by Ray Russell
“Well,” Berardi replied between puffs, “when you phoned and said something was bothering you, something that might involve my department, I figured I’d better see what it was all about.”
Glencannon nodded. “Frank, you know me. I’m a businessman. I work with facts—sales figures, costs, overhead, things like that. I weigh these matters in my mind, sort of sum them up and see how everything stands, and on the basis of my findings I make my decisions. Just common sense—no big flashes of inspiration, no jumping to conclusions, no hasty judgments. I guess you work the same way.”
“Yes, sir, I’d say so.”
“That’s right. Probably nobody would call me an imaginative fellow, or a dreamer. If somebody tried to tell me the moon is made of green cheese, I’d laugh. If somebody else came along and said the same thing, I’d still laugh. Then if some scientist, say, came up to me and said he had color photographs taken from a rocket that prove the moon is bright green, I’d begin to wonder; and if another scientist from somewhere else said he didn’t know about that but he’d analyzed the moon through one of these spectroscopes and found it had a high protein content . . . well, then I’d start to think maybe those first two nuts weren’t so nutty after all.”
Berardi nodded.
“Frank, I’m a Catholic, just like you. We go to the same church. I’m no saint—I guess you wouldn’t claim to be either—but I think I’m a pretty good Catholic. Maybe better than some. I don’t put any store in talk against the Church. I’ll walk out of the room if someone starts telling jokes about nuns and priests. Or making wiseguy comments about the Pope. I contribute to the Church every year—I won’t say how much, but believe me it’s a healthy chunk.” Glencannon treated himself to a pause and a long draw on his cigar. “All right. So if a man came in here and said my parish priest was laying women in the rectory, I’d kick that man out of the house. I wouldn’t stand for that.”
Berardi, who had felt tense during Glencannon’s preamble, now relaxed. He smiled. “Oh, I see,” he said. “John Talbot.”
“No,” Glencannon said.
“No?”
“That’s my point, Frank. The green cheese. I wouldn’t listen to a man like Talbot, much less believe him. But Talbot plus Lydia Barlow plus Mike Chandler plus some people named Dunham from an entirely different parish . . . then I begin to sit up and take notice. And so should you.”
“Take notice of what, Mr. Glencannon?”
“Facts,” said the businessman. “Wild parties in the rectory at weird hours in the morning. Screaming and laughing—female laughing—and glasses being broken and things thrown around.”
“Oh, now—”
“No, hear me out. I get that from the Chandlers. Good people, better Catholics than I am. From this other family you don’t know, the Dunhams—I get this by way of Barlow’s wife—I’ve learned that this new priest was kicked out of his old parish for drinking, for administering a sacrament while he was drunk. And that’s not all. Lydia Barlow was in the rectory today and talked to this new fellow. He looked like hell, needed a shave, told her to mind her own business, as much as threw her out. And he has a woman in there. Lydia heard her. She heard her laugh and shout filth, like some drunken whore.” Glencannon sat back. “What do you say to that, Frank?”
Berardi frowned. “I don’t know. It sounds bad. Sounds crazy. But, Mr. Glencannon, a priest—”
“Look, you and I aren’t kids. We know priests are men, flesh and blood just like anybody else. They have hankerings—and those hankerings can get out of control. Why, a priest can go insane! What then? He might do anything. And a drunk besides? Oh—and wait a minute. Have you seen this?” He reached for a magazine and handed it to Berardi. “Article in there all about ecstasy, of all things, all about how sex and religion are really the same thing. Can you beat that? And take a look at who wrote it.”
“Well,” Berardi started to say, “this doesn’t mean—”
“Nothing by itself means anything,” Glencannon cut in. “But all of them added up do mean something. All this preoccupation with ecstasy . . . the drinking . . . the lewd woman in the rectory . . . the wild laughing and screaming at night . . . How can you ignore it?”
“Look, Mr. Glencannon,” said Berardi, ashtraying his now dead cigar, “even if it’s true—if!—it’s something the Church authorities should look into. Not laymen. Certainly not the Homicide Department!”
“How do you know?”
“What?”
“How do you know it’s not a matter for Homicide? How do you know some of those shrieks aren’t the shrieks of someone being murdered, tortured?”
“Mr. Glencannon, a drunken priest, even a lecherous priest, is one thing, but how does that add up to murder and torture?”
“I don’t know. But there’s such a thing as priests turned inside out, priests who officiate at altars made of a woman’s flesh, priests who recite the Our Father backward, priests who offer living sacrifices to the Devil—”
“I think you are a pretty imaginative man, Mr. Glencannon . . .”
“No I’m not! I don’t make anything up. Sure, Talbot originally put the bug in my ear with his silly pamphlets, I admit it, but I went further than that. I did a little reading. I did a little asking. It exists, that kind of filthy service. It’s existed for hundreds of years. It has a name. You want to know what they call it?”
Berardi let Glencannon tell him.
“They call it The Black Mass.”
And a chink of doubt opened in Berardi’s armor.
XII
THE TEARING OF THE TONGUE
“I know it’s a lie,” said Gregory. He was standing with the Bishop in the hall outside the spare bedroom where Susan lay. “I know it wasn’t Father Halloran.”
