The Cult

by Arno Joubert

  And the fact that he had to remove the dead babies and other bodies after every performance bothered him as well. Covering up the murders. No, next time he wouldn’t be doing anyone’s dirty work.

  He fingered the golden chain around his neck. It was thick and heavy, a parting gift he’d taken with him from Di Mardi. Memories. He would probably pawn it somewhere.

  He tore a crisp new shirt from its packaging and slipped it on. Next, he wrapped his favorite blue silk tie around his collar and started tying a windsor knot. He frowned, scratched his neck when he felt a tingling sensation, like the shirt had been washed in some fabric softener that caused an allergic reaction.

  His eyes opened wide as smoke erupted from the collar, then shrieked as it started heating up and burning his skin. He tried to pull it off, but it burned his hand and then his entire neck and chest lit up, blinding him. The goddamn chain!

  He screamed as he slumped to the floor, rolling around, trying to rip the burning object from his neck. He managed to crawl into the basin and stick his head below the tap, but he was too late to open it, dropping to his knees as he slumped over the tub.

  The chain burned for another thirty seconds before fizzling out. Ortell’s charred features were contorted into a grimace, the skin burned from his face. His body spasmed and convulsed in a defiant rebellion against the inevitable damage it had suffered, then went limp as Ortell blew his final breath through yellowing teeth visible beneath the blackened skin of his lips.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  McGill woke up as he felt someone squeezing his shoulder. He bolted upright in his bed, looking around the room, trying to see who had touched him.

  “Good evening, Bishop,” he heard someone say with a smooth voice.

  “Who’s there?” he asked, fumbling for the light on his night stand. He switched it on, then groped for his glasses and slipped them on.

  A man sat in his favorite recliner to the side of his bed. His leg was folded over a knee, bouncing up and down. He had a grin on his face, and he was drumming his fingers on the armrests of the recliner, like he had a nervous energy.

  “Who are you?”

  The man stood up and folded his hands behind his back. “My name is Father Timothy Casanellas.”

  “What do you want?” McGill asked, pulling the crumpled covers from his legs.

  The man shrugged, started pacing around the room. “Retribution.”

  “For what? I did nothing to you.”

  The man stopped pacing, turned around to face McGill. He wore a Roman Catholic cassock and stood looking down at McGill, a trace of a smile on his lips. “Oh, but you did, my dear Bishop. You have brought disrepute to our profession.”

  “How?”

  He marched over to McGill, leaned on the bed and put his face close to the bishop’s. “Because you’re a murderer,” he hissed.

  “What? How do you…?”

  The man stood up. “We know! I checked your records. You killed a man almost twenty years ago.”

  McGill shook his head, pushing himself back. “I served my time!”

  The man lifted his chin an inch. “Doesn’t change anything. A murderer is a murderer. A person of the cloth who murders is an abomination to the Lord.”

  Bishop Daniel McGill feared for his life for the first time in forty years. The awful memories came rolling back, like ghosts from his past. “What are you going to do to me?”

  The priest sneered. “Watch you suffer, old man.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  Alexa used the key McGill had given her and unlocked the front door. She bound up the carpeted stairs then stopped dead in her tracks, listening intently. She heard urgent voices and a muffled conversation and then a thump and McGill shrieking.

  She dashed the rest of the way upstairs and ripped open the door to the Bishop’s bedroom. McGill looked up. He sat, fastened to a chair, and a man stood over him, his arm pulled back, ready to deliver another blow.

  “Stop! What the hell are you doing?”

  The man turned around, straightened his cuffs. “Who are you?”

  “Alexa Guerra, Interpol. What are you doing to Father McGill?”

  The man smiled, sauntered toward her. “Ah, so you are the famous Captain Guerra. I’ve read so much about you.”

  Alexa glanced over the man’s shoulder at McGill. He looked terrified, a welt forming below his right eyes and blood seeping from his nose. She now regretted to agree to the older man’s rules of no weapons in his house.

  “Who are you?”

