by John Saul
“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” Father Laughlin breathed almost inaudibly as he saw the blood-soaked mass that a little while ago had been Jeffrey Holmes.
“I was afraid of this,” Father Sebastian said, laying a steadying hand on the older priest’s shoulder. “I’ve seen it before.”
Laughlin crossed himself, then lifted the crucifix that hung from his belt to his lips and kissed it. “This is my fault,” he whispered. “My sin. Father Sebastian, will you hear my confession?”
“At the proper time,” Sebastian replied, playing the beam of his flashlight around the cell. “I’ll have to carry him.”
Laughlin’s eyes widened in horror. “Carry him?” he echoed. “Carry him where?”
“Someplace where he won’t be found, at least until after the Pope’s visit.” His eyes fixed on Laughlin. “Assuming His Holiness comes at all,” he added. “Which he surely won’t if this gets out.” When Laughlin still hesitated, he spoke again, this time using the headmaster’s Christian name. “Ernest, there is nothing we can do to change what has happened. But it isn’t only of poor Jeffrey that we must think right now. We also have the school to consider, and all the other children under our care. No matter how we feel, we cannot put our school and the children at risk, and if this gets out, not only will His Holiness not come, but St. Isaac’s itself will surely be closed. We must do what is required for the greatest good, and trust in God to forgive us whatever sins we may commit.”
Laughlin nodded mutely, still unable to take his eyes off the boy’s ruined face, but finally managed to find not only his voice, but his courage as well. “I know a place we can put him,” he said. “I shall come back afterward and scrub away the blood. It shall be part of my penance.” Tears flooding his eyes, he watched as Father Sebastian lifted the corpse up and put it over his shoulder.
Ryan stood at the foot of the dark stairs for a long moment before stepping back into the tunnels beneath the school. He hated the whole idea of leaving Melody lying in the infirmary, but what could he do?
Call her parents? But Ryan didn’t even have any idea where they were.
The police? And tell them what? That Melody wasn’t sick? Why would they believe him? All that would happen was that he’d get in trouble for having snuck in.
Broken in.
He’d better go back to his room, and maybe talk with Clay.
Praying that the flashlight would last until he reached the stairs leading to the dining hall, he stepped out of the shelter of the doorway into the infirmary basement.
Then, before he’d taken more than half a dozen steps, he heard something.
Someone was coming.
Without thinking, he turned around and darted past the doorway from which he’d just emerged, pressing himself into the same alcove in which he and Melody had hidden a few nights ago.
As the footsteps drew closer, he recognized one voice—Father Sebastian—and thought he heard someone else breathing hard.
A few seconds later the beam of a flashlight played along the floor in front of him.
Ryan crouched low and pressed himself against the wall of the alcove, holding his breath.
A figure shuffled quickly past the alcove, immediately followed by another.
The second figure was carrying something slung over his shoulder.
Something that looked like a body.
What was going on in this place?
Only when they were well past him did Ryan finally slip back out into the tunnel, every fiber of his being wanting to run the other way, back toward the dining room.
Instead, his heart pounding, he followed the two figures.
Every few yards they stopped to catch their breath.
Ryan kept as far back as he could without losing track of them, but as they went deeper into the underground, down narrow tunnels and two series of old stone steps, Ryan had to move closer or risk losing sight of them entirely.
Lose sight of them, and lose his own way as well.
At last the two men stopped.
Ryan watched as Father Sebastian fumbled with a key, then pushed open a door so old that it creaked in protest as it swung on its rusted hinges.
In the flickering of the flashlight, Father carried a body that Ryan could now see clearly.
A boy about his own age, naked and covered in what looked like blood.
Ryan’s pulse began to hammer in his ears.
A light came on in the chamber beyond the door, and the two men stepped over its threshold.
Ryan moved closer to see what was in the room.
Father Laughlin leaned against the wall, breathing hard, his face shining with perspiration.
Something that looked like a stone coffin stood in the center of the floor. Its rim was ornately carved with garlands, and there was a detailed crucifix on one end. Its lid leaned against the wall.
Father Sebastian laid the body in the sarcophagus.
It took both priests to lift the stone cover and slide it into place.
“Good,” Father Sebastian pronounced. “Let’s go.”
“Oh, Jeffrey,” Father Laughlin said, laying a hand on the stone tomb. “I am so sorry.”
Jeffrey! The name thundered in Ryan’s mind as he slipped back into the darkness, searching for somewhere—anywhere—to hide until the two priests had passed him. Was that Jeffrey Holmes? Ryan flattened himself against a small doorway, holding his breath until they passed.
But when he stepped out, he tripped on the uneven flooring, and his shoe hit a rock that ricocheted off the wall.
Father Sebastian whirled around.
The beam of his flashlight caught Ryan square in the face.
CHAPTER 44
THE POPE LEANED in close to the computer screen, unwilling to miss even the slightest nuance of the young blond girl’s movements. Though his vision was nearly as sharp as it had been forty years ago when he first came to the Vatican, he wished there were some way of seeing the clip on a larger screen.
