt like hell from his weight, but the bullet hole was a flesh wound, not something serious. Salt in the wound made it worse, and he hoped that, in the age of pollution, it was still true that sea water was good for a cut.

  Ha!

  In his bag stored at the station, Wyatt had antibiotics. He'd learned from past travels never fly to a Third World country without a medical kit, so he had a vial of unused drugs from last summer's trip to Botswana.

  He was freezing. Survive this and he'd probably catch his death of cold.

  Ah yes, the smell of sea air.

  A day at the beach.

  Waiting for the tide gave Wyatt time to assess his situation. The moment the cops got their claws into him, he knew he'd be tossed in the clink. He was up to his neck in circumstantial evidence before this, and now he'd left his calling card at two more murders.

  The hand that had aimed the gun was wearing gloves, he recalled.

  That meant there'd be no prints from the killer in the cottage.

  Just his calling card on the mat, dropped when he stopped by to butcher two more descendants of the Ace's crew.

  Wait a sec.

  The hand, he thought.

  What was that mark on the hand?

  Not the gloved hand of the Lenny aiming the gun at him through the Judas window, but the bare hand that shook his when he met Lenny in Germany. Wyatt recalled seeing a scar on the back of that palm.

  And later, while swilling beer to the oompah band, he'd noticed a similar scar on Lenny's inside palm.

  Only now did Wyatt connect the dots. The scar on the inside palm was on the left hand, but Lenny had shaken hands with his right.

  That seemed to indicate that something the size of nails had passed through both palms.

  Another recollection.

  From the cottage crowning this cliff.

  When Wyatt peered in through the Judas window, didn't he see a crucifix strung upside down from the ceiling?

  The same way a crucifix was hung from the beam in Balsdon's Yorkshire home.

  "Jesus Christ!" he swore. The cops would find his calling card at this murder scene and trace the inquiries he made to find the clifftop cottage. Meanwhile, Lenny would surely be on his way to York, to find Liz and Sweaty at Balsdon's funeral. If Wyatt went to the cops, they'd be busy giving him the third degree while he tried to convince them that the ghost of one of his alleged victims was on the hunt.

  No matter how, he had to get to York.

  + + +

  Liz Hannah was screaming.

  So hysterically was she struggling against the ropes that bound her wrists and ankles to the posts of the bed that she was tearing off her underlying flesh. Turned upside down on her naked abdomen was a bronze bowl. A small fire built in the hollow of the bowl's bottom was heating the metal and turning it into a miniature oven. Inside, mice clawed at the metal in a frantic attempt to escape. When they found themselves unable to break out through the dome of their bronze prison, the panicked mice began digging tunnels into Liz instead. One burrowed through her intestines and ate its way out above her navel. Another gnawed into her chest cavity and chewed at her lungs and heart.

  No sooner had the Legionary ended his plea for an exorcist than Satan snuck that premonition of what would happen to Liz into his mind.

  "Do it!" Satan commanded.

  So now the Devil's disciple was on the road from Sussex to York, heading north to the funeral, where he would seize Liz and act out the vision.

  On the seat beside him sat the Bronze Mice Bowl he'd stolen from the Inquisition.

  In the cage next to it scurried five mice.

  LAMENTATION

  Sunset stained the horizon beyond the window of the plane.

  Drops drained from the sky to redden the North Sea as the aircraft flew to Leeds, the nearest airport to York. Wind heralding a storm crumbled the scattered clouds like wafers disintegrating in the hands of a frightened priest.

  An omen? the exorcist wondered.

  Stored in the bag at his feet were the sacred implements of his calling.

  One way or another, this trip would bring to a climax the crusade launched by the Secret Cardinal in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

  "There are three threats to the Church, actually," the Art Historian had said then, reiterating what he was once told by his father, who held the same position at the Vatican during the Second World War.

  "First, there's the threat that the map Rommel brought home from Tobruk came from Haceldama. Because the map predates the destruction of Jerusalem and the construction of the Third Wall, it also predates the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. If the map is genuine, so must be the confession of Judas and the relics wrapped in it. The Judas relics are referred to in the confession.

  "The New Testament gospels agree on three facts about Judas.

  One, he was one of the twelve disciples. Two, he condemned Jesus to death by singling him out in the Garden of Gethsemane with what we now call the Judas kiss. And three, the motive for that betrayal was money: the thirty pieces of silver.

  "Judas's betrayal is crucial for the Passion of Christ, for if Judas didn't cause the crucifixion, who did ? We know from the Bible that Jewish priests feared an uproar on Passover if they took public, heavy-handed action against Jesus, so they postponed his arrest until after the holy day. It's only because Judas helped them arrest Jesus overnight that he was crucified before Passover."

