by Ray Russell
Susan screamed a long inhuman yowl of rage and unendurable pain. The window, under the siege of water and wind, gave way with a crack and a jangle of glass upon the floor. The candles were blown out.
Disregarding all, Gregory went on reading, the room lit only by the gray-green of the storming sky:
“Begone, Satan, inventor and master of all falsehood, the enemy of human salvation.” Then he said, “Let us pray.”
Gregory and the Bishop fell to their knees. Susan moaned. Gregory, hearing her, looked up quickly, for the moan, after so many hours, had sounded like the moan of a girl once again. But there would be time to make sure of that later. Now, he read from the book the final prayer:
“O God of Heaven, O God of Earth, Lord of Angels, Lord of Archangels, Lord of the Patriarchs, Lord of Prophets, Lord of Apostles, Lord of Martyrs; O Lord of Confessors, Lord of Virgins, Lord who has the power to give life after death and rest after toil; because there is no other God above Thee, nor is anything able to exist without Thee, Creator of the visible and invisible, to Whose reign there is no end—we humbly supplicate the majesty of Thy glory so that Thou may mightily deliver us from every power of the evil spirits, from every deception, ensnarement and evil, and deign to keep us unblemished. Through Christ our Lord, Amen . . .”
The kneeling Bishop said, “From the evils of the demon deliver us, O Lord . . .”
“So that we may serve Thy Church in safety and freedom, we beseech Thee, hear us!”
“So that Thou may deign to humble the enemies of Thy Church,” said the Bishop, “we beseech Thee, hear us!” They were the final words in the ritual of exorcism.
Gregory arose and, taking the aspergillum, began to sprinkle the entire room with holy water.
The Bishop went immediately to Susan. In the dim light, her face was difficult to see clearly, but to the Bishop it seemed tranquil at last. “My dear,” he said softly, “are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said in her own voice. “Oh, Your Excellency, I feel so much better now . . .” Her voice was small and weak, and now the Bishop could see the smooth, sweat-shiny face, and the release and exhaustion upon it. It was like the face of a woman after labor. “Everything is all right now, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes, my dear,” said the Bishop, gently removing the ropes from her chafed wrists. “Everything is all right.”
She sighed deeply, as after sharp high love, then closed her eyes. Immediately, she was in the sound, healthy sleep of total contentment, not clubbed into unconsciousness by outraged nerves and spirit.
“You’ve done it,” the Bishop said in a whisper. “Gregory, you’ve done it.”
The priest did not answer, so the Bishop turned around.
“Garth,” said Gregory. “He’s gone.”
Gregory opened the bedroom door. “Garth,” he called. He stepped into the hall. “Where are you?” There was no answer. He was about to call Mrs. Farley when he saw her climbing slowly up the stairs toward him.
“Mrs. Farley,” he started to say, “have you seen—”
She mumbled something. It sounded like “odd hand” to Gregory. Her face was white, her eyes glazed with shock.
“God’s Hand,” she said. “God’s Hand, I saw it . . .”
“What are you talking about?”
“Struck him down, Father . . .”
“Make sense, woman!”
“God’s Hand, Father, it reached out of Heaven and struck him down, struck him dead.”
“Struck who?”
“Himself, Father. The Devil.” As she crumpled forward, Gregory caught her in his arms. She looked up at him and her eyes rolled back into her head. “The Devil himself,” she repeated. “Garth.” And she fainted.
XIV
THE BOMB UNDER THE BED
The white dwarf star astronomers call 40 Eridani B is only half as heavy as our sun, but the stuff it is made of is jammed into a little sphere the size of Mars, a planet considerably smaller than the Earth. The high concentration of mass creates a powerful gravitational field that seizes upon the very light of Eridani, holds it back, literally and actually slows it down so that time itself is slowed down, falling behind at the rate of six seconds a day.