As if he’d read the Pontiff’s mind, Cardinal Morisco tilted his head toward the large plasma screen that hung incongruously on the wall between a pair of sixteenth-century portraits depicting two of the current Pope’s earlier predecessors. “Perhaps if I connected the computer to the big monitor…?” he asked softly.
His Holiness nodded, then waited impatiently as the connection was made and the clip began again.
All too soon, it ended.
“Play it again,” he commanded.
Morisco tapped a few keys on the laptop keyboard, and the video began playing for the fourth time, the second time on the big monitor.
The Pope gazed in rapt fascination. The younger priest—the one with the knowledge of the ancient rite—appeared to know exactly what he was doing.
And he appeared to know exactly what proof the Pope needed to see in order to satisfy himself that the young priest truly had full control of the evil in the young girl. As the Pope watched, the priest played the demon like a master puppeteer manipulating a marionette, calling it forth and suppressing it at will, making it flow to the fore then ebb away again like waves on a beach.
But it wasn’t a beach upon which the evil played—it was on the soul of the girl in whom it resided, and every one of the demon’s tortures were reflected in the child’s face as her features twisted from placid innocent beauty into the unmistakable snarl of the devil himself, only to return to innocence as the young priest suppressed the evil.
Again and again it happened, taking on an almost hypnotic rhythm.
“Sound!” the Pope whispered. “I want sound!”
“I’m sorry, Holiness,” Morisco said as the clip once more came to an end. “There is no sound.”
“Play it again.”
This time, the Pope watched the faces of those attending the ritual: the old nun, the elderly priest, and the young, dark-haired priest who was conducting the ritual.
They were the same three he’d seen in the previous video—the one with the dark
-haired girl—and he was certain their expressions were genuine.
Genuine anticipation as the ritual began.
Genuine terror when the evil showed its face.
Genuine anxiety as the young priest battled for control of the evil.
And, most important of all, genuine relief when the evil had been tamed.
These were not actors. The Pope himself had studied the records of all three of these servants of the Church, and their lifelong devotion to Christ could not be questioned.
Beyond that, there was the face of evil itself. The Pope had seen it before, too many times, and recognized it instantly. There was no mistaking its vileness, nor any way of faking its presence when it was not there.
Yes, this young priest knew what he was doing: he was able to invoke the devil himself from the soul of an innocent.
“I must see this for myself,” the Pope finally said, turning to Morisco. “We shall go to Boston.”
CHAPTER 45
A LIGHT RAIN BEGAN to fall across the Boston area, but Matt McCain barely noticed it as he slouched against the passenger door of the patrol car, while his partner threaded the vehicle slowly through the late-evening traffic. “Anything about that break-in strike you as odd?” he finally asked as Steve Morgan exited the thruway and braked quickly as they closed on a long, snaking line of red taillights.
“Like what?” Morgan parried, turning on the windshield wipers.
McCain shifted in the passenger seat, sitting up. “Didn’t seem like enough was messed up. I mean, usually a break-in like that is some junkie, looking for anything they can sell. And there were things all over that house that a junkie would have taken, starting with the computer sitting right out on the dining room table. How come the perp didn’t take it?”
Morgan said nothing, having been McCain’s partner long enough to recognize a rhetorical question when he heard one. Sure enough, McCain answered his own question without so much as a pause.
“I think this guy was after something specific.”
Morgan shrugged. “Maybe so. But what? Mrs. McIntyre didn’t seem to think anything was missing except some jewelry, and she said what was gone wasn’t worth much.”
“Exactly,” McCain said. “And nobody’s going to take junk jewelry, except to make it look like a burglary. Most of the junkies know how to spot the good stuff these days.” He picked up the report folder, flipped it open and twisted his penlight. “I’ve just got a funny feeling about this. Something hinkey about the whole thing.”
“You want something hinkey, how about this traffic?” Morgan grumbled. “How come people don’t just stay home once in a while?”
“Ah, crap,” McCain groaned. “You’re going to love this.”
“What?”
“No signature on the form.”
Morgan looked at the clock on the dash. 9:47. Their shift ended at ten. “Christ.”
“We gotta go back.”
“We’re almost at the station,” Morgan protested.
“And we can’t go in with an unsigned sheet.” McCain sighed. “Turn it around.”
“Maria’s not going to be happy,” Morgan said. “I told her I’d be home in time to say good night to the kids—”
“Okay, how about I drop you off at the station and I go back by myself? It was my stupid mistake.”
Steve Morgan thought about it for no more than a second. If McCain was alone, and a call came in, either he’d have to respond to it alone, or the department would be short a car. “Forget it,” he said, turning on the flashing lights and swerving the cruiser around the grid-locked traffic.
The kids would just have to stay up an extra hour.
CHAPTER 46
RYAN?” FATHER SEBASTIAN asked, his voice sounding slightly puzzled, but keeping his flashlight squarely in Ryan’s eyes, making it impossible for him to see the priest’s face, let alone read his expression.
Ryan had been caught—there was no escaping that fact—but he had no idea if Father Sebastian knew he’d been following them and had watched them put Jeffrey Holmes’s body into the stone sarcophagus. Maybe if he just played dumb…
“What are you doing down here?” Father Laughlin asked, giving Ryan an opportunity.