  “Sorry, how impolite of me.” The man stood up straight, jutting out his chin. “My name is Father Alessandro Raphael Timotheus Casanellas, member of the Illius Mortiferis, ordained by the Pope and selected by God Himself to perform my sworn duty.” He blinked a couple of times and stabbed his finger at her. “And you, little girl, are in my way.”

  This was the guy whom Latorre had been investigating? “You’re the priest killer?”

  The man frowned, the side of his mouth turning up in a faint smile. “Oh, my, no, Captain. I am so much more than that.” He turned to his side, keeping his eyes on Alexa as he bit his lower lip, his teeth showing. “I am the purveyor of justice to men of the cloth, the punisher of sins and the grim reaper come to dispatch these false prophets to hell.”

  “Blah-blah. You kill priests.”

  The man lifted his eyebrows. “And you do not see yourself as a murderer, Captain? I have heard that you body count is tallying up to quite a commendable sum.”

  Alexa shook her head. “I don’t judge those I kill, priest.”

  “You sure?”

  Alexa shook her head again. “Nope, never.”

  “Is it not true that in that split second,” the priest snapped his fingers, “before you send your victims to Hell, you make a moral choice between yourself and the poor soul you are about to kill?”

  “Nope.”

  The man stood up straight, fluttering his eyelids. “So what would you call it then?”

  Alexa grinned. “Self defense.” She stepped into the room, keeping her eyes on the priest as she sauntered over to McGill, touched the Bishop’s shoulder. “You okay?”

  McGill pursed his lips, nodded.

  Alexa bounced back as the priest upended McGill’s bed and pushed it against the wall, creating more space in the room. He beckoned her closer. “Come, Captain, let us perform the macabre dance of death, and let God be the judge of whom shall leave here and whom shall sit at his feet tonight.”

  The man circled her like a python waiting to strike. He crouched low, hitching his cassock onto his knees, then threw a couple of mock-punches, feinting to the left and striking with a right, but she stepped to the side and the blow shot by harmlessly.

  She stood still, her arms by her side, watching his chest. He had a low center of gravity, bouncing around on his feet, like a boxer. But his fighting style was something she had never seen before, a combination of Brazilian Capoeira and Chinese Wu Shu, changing his stance regularly, first orthodox, then southpaw, rolling his shoulders as he did so.

  He bounced forward and swept at her feet but she stepped back again, watching him closely. He followed by going into a handstand and lunging up into a roundhouse kick which caught her off-guard, striking her shoulder with a powerful blow.

  She winced and backed off, rolling her shoulder. Shit, that hurt.

  The man danced around her energetically, changing stances as he did so. “I thought you were going to be a tad tougher after everything I’ve read about you, Captain.”

  She realized that the objective of his fighting style was to deceive, feints followed by blows, sweeps followed by kicks. She would need to use all her skills and training to defeat this man.

  Her shoulder was aching, but she didn’t show any signs of pain. The man aimed a front kick at her midriff, and she stepped aside and forward, anticipating the punch that was to follow and blocking it with an arm while simultaneously striking a knuckle-punch into the man’s che
st. He took a couple of halting steps back, grimacing.

  The confident look on his face wavered for a second. “They teach you bursting in the French Army, Captain?”

  Alexa dropped her arms. “My dad taught me some Krav Maga, yes.”

  His eyebrows raised slightly, as if re-assessing her. She didn’t give him time to think, whipping out a side kick which he blocked, then swinging back and striking his shoulder with her elbow.

  He grunted, took a step back. “You fight so—”

  “Brutally?”

  He shook his head. “It just doesn’t look elegant, Captain. You have removed all the art from the concept of martial arts.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t need to be stylish, I need to kill you.”

  He chuckled. “Now that is the difference between you and me, Captain. I see beauty in the act of killing, you only see it as a means to an end.”

  “If it means I survive and my opponent dies, I guess you’re right.”

  He bounced around her, feinted a charge then struck out with back-kick, catching her on the hip, causing her to stagger back. “There is so much more to killing than the brutal act itself, Captain. It’s a ceremonial rite of passage to the losing party, a sacrifice to God.”