Gregory had read about Eridani and its slow time in some scientific journal. He had been fleetingly fascinated, then had forgotten about it. Now he remembered it; now he felt like an inhabitant of a slow-time region himself. For the last few hours, time had been moving on wings of lead, dragged down by the relentless gravitational field of horror. Things seen and heard by him floated to his senses through a fog of shock; he was a drugged observer of events that took place on the other side of a theatrical scrim. Lieutenant Berardi was saying, for the second or third time, that “anything you say may be held against you,” and Gregory, smiling faintly, was saying, “Yes, I know. That’s why I’m not saying yet—until I’ve had time to choose my words—just what the Bishop and I were doing.”
“Any ideas, Father, as to what the cause of death may have been?”
Berardi’s voice reached Gregory as from a great distance, but it reached him. He thought of the last time he had seen Garth alive—upstairs, in that little bedroom, just before the exorcism ritual was started for the last time. What had happened after that Gregory had been obliged to patch together later from bits and pieces. That Garth had run from the bedroom was certain. Mrs. Farley, who had been waiting in the hallway, had seen him propel himself out of the room, terror stamped on his face. He had gone pell-mell down the stairs and out of the rectory. Mrs. Farley subscribed to the notion that he had left at the words Vade, Satanas!—Begone, Satan!—and on that assumption she darkly hinted that Garth was the Fiend in flesh. But no one knew for certain precisely when Garth had left the room.
A man passing the rectory at that time, passing at a run because of the driving rain, had knocked at the rectory door and told Mrs. Farley that he had seen Garth flee the rectory, dash across the wet street, run north—north, Mrs. Farley took pains to point out, was the direction of Talbot’s print shop—and within seconds, insisted this passerby, Garth was dead, struck to the ground by a spear of lightning that had blinded the passerby for many seconds thereafter.
“I saw the lightning myself, I did,” Mrs. Farley had said, “through the windows I saw it flash, the very lightning that struck him down. Just a few seconds after it flashed, there was this knock at the door and there this man stood telling me about the fellow he saw run out of here and get hit by lightning. God’s Hand it was, sure, that killed him dead in the street.”
Garth had indeed died in the street as he ran from the rectory, but the coroner’s office reported that there were no burns on the body. The lightning had struck near him but had not hit him. Mrs. Farley sniffed at this. If Garth wasn’t the Devil himself—and she was not ready to discredit that idea—then he was on the way to the Devil, his master, the demon who called himself Talbot. And the Hand of God had struck him down. In answer to Berardi’s question, Gregory said:
“None.”
Berardi turned to the Bishop. “You, Your Excellency?”
“No, none,” said the Bishop, “other than simply the Hand of God . . .”
“By which you mean the Hand of God figures in every death?”
“Yes, I suppose that’s what I mean.”
“Even murder?”
“Surely you aren’t suggesting Garth was murdered?”
Berardi shrugged. “I’m Homicide, Your Excellency. And it is a possibility.”
“But is it a probability? In the rectory of the church? In the presence of a priest and a bishop?”
“There were others here,” said Berardi. “The girl. And Mrs. Farley.”
Mrs. Farley spoke up: “I killed nobody.”
“Not saying you did, ma’am,” Berardi assured her. “But is there anything you can add to what’s already been said?”
“Never mind. Let’s hear it.”
“The Father and His Excellency left the bedroom for a moment and stepped out into the hallway to talk in private. I was in the room with Garth and the unconscious girl. I saw Garth take a little bottle of pills from his pocket and pop one in his mouth. Naturally, I thought it was some kind of medicine.”
A little bottle of pills. At the words, time plunged ahead again for Gregory and the scrim quickly lifted. He felt himself turn pale and hoped nobody noticed.
“Pills, eh?” said Berardi. “That must have been the bottle we confiscated along with the other items in his pockets. Best clue we’ve had so far. I think we can all adjourn to the living room now—we’re through up here.”
Mrs. Farley asked, “Can I look into the master bedroom and see if the girl is still sleeping quietly?”
“Sure,” said Berardi, “but come right down to the living room because I may want to ask you some more questions about those pills.”
