Punish the Sinners

by John Saul

  Peter patiently explained it again.

  “I wanted to know what goes on at the services,” he said. “I couldn’t remember myself; all I could remember was going into some kind of a trance, and it being much later than I thought it should be when I came out of it.”

  “Not unusual during times of devotion,” the Monsignor said.

  “It had nothing to do with devotion,” Peter replied, his anger rising. “I don’t know what it had to do with, but I wanted to find out what was going on. So I brought a recorder to the meeting, and recorded the whole thing. When I played the tape back, I was sick. Literally sick. If I played the tape for you, you’d all be sick.”

  “You’re exaggerating, of course,” Monsignor Vernon began, but Peter cut him off.

  “I’m not exaggerating,” he snapped. “The whole thing was absolutely depraved.”

  “I think we’ve heard enough,” Monsignor Vernon said, standing up. “All you can tell us is that you heard a language that you think—you think, mind you; you don’t know—might be some kind of mixture of Latin and Italian. And that we were all indulging in something you call depraved. Something you won’t describe tous.”

  “I don’t see that it’s necessary,” Balsam said. ‘I’m sure that when the Bishop hears the tape, hell be convinced.”

  “Convinced?” It was the Monsignor again. He was pacing the room now. “Convinced of what?”

  “Well, for one thing, I think hell be convinced to put an end to your Society.”

  The Monsignor chuckled. “Convinced by the words of a heretic?” Peter noted that the fanatical light was beginning to come into Vernon’s eyes. He told himself to be careful.

  “Heretic again,” he said softly. “Well, at least I know where that’s coming from now.”

  “You finally figured it out?” The priest’s voice was as soft as Peter’s own.

  Peter nodded gravely. “That, and a couple of other things.” He stood up. When he spoke again he tried to keep his voice level. “Monsignor, I don’t intend to spend any more time here discussing something that I don’t think you’re mentally competent to discuss. I know you think I’m a heretic—whatever that word means to you. But I think the Bishop is much more likely to come to the conclusion that you’re sick. After all, when he hears your voice claiming to be St. Peter Martyr, and calling down the wrath of God on the sinners and heretics, what else can he conclude?”

  If he had expected an outburst of protest, Peter Balsam was disappointed. A sudden silence fell over the small study, as the priests exchanged glances. But the atmosphere in the room had changed. No longer was it filled with hostility toward Peter Balsam. Suddenly there was something else. A sense of anticipation, as if something long awaited was about to occur.

  Monsignor Vernon had stopped his pacing, and was staring at Balsam. The other five priests all looked uncertainly toward the Monsignor.

  “Can it be true?” Balsam heard one of them whisper. But before he could answer the voice of Monsignor Vernon roared over him.

  “What did you say?”

  “I asked what else the Bishop can conclude,” Peter said, trying to ignore the rage in the priest’s voice.

  “About St. Peter Martyr,” the Monsignor thundered.

  “During the last service you claimed to be St. Peter Martyr, and exhorted God to hand down punishment on what you called the sinners and heretics.”

  “It’s happened,” Father Martinelli breathed.

  Peter whirled and stared at the old man. An expression of awe had come over the priest’s face, and he was gazing at the Monsignor with adoration.

  “What’s happened?” Peter asked in a low voice, though he was sure he knew the answer.

  “He’s come to us at last,” Father Prine said softly. “After all this time, St. Peter Martyr is finally among us.”

  Peter Balsam sank back into a chair. It couldn’t be happening. And yet it was. They had heard him, but what he had told them hadn’t shaken their faith in their young leader. Instead it had deepened it. Peter Balsam remembered the words of the Bishop. “They want to Believe. They need to lean on each other for support.” Now, when they should finally have realized that the person they were all leaning on was unbalanced, they only drew closer.

  Balsam’s eyes moved to the Monsignor. An expression of rapture had come over him, and he was staring upward, his hands clasped in prayer, his lips moving silently. Suddenly he looked at Balsam, and the teacher saw the fierce light in the priest’s eyes.