  "Not on the festival day, lest there should be a tumult among the people," the Secret Cardinal quoted.

  The Art Historian nodded. "That's set in biblical stone.

  So without Judas's betrayal, the Passion doesn't work.

  His betrayal is crucial if we're to believe that Jesus suffered unjustly on the cross.

  "Threat number two is Judas's confession, found with the relics. According to my father, it's written in Aramaic, the language of Judas and Jesus, and dates from the time between the crucifixion and the resurrection. It discusses the former but not the latter. In effect, the confession is a suicide note.

  "Instead o
f the sinister traitor, the chief villain of the crucifixion, Judas says he was the main confidant of Jesus, and got to hear things kept from the other disciples. According to the confession, Jesus asked Judas to betray him to his foes, and out of love for Jesus, Judas did what he asked. They were collaborators. Judas sold Jesus out to those who hated him because he thought the Messiah would use his God-given powers to survive being nailed to the cross. And that, he believed, would ignite a Jewish revolt against Rome."

  "What you are going to do, do quickly," the cardinal quoted.

  "But then Jesus died like an ordinary man. And the other disciples accused Judas of causing his death. After the descent from the cross, the traitor was given the relics as a damnable symbol of his betrayal. Overcome with guilt, Judas dictated his confession during Passover, then hanged himself. Somehow both it and the relics got buried with Judas at Haceldama.

  The confession survived as rumor, until it was recorded by the Gnostics as the Gospel of Judas."

  The Art Historian approached The Lamentation.

  "Do you see the threat? If Jesus set himself up to be sacrificed, what is there to lament about? And did he also set up his resurrection, to advance his ministry after death? If Jesus colluded with Judas, did he also conspire with those who claimed to have witnessed his resurrection?" he asked. "Of course, all of that is heresy without substantiation, as long as the Gospel of Judas remains a heretical text. But if the confession of Judas predates the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, it becomes a biblical text."

  There was no need for the Art Historian to elaborate.

  The problem with the Bible is that it was compiled by men, and the New Testament is the product of the Church. In the earliest centuries of Christianity, eighty gospels at least were written, and one of them was the Gospel of Judas, recorded by the Gnostics in the second century. The priest who deemed it heresy was Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyon. He announced in 180 A.D. that only the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John had divine inspiration. Those four gospels come from the first century, while the writings of the Gnostics come from the second century. Insisting that the Gospel of Judas says anything factual about Jesus is like saying a document written two centuries after Julius Caesar died tells us the inside truth about his conquest of Gaul. The later each gospel was written, the less likely it was to bear witness to the truth.

  The Bible didn't come chipped in stone like the Ten Commandments. It was commissioned by Constantine the Great, after he legalized Christianity. The Church wanted a Bible that confirmed Jesus was the son of God, and it rejected as heresy any gospels that didn't support that viewpoint. In 397, the Council of Carthage produced the official Christian canon of scripture for the Old and New testaments. And ever since, that Bible has been called the Word of God.

  The Gospel of Judas didn't make the cut. Irenaeus called it heresy, and heresy it remains. The discovery of the Coptic Scrolls at Nag Hammadi in 1945 and the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Judean desert in the 1950s didn't change that; nor did the surfacing of the Gospel of Judas in 2006.

  But the confession of Judas!

  That would shake the Bible to its spine.

  For here would be an account written by one of the participants in the Passion of Christ that not only tied Jesus to a sacrilegious conspiracy, but also leapfrogged the Gospel of Judas to the front of the biblical timeline. The original manuscripts of the accepted gospels no longer exist, so they must be taken on faith, but here would be the actual parchment of the real first gospel.

  That would be so contrary to Catholic catechism in the eyes of those who say the Vatican hides the truth about Jesus that the Confession of Judas might as well have been locked in a popes' safe for two thousand years!

  And then there was threat number three.

  The Judas relics themselves.

  Was it any wonder that since the Art Historian's father had first warned the pope about Rommel's discovery, the Vatican had appointed a succession of Secret Cardinals to respond to the threat if the relics surfaced?

  And now there was threat number four.

  Satan was a-hoof!

  + + +

  The Art Historian was so sickly that he would have looked more at home at death's door than the airport arrivals gate.

  "It's on the news," he whispered. "Two more bodies. The son and daughter of Ace crew members. The police are looking for a man to help them with their inquiries."

  "Who?"

  "They won't say."

  "If it's the Legionary, we're all in danger."

  "That's for sure."

  "I pray he shows," said the exorcist.