Mrs. Farley walked to the master bedroom, opened the door and tiptoed in. Susan was sound asleep on a big bed, breathing deeply and regularly. She was pale, but her face was serene. Mrs. Farley closed the door quietly and joined the others downstairs.
In the living room, Berardi had picked up the phone and was dialing the coroner’s office. “Doc Foster there? Yeah, it’s important . . . Doc, Berardi. Any news? . . . Mmm, well, as soon as you find out the cause of death, let me know. Listen—those pills we took from the body: what does the label say? . . . No label? That’s funny . . . Well, will you put them through analysis and let us know what they are? Call me here at the rectory.” Berardi gave him the number and hung up. “Suicide, maybe,” he mused. “I hadn’t figured on that.” Then he turned to Gregory. “Father, an hour or so ago you said something in passing—something about checking Garth’s record. You were interrupted and never got back to it. What did you mean?”
“Two things, actually,” said Gregory. “First, I wondered if Garth had ever been picked up on a child-molesting charge, years ago perhaps and possibly under a different name.”
“A sex charge? We can try to check, of course. What was the other thing?”
“Garth’s wife died six years ago—drowned in a lagoon—accidentally, it’s believed. Would there be any chance of investigating that?”
“You suspect foul play?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” said Berardi, stroking his chin, “we could investigate up to a point, but six years is a long time. Were there any witnesses?”
“Garth. And the girl.”
“Those are pretty sinister suspicions you have, Father. Child-molesting, murder . . .”
“If they have any foundation,” said Gregory, “they may go a long way toward explaining his death. Because if Garth believed his crimes had been discovered, suicide might have seemed the only way out. It’s just a guess.”
“Not a bad guess, Father. We’ll try to check into that stuff.” Berardi’s eyes dropped in concentration for a moment, and then he said, “One odd thing. If Garth killed himself because he felt cornered, and if he didn’t feel cornered until his visit to the rectory today, then why did he have poison on his person? Why would he just casually carry it around with him like a pack of cigarettes or something? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Perhaps it was—” Gregory checked himself.
“Yes?”
“Well, I don’t know. Anything I say may be held against me?”
“That’s right. On the other hand, it’s illegal to withhold valuable evidence or information.” Berardi smiled genially. “We’ve got you coming or going, Father.”
“So I see,” said Gregory, also smiling. “Well, it was just another guess. But what if the bottle normally contained the kind of pills a person might conceivably carry around—aspirin or indigestion tablets, that sort of thing—and somebody substituted poison?”
“Somebody?” asked Berardi. “Who?”
“Why . . . I don’t know . . .”
“Father,” Berardi said, “what about that daughter? Up to now I’ve respected your wishes and haven’t pestered her with questions. You said she’d gone through something so terrible you couldn’t even discuss it with me, and I believed you. But not being able to question her has left too many holes in my information. I have nothing to go on, and I have a feeling she may be able to help me get to the bottom of this. How about it?”
“Lieutenant,” said Gregory, “I want to help you—but not at the expense of that girl’s sanity. It could be disastrous to disturb her now. The poor orphan doesn’t even know her father is dead!”
Orphan. The word brought Father Halloran to Gregory’s mind. Susan, when in the claws of that Other Force—madness or demon—had shifted her story so often, slid into ambiguity and equivocation, accused Father Halloran one time and Garth the next, that no rational man could have grounds to say one utterance was truth and another falsehood. Garth was dead, and could never tell them. Susan was alive and seemingly herself again—but how could one be sure of that? Unless investigation uncovered evidence of past child-molesting of Garth’s, his sexual guilt or innocence would remain a mystery.
And so would Father Halloran’s. Yes, thought Gregory, sadly, the ex-pastor of St. Michael’s, that humorless, driven man who had seen a naked girl for the first time in his life in the stillness and privacy of his study . . . the sexual guilt or innocence of that man, too, was still a looming question mark.