  “And still you don’t believe?” he said softly.

  “No,” Peter said. “I don’t believe any of it.”

  “But you must believe,” Monsignor Vernon said. “I tried to tell you so long ago, when we were in school together. But the time wasn’t right. But you must have known. It’s in the names.”

  “The names,” Peter said tiredly. “You always come back to the names, don’t you?” He peered quizzically at the Monsignor; he wasn’t sure the priest was listening. But the others were. Balsam looked from one old face to another, and saw the same puzzlement in each of them.

  “Hasn’t he told you?” he asked them. They stared at him, waiting for him to continue. When he did, Balsam chose his words carefully.

  “St. Peter Martyr was a man by the name of Piero da Verona. Peter Vernon, if you want to believe it. And he was killed by another man, a man named Piero da Balsama. Get it?”

  “Peter Balsam,” Father Martinelli whispered. “It’s happening all over again! You are St. Acerinus.”

  “No!” Peter snapped. “I’m not St. Acerinus, I’m not Piero da Balsama. Any more than Monsignor Vernon is St. Peter Martyr. It’s coincidence. Nothing more!”

  And then it happened. Monsignor Vernon’s voice was quiet, but it carried throughout the small room.

  “I am St. Peter Martyr,” he said.

  It’s a nightmare, Peter Balsam thought to himself. It isn’t happening. None of it can be happening.

  But it was. Around him, the five priests knelt, staring up at Monsignor Vernon. For them, in that moment, Monsignor Peter Vernon became St. Peter Martyr. Peter Balsam stood up, and his eyes met the Monsignor’s over the heads of the kneeling clerics.

  “I won’t do it,” he said softly. “I won’t carry it any further. I won’t be your heretic, and I won’t kill you. If you really need a St. Acerinus, you’ll have to find him somewhere else.”

  But the priest didn’t seem to hear him. He stood quietly. His face was calm but the fanatic light gleamed in his eyes.

  Peter Balsam walked from the study, and from the rectory. It would have to end now, he told himself. They needed him to sustain the fantasy. But he had withdrawn, and now it would have to end. And then, as he started down the hill, he heard it.

  The chanting had begun again.

  It had not ended.

  Somewhere in Neilsville, a clock was striking the hour. It was ten, and the Society of St. Peter Martyr was holding a service, and Karen Morton was preparing to die.

  Karen lay in the tub of warm water, and wondered why it didn’t hurt. Judy Nelson was right; there was no pain at all. Only a kind of numbness.

  Karen watched the blood flow from her wrists, watched it form strange patterns in the water, then move swiftly around her to turn the entire tub a bright pink.

  As the pink slowly deepened into red, Karen wondered if she was doing the right thing. But it was too late. Too many things had gone wrong, and there was no one to talk to. If only there had been someone to talk to, someone to listen to her. But there hadn’t been, and as the redness in the tub grew steadily deeper, Karen realized she didn’t really care. Not any more.

  She began to pray, but she kept her eyes open. She wanted to see the color of her death, as if perhaps by watching her life stain the water she could figure out why it had all gone wrong.

  She never saw the color of death. Long after her eyes drifted closed, the water continued to darken. When she died, it wasn’t from the bleeding.

 
It was from drowning.

  At quarter of eleven, Karen’s head disappeared beneath the surface of the crimson water.

  At eleven-fifteen Harriet Morton unlocked the front door. “Karen?” she called. When there was no answer, she called a little louder: “Karen!?” Still no answer. Yet the house did not seem empty: she was sure Karen had not gone out.

  Harriet went upstairs, but didn’t call out to Karen again. When she saw the bathroom door, she felt a sudden surge of relief. Karen was in the tub. Of course. That was why she hadn’t heard Harriet’s first call.

  Harriet tapped at the door. “Karen?” she called. “Are you in there?”

  There was no response, so Harriet tried the door. It was locked. And then the fear hit her.

  She pounded on the door, and called out her daughter’s name. The silence buffeted against her.