  Alexa stepped up, shot out a boot, aiming the kick at the priest’s groin, but he blocked it with both hands. This was the opening she had been waiting for. She grabbed his shoulders and smashed her forehead into his nose. He fell back, clutching his face, blood seeping between his fingers.

  “This is the difference between me and you, Casanellas. You’re a sick psychopath who enjoys killing, and I enjoy killing sick psychopaths.”

  He looked up through teary eyes, then pointed a bloody hand at her. “You’re an abomination to humankind, you little whore!” Blood dripped from his bloody nose and chin as he shouted, spittle flying from his lips.

  He clutched his hands open and closed, a sneer on his face. “I’m going to rip you limb from limb, you piece of Satan’s spawn.”

  He was getting angry, which didn’t bother her a bit. What did bother her was the cut on her brow, blood was starting to seep into her left eye. She must have connected her brow with a part of his upper eye socket which.

  She wiped her face with the back of her hand, trying to see through the red haze.

  Casanellas lunged in a complicated whirl of twists and turns, high kicks and swirling arms. He connected with two powerful blows, one against her upper thigh and the next against her arm as she stumbled, trying to recover her balance.

  The man was attacking like a demon, spinning and striking as he went, connecting Alexa with glancing blows, pummeling her to the ground.

  She fell down on all fours, blood dripping from her nose and mouth, splashing onto the ground between her hands.

  He stood back with a grunt, hands clutching to his sides, sucking in deep breaths. “Prepare to die, whore.”

  Her shoulders jerked as she sobbed, and she lifted an arm defensively. “Please wait, Father. I need to make a confession before I die.”

  The man stopped dead in his tracks. “You’re Catholic?”

  She nodded as she sobbed. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

  He grabbed her arm roughly, pulling her up to her feet. “Tell me, bitch.”

  “Both of you, stop!” McGill shouted.

  The priest turned to face McGill. “Give me one good reason not to end this whore’s life—“

  “Because I never murdered any—“

  Alexa jumped up and grabbed Casanellas in a neck hold, went down on a knee and leveraged her position to exert as much pressure on his neck as she could. She heard him choke and gag, slapping her arms, it would be a matter of seconds before the blood and oxygen supply to his brain was cut off and he blacked out.

  He thrashed his limbs, trying to kick himself out of the death grip, but his attempts became weaker.

  “Captain, no!” McGill screamed. “Don’t do this, please.”

  “He’s a goddamn murderer, McGill,” Alexa grunted. “If you’ll pardon my French.” She felt the man’s thrashing stop and his body go limp. She yanked his head to the side and heard the bones in his neck crack, then dropped his body to the ground and stood up on shaky legs, breathing deeply. “Forgive me for I have killed a priest,” she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her arm.

  She looked up as she heard heavy footsteps on the stairway and Laiveaux burst into the room, weapon held ready. He cast her a questioning look as he holstered his weapon. “I guess I’m a bit late.”

  Alexa dropped her shoulders. “You guess right, General.” She stumbled over to McGill and started untying the ropes around his arms and legs. “Bishop McGill, General Alain Laiveaux. Laiveaux, McGill,” she introduced the two men.

  Laiveaux strode forward holding out a hand, a friendly smile on his face, but McGill simply sat there, mouth wide open, his eyes locked onto Alexa’s face.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  Alexa sat crouched, waiting to the side of Bishop Daniel McGill’s home. She blew into her hands, rubbed them and checked her watch. It was six fifteen AM, and even though they were in the desert, the nights got cold. The horizon was tinged a pretty hue of pink and orange, soon the heavenly furnaces would be lit once again and stoked to provide the inhabitants of scamster’s paradise - as Peter Di Mardi had called it - with another hellishly hot day. She rubbed her arms and shivered. McGill would leave soon; he had mentioned that they had early-morning choir practice.

  The previous evening had been busy, the place had been teeming with police who needed statements and special investigation units who needed fingerprints.