  "He's on his way to York."

  "You spoke to him?"

  "No."

  "Then how do you know?"

  EXORCIST

  The moon was high, and its colorless beams transformed the graveyard into a chessboard of black and white. The Legionary lurked among the headstones, watching the Secret Cardinal pass back and forth between the light within the church and the stained-glass window. The ancient abbey's stone had been shaped by ax and chisel, its wood by saw and adze. The wind of the oncoming storm howled under the eaves and drove the tattered clouds before it like whipped slaves.

  White, then black . . .

  Black, then white . . .

  White, then black again . . .

  The moon and its shadows fought for control of the boneyard. The Benedictine abbey dated back to the time of the Black Monks, centuries before King Henry VIII seized it in the 1530s, when he broke ties with Rome over the pope's refusal to divorce him from one of his six wives. Now, the church was back in the fold of the Vatican, and it had recently been reconsecrated as a holy place.

  Black, then white . . .

  White, then black . . .

  Black . . . black . . .

  This was the hour for the legion of darkness to sack the besieged church, so as black rain began to pock the Yorkshire soil, the Legionary skulked from the crooked headstones.

  As he closed on the church door, he could hear the wailing of lost souls buried in unsanctified graves after King Henry replaced the Roman Catholic Church with the Church of England.

  Satan laughed within the possessed priest.

  More work for the undertaker.

  + + +

  Devil detox.

  That was the Vatican exorcist's calling.

  Jesus performed exorcisms in Matthew 12, Mark 5, and Luke 11. His disciples became exorcists, too, and the God-given power was vested in the Vatican through St. Peter. The Rite of Exorcism—the ceremony for driving Satan and his demons out of a possessed wretch—derives from the Roman Ritual of 1614. Pope John Paul II revised the ritual in 1999, conducting at least three exorcisms himself.

  The Secret Cardinal knew only too well the danger of satanic possession. Through scourging and crucifixion, he'd beaten back the Evil One in the Philippines. But as proved by the number of Catholic priests under investigation by the Holy Office for sexual abuses, the smoke of Satan was everywhere.

  And now the Devil had his filthy claws in the beautiful boy the priest had loved from afar in the South Pacific.

  The cardinal had to save him.

  So let this battle begin.

  + + +

  The Beasts of Satan had shocked Italians, but not the Legionary.

  For in that locked room of the Holy Office, he'd been exposed to centuries of dark deals with the Devil.

  The Beasts of Satan was a heavy metal band. In the winter of 1998, under a full moon, the group held a satanic rite in the woods north of Milan. The ritual began with a night of drinking at a rock club called Midnight, then the devil worshippers drove to the woods, where a deep pit waited.

  Though her room was decorated with black candles and a goat's skull, their vestal of Satan was believed to have links to the Virgin Mary. In a sacrifice to the Evil One, the leader of the Beasts stabbed her in the heart with a knife. When the band's sixteen-year-old singer struggled to save her, he was clubbed with a hammer. T
he bodies were dumped in the pit and urinated on. In lieu of flowers, they got scattered with cigarette butts. After filling in the grave, a Beast danced on it, chanting, "Zombies! Now you are only zombies!"

  The leader of the Beasts returned the next day to splash ammonia about to repel dogs. No one talked. The sacrifice remained secret until, six years later, in 2004, the ex-girlfriend of the head Beast threatened to inform the police. He lured her out to a remote chalet and shot her in the mouth, then called a friend to help bury her alive. His buddy finished her off with a shovel.

  An accident occurred while the leader was getting rid of her car, and the resulting police inquiry brought all three killings to light.

  Eight devil worshippers were tried and jailed.

  The leader of the Beasts kept a diary on how to conduct satanic rites in a bag filled with human hair and teeth. "Blood and death, blood raining down, blood bathing all my body, blood thirsty for blood," he recorded. "Pitiless, we will eliminate and cleanse, donating the ash of our enemies to he who sits on the throne."

  For too long, the Holy See had been willfully blind to Satan.

  The Bible isn't logical. It comes from faith, not reason. Evil spirits are universally feared. There's never been a time or a culture free of them. But only the Bible reveals why they plague us.

  They dwell in a realm that we can't see, touch, or hear. Once, they were angels created by God. But Satan rebelled against God and was cast out of heaven. Banished to hell, he was joined there by the other bad angels, and they became demons. That legion of malign entities lacks physical form. So to unleash hatred in the world, they must take possession of a human body.

  Unless that wretch's soul is saved by the intervention of the Catholic Church, it too will be thrown down to hell.

  To be blind to Satan is to reject the Bible.