  Harriet picked up the telephone in the upstairs hall. The police. She would call the police. But something was wrong with the telephone. There was no dial tone. Only a strange buzzing sound.

  Harriet Morton began to scream. She hurled herself against the bathroom door, and it burst inward. The sight of the bathtub, filled with red liquid, choked off her screaming.

  At the end of the tub, barely breaking the surface, a foot was visible. The toenails were painted green. Harriet knew that only her daughter had ever painted her toenails green.

  The neighbors called the police as soon as Harriet Morton began crying out into the night; the police called an ambulance. A moment later the night was shattered by the screaming of sirens.

  By midnight a doctor had sedated Harriet Morton, and Karen had been taken away. But still the crowd lingered in front of the Morton house, talking quietly among themselves, trying to tell each other what had happened, trying to find a reason for the tragedy that had struck their town. Jim Mulvey was there. He wondered if it had been his fault.

  21

  Peter Balsam sat waiting outside Monsignor Vernon’s office the next morning. He was waiting to resign.

  There didn’t seem to be anything else to do; he had discussed it with Margo late into the night before, then again this morning. They had gone over it all, piece by piece, trying to make some sense out of it First Judy Nelson. Then the Society of St. Peter Martyr. Now Karen Morton. And Karen was dead.

  There had to be a connection. Somehow all the strangeness in Neilsville was coalescing; Judy and Karen were its victims. And Peter was sure that the Society of St Peter Martyr was involved.

  But so was Peter Balsam. Margo had tried to talk him out of it, but all night long his certainty had grown. He had been Judy Nelson’s teacher, and she had tried to kill herself. He had joined the Society of St. Peter Martyr, and Karen Morton had killed herself. Another of his students. It was as if whatever force was loose in Neilsville had been intensified first by the arrival of Peter Balsam, and then by his involvement in the Society. And so he would leave. He had already left the Society (for all the good it had done) and now he would leave St. Francis Xavier’s and Neilsville.

  And he would talk to the Bishop.

  But first he would resign, and then he would go to Sister Marie for an exact translation of what was on the tape. He heard the heavy tread of the Monsignor, and stood up.

  Monsignor Vernon stepped into the reception room and nodded curtly to Balsam. “I expected you to be here this morning,” he said. “How long will it take?”

  “What?” Balsam said, his guard dropping a little.

  “Why, whatever it is you want to talk about this morning. It’s Karen Morton, I assume.”

  “Her, among other things,” Balsam said carefully. He felt suddenly off balance, as if he had had an advantage, and lost it.

  They moved into the Monsignor’s office, and the priest took his seat behind the desk, motioning to Peter to take the visitor’s chair.

  “No, thanks,” Peter said. “This won’t take long, and I’d rather stand.” He cast around in his mind for the right words, and decided there were none. ‘I’m leaving,” he said.

  The priest’s brows rose a fraction of an inch, but he said nothing. He simply sat in his chair, staring at the teacher, waiting for him to continue.

  “I suppose you want to know why,” Balsam said when the silence became unbearable.

  “I think I have the right to know, yes,” Monsignor Vernon said calmly. “I imagine it has something to do with Karen Morton.”

  “Among other things.”

  “Tell me about them.”

  Peter Balsam, without thinking about it, sank into the chair opposite the priest “It isn’t only Karen, although what happened to her was the final straw. I feel responsible for her death.”

  “You’re not” the priest said, almost too definitely.

  “Well, it’s neither here nor there now, is it? But I do feel responsible She wanted to talk to me yesterday, and I brushed her off. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have known how important it was to her. I’m a psychologist, after all. But I didn’t see. And I’m obviously not much of a teacher, either, am I? I mean, just look what’s happening to my students.” The feeble attempt at black humor failed even for himself.

  “I’ve told you before, and I’m telling you again,” the priest snapped impatiently, “you aren’t responsible for Judy and Karen. You aren’t a priest.”

  “But it isn’t just them,” Peter said softly. “There’s more.”

  The priest’s head came up and his eyes bored into Peter’s. Peter hesitated, but forced himself to say what he’d come to say.