  Alexa peeked around the corner as she heard the front door open. McGill whistled a tune as he opened the garden gate and swung it shut. The bishop marched down the pathway leading to the church, whistling as he went. Alexa did a final sweep of the property, slipped her backpack onto her shoulder as she stood up, satisfied that the place was empty. She slapped her arms while making her way around the back of the house.

  A couple of things that McGill had said had bothered her, niggling at the back of her mind like an itch she couldn’t reach. She tried the doorknob to the kitchen door, but it was locked. She removed a lock pick from the backpack and fiddled with the lock, turned the doorknob all the way and heard a satisfying click as it unlocked.

  She surveyed the kitchen and proceeded through the door and into the passageway. She felt paranoid and slightly guilty as she sauntered down the hallway, opening doors and checking into rooms. She stopped, tapping her lip with her finger before turning around and heading back to the kitchen.

  She walked inside and looked around. She realized that this was one of the rooms in the house she had never actually seen. During her brief stay at his home, McGill had always made the coffee and attended to domestic chores like meals, always finding a reason to keep her out of here. Everything seemed normal, painfully tidy, but that didn’t stop the hairs on the back of her neck standing up.

  She opened and closed cupboards, rummaged through doors and checked the pantry. Nothing.

  She scanned the room again, trying to find anything that didn’t seem typical. It was an old-fashioned kitchen, like Bruce’s on the farm. Eye-level oven, no microwave. A large, white double-door fridge stood humming against a wall. No decorations on the walls, no appliances on the countertops. Everything was neatly stowed away in cupboards or packed away in drawers, giving the place an almost clinical appearance, unlike the other rooms in the home.

  In the centre of the large room stood an aluminum table with four chairs. A white vase with a yellow smily face stood on top, a red material rose placed inside, the only decorative feature in the place. Like an afterthought. Or something you would place on a grave if you had a twisted sense of humor. Beside the vase lay a Petzl headlamp.

  She walked closer, examining the floor and noticed some scuff marks. She pulled the table away, it was light, but there were definite indentations on the linoleum til
es, probably caused by a previous, heavier table, recently replaced.

  She peeled back another layer of linoleum of the same pattern which had been stuck beneath the table. It revealed a trapdoor of some sort. It had two holes inside and she inserted her fingers and pulled it back. It was heavy but lifted up easily enough, revealing a wooden staircase descending into the shadows below.

  Alexa picked up the Petzl headlamp on the table and fitted it over her head, then switched it on. The LED lights were bright.

  She tiptoed down the stairs, and they creaked as she descended. She stopped dead in her tracks, cocking her head as she heard a soft whimpering noise, like a puppy or small animal, but it immediately stopped.

  She walked down and found herself in a large, cavernous room, it was empty.

  She glanced around the room, the light from the kitchen casting eerie shadows of her silhouette on the stairs against the brick walls. She walked deeper into the room and noticed a door against the furthest wall. Beside the door stood a table and a chair. A black moleskin notebook lay open on the table and a key was placed on top. Alexa opened the notebook and thumbed through it, then flicked through all the pages. It was filled with writing, an ugly cursive scrawl, a single sentence, repeated over and over.

  THOU SHALT NOT KILL.

  Alexa gingerly picked up the key and inserted it into the lock, turned it slowly and it opened with a click. She hesitated before pulling open the door all the way. She clapped a hand over her nose and took a couple of steps back as an awful smell assaulted her nostrils.

  Alexa gagged as she cast the beam of light around the room. She sucked in her breath when she noticed a figure hunkered back in a corner, shivering. She swallowed and focused her light on the thing.

  She blinked, trying to comprehend what she was looking at.

  It was a man. At least it used to be.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  Alexa swallowed, breathing through her mouth, trying to ignore the vile smell pervading the room. She stepped inside, slowly, examining the quivering, cadaverous figure slumped in the corner. The room looked like a small, padded cell, the type you see in the movies where they lock up the psychotic patients.