“I don’t even know where I am,” he said, making his voice as plaintive as he could without overdoing it. “Clay Matthews—my roommate—told me there was a shortcut to the gym, but I got lost.” He tried to shield his eyes from the beam of the flashlight. “I was really getting scared ’til I saw your light a minute ago. I didn’t think I was ever going to get out of here.”
“Well, you’re certainly not anywhere near the gymnasium,” Father Sebastian said, still holding the blazing light steady. “How long have you been down here?”
Ryan tried for a helpless shrug as his mind worked furiously. “I don’t even know. It seems like hours, but I guess it couldn’t be. What time is it now? It was about eight-thirty when I left my room.”
“And it’s almost nine, now,” Father Sebastian told him. “So it hasn’t actually been hours.”
A trickle of perspiration trailed down the side of Ryan’s face, but he couldn’t tell if the priests noticed it.
“You know, it’s against the rules to use the tunnels as a shortcut,” Father Sebastian said.
Ryan shook his head. “Nobody told me that, and everyone uses them for shortcuts.”
“And too often people get lost,” Father Sebastian replied. “Which is exactly why it’s against the rules.”
“I’m sorry,” Ryan said, putting as much conviction into his voice as he could muster. “I really didn’t know, and I can tell you after tonight I’ll sure never do it again.”
He could almost feel the two priests weighing not only his words, but the tone of his voice, and the expression in his eyes as well.
“All right,” Father Sebastian finally sighed, lowering the light. Ryan took a deep breath of relief. “Come with us.”
As sheepishly as he could—and keeping his head down—Ryan followed close behind the two priests as they walked quickly through the maze of tunnels, up and down various short flights of steps that had been put in where the levels of the various basements didn’t quite match. The flashlight beam illuminated only the floor in front of their feet, but Father Laughlin seemed to know exactly where they were and where he was going.
Ryan began rehearsing what he’d do once he was above ground.
The first thing would be to find the nearest door to the streets and get as far away from St. Isaac’s as he possibly could.
Then call his mother.
Then call the police.
And then, with his mother and the police, he’d come back and show them where the two priests had put Jeffrey Holmes’s body.
And he’d get Melody out of the infirmary and into a real hospital.
Except how was he going to show the police where Jeffrey Holmes was? He’d been trying to keep track of all the turns they’d made, and how many steps they’d gone up and down, but he’d already forgotten some of it, and—
“There’s something here you should see,” Father Sebastian said, his voice breaking into Ryan’s reverie. He put a key in the lock of an old wooden door that was set deep in the wall of the tunnel. “Come and take a look.” He pushed the door, and it swung wide, its rusty hinges creaking.
Just the sound was enough to make Ryan’s skin crawl. “I—I really need to get back to the dorm,” he stammered.
“Just a quick look,” Father Sebastian urged. “Given who you’re with, I doubt Brother Francis will be too hard on you if you’re a little late. And this is part of the school’s history. Actually, it’s one of the most interesting parts.”
Once again Ryan’s mind raced. If he insisted on going back to the dorm, they’d figure out he’d seen something. Better to pretend he wasn’t worried about anything at all, even though the hairs on the back of his neck were all standing on end, and he was overwhelmed by an urge to turn and run. But there was no choice
—he had to maintain his masquerade of innocence.
The sooner he looked at whatever Father Sebastian wanted to show him, the sooner they’d be out of here. Steeling himself against the tide of apprehension that was rapidly rising around him, Ryan stepped in front of Father Laughlin and peered into the dark room.
“Go in,” Father Sebastian said. “Light a candle.” He shined the flashlight on a candle box in a niche a few feet away and the sand receptacle that stood next to it.
Ryan took two steps into the room.
The light went out.
The door slammed behind him.
Ryan wheeled around and threw his weight against the heavy wooden door, but the unmistakable sound of an old and heavy bolt being thrown echoed in the small room, and Ryan knew his act had failed.
They knew exactly what he’d seen.
The tide of apprehension of a moment ago built into a giant wave of panic, and Ryan turned with his back to the door, pressing himself hard against it as he took deep breaths, willing the panic away. After a moment, his mind cleared enough to remember that there were candles, and certainly matches, and he didn’t need to be in absolute darkness.
He felt for the chapel door behind him, trying to remember exactly where the niche with the candles was. To the left, and not very far away. Holding his hands in front of him, he groped slowly and blindly through the darkness. But after he’d taken half a dozen steps he found nothing, and hesitated. Should he try to go back to the door and start over again? But what if he couldn’t even find the door? He didn’t even know how big the room was—he might wander for hours in the blackness!
That thought alone was enough to bring his panic surging back, and a soft moan of terror rose in his throat. Better to keep going, at least until he found another wall.
He took another step, then another, and suddenly his fingertips touched the hard stone of the wall, and a moment later he found first the niche, then the box of thin wax tapers. Gently, he ran his fingers around the box of candles until he found a box of wooden matches and a striking pad.