Berardi was saying, “How can you be sure she doesn’t know her father’s dead?”
“She was unconscious . . . and we didn’t tell her . . .”
“Maybe you didn’t have to, Father. Think of this: who wanted him dead? Wanted him dead so much that he—or she—switched the pills in his bottle? I’ve got to talk to that girl.”
“You cannot.”
“Can you tell me,” said Berardi, his gaze fastened firmly on Gregory’s eyes, “can you honestly tell me on your honor as a priest that this girl is incapable of murder?”
Gregory thought of Susan’s fingernails buried in Father Halloran’s throat.
Berardi said, “With your hand on the breviary can you tell me that?”
Gregory looked away. “No,” he said.
“All right then. Bring her out here.”
The Bishop said, “The shattering of that girl’s mind would be on you, Lieutenant. You alone would be responsible—”
“I’ll take that responsibility, Your Excellency!” Berardi snapped.
“But why? For what?” And then the Bishop asked, “Suppose she did kill her father?”
Berardi looked quizzically at the Bishop. “I can’t believe my ears,” he said. “‘Suppose she did?’! . . .”
“Suppose she did. I tell you, as God is my witness, that if she did, she was so driven to it, and had such justification, that mortal sin though it was, no jury on earth would convict her.”
“That’s not for you to say,” said Berardi.
“No jury on earth,” the Bishop repeated, “knowing all the facts, could possibly convict her. And I will say more. When you asked Father Sargent, on his sacred honor, if he could call the girl incapable of murder, he could not say Yes although he wanted to say it, desperately. He had to say No. Had to. Shall I tell you why? Because he knew that this same girl once attacked Father Halloran and tried to strangle him!”
“What!—”
“And yet I tell you that circumstances were such that the law would never condemn her.”
“What circumstances?”
“She was under the control of—”
Gregory quickly cut in: “The girl was not herself.”
“You mean criminally insane?”
“No. She was being manipulated.”
“By who?”
“I . . . I can’t tell you.”
“Christ!” The profane expletive burst from Berardi. He turned to the Bishop. “Your Excellency, a second ago you said no jury would convict her if they knew all the facts. Well, why not give me all the facts? I’m not your enemy!”
“No,” Gregory said, “you’re not. But others are. And anything we say may be used against us. In court. By a jury that could include people like John Talbot.”
“What’s Talbot got to do with this?”
Gregory said: “What we’ve been doing here is completely blameless, and something that might have been accepted as a matter of course a few centuries ago. But people today would find it too fantastic, smelling too much of witchcraft and black magic. The knowledge of what we’ve been doing would only feed the fire that burns in Talbot and others like him. They would call us purveyors of superstition, throwbacks to the Dark Ages. And when I say us I don’t mean merely His Excellency and me. I mean the Church. Your Church, Lieutenant. Ours. It would be covered with ridicule.”
“Look,” said Berardi, wearily, “I want to cooperate. I’m not some kind of villain. And I’m a good Catholic. But I’m also a policeman. I’ve got a job to do. My job is facts. That’s all I have to go on: facts. And I haven’t been getting many facts around here—every time a fact starts to put in an appearance, somebody shuts the door on it. Every time I ask a question, somebody tells me they’d rather not answer right now. I’ve been playing along with this, I’ve been a nice guy, I’ve been respectful. But now I have to stop being a nice guy. In this house you’ve got a girl you as much as admit killed her father—”
Gregory said, “We admitted no such thing.”
“A girl who tried to kill one man and is quite capable of killing another. But she can’t be blamed, you say. And also she wasn’t insane, you say. But my talking to her—that, you say, will drive her insane! Put yourself in my place. That’s a pretty tall story, isn’t it?”
“You must—” began the Bishop.
“I must be a cop, that’s what I must. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, but nothing in this case meshes and it’s all because of that damned girl. Father, I’m talking to her. I’m talking to her and that’s final. I’m going to wake her up and question her if I have to take the whole bunch of you down to the station and lock you in the bullpen.”