“How do you know?” asked the Bishop.
“Call it a hunch.”
“I can’t accept your hunches, Gregory, as much as I would like to accept this one—because you also seem to doubt the very existence of Satan on a hunch.”
“But you yourself called her a liar.”
The Bishop corrected Gregory. “Him. I called him a liar. But it was just a reaction, a spasm. I’m not really as sure as all that.”
“But it’s impossible!” Gregory insisted.
“Impossible?” The Bishop shook his head. “No. Shocking, yes. Hard to believe. Highly improbable. But not impossible. Few things are. And if it is true—what a man to be put in charge of helpless orphans!”
Gregory sighed. “Your Excellency,” he said, “let me concede for the moment that we have been talking to Satan—”
“That’s good of you, Gregory,” the Bishop interjected, not without ironic intent.
“—Do you put stock in something uttered by the Father of Lies? Do you take him at his word, do you believe him?”
“No,” said the Bishop. “Not necessarily. Neither do I disbelieve him. That is his most fiendish trick—to weave truth and falsehood together into a single texture so that one is indistinguishable from the other.”
“But the whole thing may be a cock and bull story. There may never have been an attempt to rape her at all! She spouts sensational accusations left and right, like buckshot. Look at what she said about my relations with Mrs. Farley, and about Garth murdering his wife, and about you—”
“True,” said the Bishop. “Let’s go back and see if we can poke some holes in the story.”
“Gladly.”
Susan’s eyes were open, but she was relatively calm. Mrs. Farley was sitting quietly in a corner of the room. Gregory sat down next to the naked bed to which the girl was tied.
“Tell me more about Father Halloran,” he said.
“That wasn’t enough?” asked the girl. “Not horrible enough to satisfy your curiosity?”
“I want to know more,” explained Gregory. “Details. The time. The place.”
>
“But why? Why should these trivial things interest you?”
“Never mind—”
“I’ll tell you why!” she offered, with glee. “Because your interest is not legitimate, it is not priestly—it is lascivious! Details, you say you want. Oh, and how you will lick your lips over those details, won’t you?”
Ignoring her, Gregory asked, “When and where did Father Halloran make these advances?”
“I’ve told you enough,” she said, turning her face to the wall.
“When and where?”
“Downstairs.”
“Where downstairs?”
“The study.”
“When?”
“Oh, a long time ago . . .”
“When?”
She tried to shrug, but the ropes prevented her. “Half a year ago, at least. Maybe more. I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? Aren’t all things known to you? All things of an evil nature, at least?”
“That,” she said, “is a fallacy.” The Bishop listened more closely.
“A fallacy?” said Gregory, seizing upon this as a wedge that would make her talk, talk about anything.
She said, “One category of thing I may never know: those deeds which are confessed.”
Gregory knew this as folk-belief among many members of the Catholic laity, a legend not as yet substantiated by theology. In fact, in some versions, Satan was believed to know every deed and thought of men, with the exceptions of those revealed in the confessional; but this was directly contradicted by the Summa Theologica: “The demons know what happens outwardly among men; but the inward disposition of man God alone knows . . .”
“Then,” asked Gregory, “how did you know about Father Halloran’s advances toward the girl?”
“He never confessed. He was too ashamed.”
Gregory scoffed. “A priest too ashamed to confess? Your reason is beginning to desert you. And what about Susan—didn’t she confess?”
“She, confess?” The creature on the bed laughed scornfully. “When she cannot even enter the church? Your reason is beginning to desert you, Father Sargent! Just as your faith has already deserted you, just as your parishioners will desert you, one by one, then in droves—”
Gregory, by now, was trembling with frustration and anger. “You liar,” he said. “Everything you’ve been saying is a lie. Not just about Father Halloran. Everything. Every word, from start to finish. You’re just a nasty little girl—an insane degenerate.” His voice rose sharply. “Admit it!”
Susan said nothing.
“Admit it!” His hand shot out and fiercely slapped her face.
“Gregory!” cried the Bishop, shocked.
“Admit it!” The back of his hand swung back and delivered a powerful blow to her other cheek, whipping her head to one side. “Admit it, you wretch!”
“GREGORY, STOP IT!”
Except for the thunder and rain raging outside, there was no sound now; neither was there motion. The little spare bedroom was like a photograph.
Then, finally, there was sound again, from Gregory. Not words. Sobs. His body was shaken with them, throbbing rhythmically with them. Gradually, he folded like a jack-knife and collapsed to the floor, and his sobbing became more strident. The Bishop stood helplessly over him, muttering fragmentary phrases of unsuccessful solace.
Through his tears, his voice twisted out of shape, Gregory made words. “Oh dear Jesus. Why? Why to me? Why did this have to happen to me? What did I do? What did I do that was so terrible, so unforgivable? What? What?”
“Gregory . . . my son . . .”
“Because I had doubts? Is that it? Is that why? Is it? Other men have had doubts . . . disciples, apostles, saints! Is it such a sin? Such a sin to have a mind?”