  ‘I’m going to talk to the Bishop about you,” he said, unable to meet the Monsignor’s eyes. “I’m going to see him as soon as I’m released from my position here, to tell him about the Society of St. Peter Martyr. What you and those priests are doing is grounds for excommunication.”

  “Indeed?” the priest said incredulously. “Our prayers may be fervent, but they are still only prayers.”

  Something snapped inside Peter; he leaped to his feet and stood towering over the priest.

  “Prayers!” he thundered. “You call that prayer? You have no idea what you’re talking about. Fornication! That’s what you’re up to! You and all of them.”

  “How dare you!” the Monsignor roared. He was on his feet, his rage almost a palpable force in the room. “Have you any idea what you’re saying?” If it was meant to intimidate Balsam, it failed. The teacher stood his ground, and glared right back at the priest

  “Cocksucker,” he snarled. The priest recoiled.

  “What did you say?” There was a look of horror on his face.

  “The truth,” Balsam said softly. “I called you a cock-sucker and it’s the truth. That’s what you do, all of you. You get yourselves stoned some way, and you start in. And the saddest part of it is that you don’t even know it.”

  The priest sagged into his chair and stared at Peter. “So that’s what you meant last night?” he asked softly. “When you said we were depraved?” Peter nodded, and the priest shook his head gently. “Then it’s even worse than I thought. I thought you were telling us we were perverted in a religious sense. But it’s worse than that, isn’t it? It isn’t enough for you, is it? Now you have to accuse us of—of—” He broke off, unable to say the words. He stared balefully at Balsam. “Piero da Balsama,” he said softly, “you killed me once, and now you try to disgrace me. But you will not do it. This time I shall triumph.”

  Now it was Balsam’s turn to sag into a chair.

  The man was insane. There wasn’t any other word for it. But how should he deal with it? He tried to remember the books. The books had had the answers, but what were they? Buy into the insanity. That was it.

  He remembered the technique. It was sometimes used in dealing with paranoia; Balsam was sure the priest was paranoid.

  “What makes you think so?” he said now. “If I beat you last time, what makes you think I won’t beat you again? Why should this time be any different?”

  The priest’s eyes flash
ed around the room as if he were looking for a hidden weapon.

  “I know,” he said softly. “I just know.”

  “Did God tell you?” Balsam sneered the word “God,” trying to make it sound tainted.

  “You don’t believe me, do you?” Monsignor Vernon said. “But why should you? I’d almost forgotten—you’re a heretic, aren’t you?”

  “If you say so,” Balsam said evenly.

  The priest continued to glare at him, but then something happened. It was as if a switch had been thrown, and the light suddenly faded from the Monsignor’s eyes. He shook himself slightly, as if waking up from a sleep.

  “What were we talking about?” he said, totally puzzled. Balsam thought fast; the paranoid state could have passed, or this could be simply another manifestation of it. He’d have to be careful.

  “My resignation,” he said. The priest still appeared to be puzzled, but then his face cleared.

  “Ah,” he said, clearing his throat. “Of course.” He smiled genially, and leaned toward Peter. “Well, of course I can’t stop you, but Pm afraid I’m going to have to ask you to wait a while. Oh, not long,” he said quickly as Peter started to protest. “Just a few weeks. You see, I spoke to the Bishop this morning.”

  “The Bishop?” Peter said blankly.

  The priest nodded. “He called me early, about Karen Morton. He’s very concerned about the situation here, as am I. He seems to think there’s something going on here, that whatever happened, first to Judy Nelson, and then, last night, to Karen Morton, are somehow connected.” The priest’s tone suggested that he didn’t agree with the Bishop’s assessment. “At any rate, he thinks it would be a good idea if we made the fullest possible use of your background in psychology. For some reason, he seems to think that of everyone here, you’re the best qualified to deal with whatever’ happening. Not, of course,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “that anything is happening here. However, under the circumstances, we’re going to have to ask you to stay a while longer.”

  Balsam thought it over. The Bishop, of course, was right. His resolution began to waver.