Punish the Sinners

by John Saul

  “It was you we all talked about, wasn’t it? When we were kids?”

  “Yes, it was me,” the priest said. “But I didn’t know it, not until five years ago.”

  “Five years ago?”

  “Someone sent me that scrapbook. I don’t know who, and I don’t know why. But it explained a lot to me. It made me see what I had to do.”

  “Do?” Peter Balsam felt his heart beat faster.

  “I had to punish them. All of them.”

  “You mean the girls?”

  “They’re evil,” the priest said. “They’re evil with their minds, and with their bodies. The Lord wants me to punish them.”

  “I thought it was St. Peter Martyr,” Balsam said softly.

  “Of course you did. That’s what I wanted you to think. And that’s what I wanted the members of the Society to think. It makes it much easier that way.”

  “I see,” said Peter. “The Society never had anything to do with religion, did it?”

  “What is religion? It has to do with my religion, and with St. Peter Martyr’s religion. But not with the religion of the Church. The Church has no religion any more. It has become weak. It tolerates.”

  “And you do not.”

  “I don’t need to,” the priest said. The fire in his eyes was raging now, and Peter Balsam was suddenly afraid. But he had to know.

  “Me,” he said. “Why did you need me?”

  Monsignor Vernon smiled now.

  “You think I’m insane, don’t you?” he asked.

  “Are you?”

  “If I were, I wouldn’t do what I’ve done.”

  The fear stabbed at Balsam again. “Done? What do you mean?”

  “You,” the priest said simply. “You’ve figured out everything else, but you haven’t figured out your own part in it, have you?”

  “I’m to be St. Acerinus,” Peter said. “I’m supposed to kill you, and then repent. But I won’t do it.”

  “No, you won’t,” the Monsignor said. “You’ve done everything else admirably, but I don’t expect you to kill me. That was never part of the plan. That was the way it happened the first time. This time, St. Peter takes his revenge.”

  “I’m not sure Pm following you,” Balsam said. It was all getting confused again. Did the priest really believe, after all, that he was St Peter Martyr’s reincarnation? And then the truth struck. Of course he did. He had to, or the guilt would be too much for him. If he weren’t Peter Vernon—if he were St Peter Martyr—then everything was different He was punishing heretics and sinners, carrying on the work of the Lord, and protecting the Mother Church. He was no longer just Peter Vernon, insanely avenging the death of his parents.

  “I’m going to kill you,” Monsignor Vernon said in the silence.

  Balsam stared at him. “You can’t,” he protested.

  “Can’t I?” The priest’s eyes had grown cold. “What will happen if I do? They’ll think it was suicide.” He picked a letter opener off Peter Balsam’s desk, and began twirling it in his hands as he talked.

  “When they find you, what will they find? A young man, a psychologist, a teacher. Wearing monastic robes stained with blood.”

  The letter opener glittered as it reflected the light from the desk lamp. Peter Balsam blinked as the flashes of light struck his eyes.

  “And who is this young man? His name is Peter. He grew up in a convent, after a tragedy in his youth.” The priest touched the scrapbook with the point of the letter opener. “And he was a failure at nearly everything.”

  The letter opener glinted again. Peter Balsam watched it, unable to force his eyes away from the lamplight reflecting on the blade.

  “His students have been dying, one by one,” Monsignor Vernon’s voice went on inexorably. “But has he been trying to help them? No. Instead, he’s been busying himself by spreading preposterous tales about a simple religious study group. And he’s been acting very strangely.”

  The light seemed to bounce off the blade directly into Peter’s brain.

  He felt the sleepiness overcoming him, felt the heaviness in his limbs that he knew marked the first stages of hypnosis.

  He tried to fight it, tried to summon his last reserves of energy to rouse himself, to look away from the flashing light, and block out the voice of the priest But he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the blade; the voice was relentless.

  “They’ll find the scrapbook, of course, and they’ll read about what happened to the little boy—the little boy Peter—who grew up and became a psychologist and whose students began to kill themselves.

  “They’ll put it all together, Peter. They’ll call your death a suicide. Your work is done, Peter. Mine is just beginning.”

  Peter saw the priest come toward him, the letter opener held almost carelessly in his right hand. Still the light flashed in his eyes. He told his body to do something, to move, to react, but there was nothing. His brain cried out in its weariness, but his body would not respond.