The Bishop fell to his knees beside the prostrate, weeping priest. He prayed. “Dear Jesus, come to the aid of this boy . . . this devout man . . . and in Your infinite mercy reveal to him Your wisdom. Let him know that, even as You appeared to Thomas the Doubter to quell his doubts, so even now Your Hand is here, quelling the doubts of Your son Gregory, that he too may come to the shelter of Your Almighty Arms . . .”
The weeping in the room now was Mrs. Farley’s, not Gregory’s. As the Bishop crossed himself, Gregory rose slowly from the floor, speaking brokenly as he rose. “No more lying . . . no more equivocation and deceit and double meaning and artful twisting of truth . . .”
He stood over Susan, his swollen eyes blazing into hers. “You!” he shouted. “Whoever you are! I don’t care who you are! But whoever you are—girl or demon—listen to me. I’ll have no more of your lies, no more of them, do you understand? I’m tired of them and sick of them, sick to death of them, and whoever you are I want the truth from you. I want it and I will get it because I command it! I command it by the power vested in me as a priest of the Lord—”
Mrs. Farley said: “Listen.”
Gregory stopped speaking. “What?”
Mrs. Farley opened the bedroom door. A pounding reverberated throughout the building. “Someone’s knocking at the front door,” she announced.
The Bishop said, “Let them knock . . .”
“They’re knocking pretty hard,” said Mrs. Farley, “and they’re not stopping . . .”
“Never mind. Gregory, go on.”
“In the name of Christ crucified,” said Gregory, “I command you to answer truthfully all questions I put to you.”
The knocking continued.
“Did someone really attempt to rape Susan Garth?” asked Gregory. “The truth!”
The girl on the bed said, “Yes!”
“And was this someone Father Halloran?”
“I have already said—”
“You have already said ‘What if I told you it was Father Halloran?’ Now I require a definite statement—the truth!”
“Fool!” yowled the girl. “How can you tell truth from falsehood?”
“The truth!”
“How do you know I have not told you the truth?”
The pounding on the front door increased. He who knocked made no sign of giving up.
“The man who tried to rape her—” Gregory held up the crucifix. “Tell me his name!”
Sweating and writhing on the bed, the girl cried, “I will not!”
“Tell me!”
“No!”
“His name!”
Her words came from between clenched teeth: “Why will you not believe it was Father Halloran?”
“Because you did not definitely say it was!”
“I did!”
“You did not!”
“I did! It was only a manner of speaking . . . I had to say it that way . . . to stop the pain . . . don’t make me say it again . . . you don’t know what it costs me . . .”
“I don’t care what it costs you! I don’t care if it splits you in two! Tell me definitely! Was it Father Halloran?”
“If I tell you . . .” Her face was a putty mask being stretched and kneaded grotesquely by an unseen hand. “If I tell you the truth now, will you believe me?”
She had confused him. Would he believe a demented girl? Would he believe the Father of Lies? And why believe one statement and not others? The pounding at the door was now a steady hysterical tempo.
“Will—you—believe me?!” The question was torn from her bowels.
Not wanting to stop at this stage, playing along with her, Gregory said, “Yes, yes. Was it Father Halloran? Speak!”
The girl’s eyes opened wide, loomed from their sockets in an expression of rising agony; and her cry of pain lanced through the house.
Gregory watched with horror as the girl’s own teeth became her enemy and clamped down upon her own tongue, sinking into the red flesh.
“In the name of Mary the Immaculate,” he
said softly, “speak.”
The teeth slowly released the mutilated tongue. Blood welled up from the wounds and trickled out the side of her mouth. Over the rising, unreasoning tattoo that was being beat on the outside door, words were yanked one by one from her:
“This is the truth. It was he—he who knocks—”
“What?”
“He who pounds so long and hard on your door,” she groaned. “He it is—whose name—you desire.”
They were her last words before her body went limp with unconsciousness.
XIII
HE WHO KNOCKS
The pounding on the door had not diminished. It had become a jungle drum, echoing through the rectory with insane frenzy. Gregory stood transfixed, part of his attention riveted to the unconscious, bloodied girl, the other part pulling him to the sound of the mad knocking downstairs.
Hoarsely, he said, “Answer the door, Mrs. Farley.”
“Wait,” said the Bishop. “I think you had better answer it yourself, Gregory.”
“Yes,” said Gregory. “Yes, I will.”
He left the bedroom and walked down the stairs, not exactly with haste, even though the knocking grew oppressively louder as he drew nearer to it. Who dared pound so on the door of the rectory? And whose voice—now he began to hear it—demanded entry with shouts of “Let me in! Open this door!” in tones which hysteria had distorted out of all recognition? It is not Father Halloran, Gregory told himself; Father Halloran is miles away; it cannot be he who knocks . . .
Gregory slid back the heavy bolt of the door with a sharp click that put a stop to the pounding. The rectory was grave-quiet except for the sound of the rain. “Please, God,” Gregory prayed in a desperate whisper, “let it not be Father Halloran.”
He opened the door.
“About time!” roared Robert Garth. He wore no outer coat, and his clothes were heavy with rain. Water ran in rivulets down his face. “Get out of my way!” Garth pushed himself past Gregory, and dashed into the living room of the rectory. Gregory closed the door and followed him.