  “Would you like to watch yourself die, Peter? It won’t hurt I promise you. There won’t be any pain, Peter. No pain at all. The blade will simply slide into you, and it will all end.”

  The point of the letter opener was against his chest now, its tip lost in the folds of his robe. And still he watched it his eyes drawn to the blade in fascination.

  Is this how it ends, he wondered, staring at the polished blade. Is this what they felt—Karen and Penny and Janet and Marilyn? Did they see the shining metal, coming for them? He tried to rouse himself from the awful torpor that had claimed him. It was too late.

  He felt a slight pressure, but Monsignor Vernon was right It wasn’t pain, not really. What he’d been feeling the last few days had been pain. This was release.

  He gave himself up to it, and began praying silently for redemption.

  Peter Balsam watched as the blade slid into his chest, but he felt nothing. Only a sense of anticipation, and a sense of gladness. For him, finally, the horror was truly over.

  Ten minutes later Monsignor Vernon left Peter Balsam’s apartment, and began walking back to the rectory. He took the side streets. No one saw him as he moved deliberately through Neilsville. Not that it would have mattered had he been seen; the tall authoritarian figure of the Monsignor was a familiar sight in Neilsville. They believed in him. They leaned on him.

  31

  They buried him a week later, in an unmarked grave. They tried to reach his wife, but she had disappeared. They weren’t sure that even if they found her, she would want him. Not after hearing what they would have to tell her.

  In the manner of small towns, everyone in Neilsville knew where the grave was. And they went; the Catholics secretly, the others openly. They covered it with filth, as if by desecrating his grave they could wipe him out of their memories. Each day the filth was cleaned away, and each night it reappeared.

  It took nearly a year, but eventually they forgot, or buried their memories deep in the backs of their minds. Peter Balsam’s grave lay clean, unvisited, untended. For awhile.

  For Judy Nelson, that year was the most difficult of her life. She had always felt set apart from the town, but during that year it was worse than ever. Her friends were gone, and she was unable to make new ones. It was as if she was tainted; as if whatever had brushed against her, then attacked her friends, might still be in Neilsville, ready to strike again.

  Judy was haunted by the memory of Marilyn Crane. Late at night, when she should have been sleeping, she would remember. She hadn’t intended for the pranks to go as far as they had. She had only been teasing Marilyn. She hadn’t meant for Marilyn to die. But Marilyn had died, and Judy knew that, whatever had happened to the other girls, with Marilyn it had been different. She, Judy, had driven her to her death. Her mind would not let her forget.

  On the anniversary of Peter Balsam’s death, the memory of Marilyn Crane loomed larger than ever in Judy’s mind. She woke out of a sound sleep, and Marilyn was singing to her, calling her. She left her
bed and moved to her closet. From the top shelf she removed the box that contained her confirmation dress. She opened the box and shook the dress out.

  She put it on.

  She left the house quietly, and walked through the streets of Neilsville. She entered the graveyard, and went to the spot where Marilyn Crane lay buried. She stood for a long time, staring down at the grave and praying.

  Then, as the first gray of dawn showed in the eastern sky, Judy moved to Peter Balsam’s grave. There, too, she stood for a long while, praying once more. As she prayed, the music—a sort of chanting—grew in her ears.

  She began searching in the rubble around the grave until she found a piece of broken glass. With the shard of glass she began to cut herself.

  They found her late that morning. She was lying on Peter Balsam’s grave, face down, her arms spread wide, as if trying to embrace the decaying remains that lay below. Pools of blood soaked the earth beneath her palms, and her rosary lay broken, the beads scattered in the mud where the headstone should have been.

  They removed Peter Balsam’s bones from the ground and burned them.

  But it happened again, and yet again.

  The people of Neilsville wondered, and were frightened.

  They grew expectant, and each year, about the same time, they began watching their daughters, looking for a sign. But there was never a sign, never a clue. But each year, sometime in the fall, one of their children would be missed from her home. She would always be found in the same place, reaching out as if to embrace the empty grave.

  And each year, in the rectory of the Church of St Francis Xavier, the Society of St. Peter Martyr met

  Six priests, meeting in the glow of the firelight, praying to their patron saint

  On each of those nights, very late, the flames would begin to dance in a slow rhythm, and the voice would speak to them.

  “Give praise unto the Lord, my servants. Strike down the heretics, and punish the sinners.”

  Each year the will of St Peter Martyr was carried out, and the sins of the faithful were punished.