Golgotha Falls

by Frank De Felitta

  With the holy water chalice was the aspergill, the brush used to flick out the droplets. It all came back to Mario. The endless hours in the chapel, the nuns with their busy feet, the doctrine pounded daily into young heads. Father Pronteus. As he held the offensive chalice, he looked bitterly into the graveyard.

  At least, he thought, the instruments were recording everything.

  The Jesuit glanced over his shoulder at the black glassless windows of the church. For a long time, he stared. Then he looked out over the graveyard.

  Father Malcolm raised the silver crucifix high. With a bold step, he entered the half acre of nettles and fungus-ruined tombstones.

  “I abjure you, ancient Serpent,” he called out, “by Him who has power to send you to hell, depart from the ground consecrated in the bosom of Christ!”

  Mario watched the Jesuit’s eyes close, as though the older man summoned the power to continue. Work yourself into a frenzy, he thought. I need results.

  “Let evil have no more power over this ground! Let the peace of Christ the Redeemer send its saving grace to this ground!”

  The Jesuit swung the censer in the pattern of the cross. Then Mario held the censer as the Jesuit flicked holy water at the dirt.

  “Follow me, Mario,” he said gently. “Nothing will happen to you.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Mario saw Anita discreetly photographing the proceedings.

  Father Malcolm plunged into the chest-high weeds, pushing the silver crucifix high in front of him, and repeated the procedure at each of the graves, frequently making the sign of the cross with the edge of his palm. At the fifth grave, that of the missing twin, he intoned, “Repel, O Lord, the power of evil! Dissolve the fallacies of its plots! May the unholy tempter take flight! May this earth be protected by the sign of Your name!”

  Again the Jesuit made the sign of the cross. He paused. A chill ran up Mario’s back. The clouds above were massing.

  It took over an hour and then Father Malcolm sanctified the entire perimeter of the graveyard. When they came back to Anita, he was pale and trembling.

  “Are you all right, Father?” she asked.

  “The fifth grave . . . I felt something pulling—something nauseating—unspeakably foul—”

  The Jesuit wiped the sweat from his neck with a handkerchief. He brushed the red mites from his alb.

  “The bell tower now,” he said. “Mario, get the ladder.”

  Mario stared at him, rooted, uncomprehending. The Jesuit turned back to him angrily.

  “The bell must be sanctified, too!” he shouted.

  Mario put the censer in the case. Then he followed Father Malcolm to the north wall. Overhead, the massed clouds circulated down into the valley.

  “Quickly, Mario—”

  Mario leaned the gray, weather-beaten ladder against the steeple wall. The Jesuit carried a vial in his hand.

  “Father, that ladder won’t hold us—”

  But the Jesuit belonged to another realm. His eyes glistened and his lips were taut. Mario followed.

  They climbed to the roof and held on to the steeple base. The steeple itself swayed in the strong breeze. Below, the entire system of fields ruffled from the crossed currents of the rapidly gusting wind.

  The vertigo reeled through Mario’s ears and made him nauseous. Normally, he did not suffer from vertigo.

  “Fasten this rope to the bell, Mario,” the Jesuit said. “The bell must ring again.”

  Opening his eyes, Mario felt the landscape tilt again. He saw Anita, arms folded, looking up. Everything was unstable. He grabbed hold of the steeple supports.

  “Be strong, man!” the Jesuit hissed.

  It was such a strange thing to say. Mario stared at him. He wondered if the Jesuit were insane. Finally, he grabbed the end of the rope and worked it through the eye of the bell loop. To his amazement, the massive ridged iron bell, bearing the date of a Philadelphia foundry of 1886, swung loose and free after nearly a century of being crammed into the support.

  Father Malcolm unstoppered the vial. Using his fingers, he anointed the bell inside and out.

  Abruptly, the stopper was flung from his hand, twirled, and flew spinning into the Siloam. He grabbed Mario’s hand.

  “He is angry, Mario,” he whispered. “Do not be afraid.”

  Father Malcolm made the sign of the cross over the quarter ton of iron.

  “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” he said into the wind, “let this bell abjure every evil power and ministration over the land! Let the ancient evil hear its sound and flee it! For it signals the Redemption of our Lord Jesus Christ!”

  Now Mario knew where the vertigo came from. The litanies, the Catholic passion in his ear, shouted by a believing priest, brought back his old dreams, so long reviled, of service to the Church.

  Storm clouds now rolled through the birch woods. Barrels and bits of branches flew down the streets of Golgotha Falls. In them Mario saw an analogue of the chaos threatening to blow through his brain. When Mario came down the ladder, he felt the tug of the wind at his legs like hands, sucking him back toward the archaic fears and mythologies of the orphanage.

  Anita steadied the ladder.

  “The priest is completely charged,” Mario said sardonically, hiding his torment. “Just wonderful.”

  But when Father Malcolm stepped down beside her, she saw only the tired, drawn face of a deeply sensitive man.

  The Jesuit turned at a sound. Pebbles flew randomly out from the clay banks. The flat stones rattled against the Church foundations. He smiled grimly and led them to the locked door.

  Mario held the censer. To Anita, he gave a pewter vessel that contained Gregorian water. The mixture of holy water, salt, wine, and ash was surprisingly heavy in her hand.

  Father Malcolm lifted the crucifix.

  “Look on the Church of Eternal Sorrows,” he said loudly. “A church assaulted by the cunning power of the unclean spirit.”

  The name of the church was too appropriate, Mario thought. With unerring accuracy, the Catholic Church spotted its mysticisms in the places of neglect.

  The Jesuit spoke intimately to the church that had killed his uncle and festered in his thoughts. In some way, it had become an extension of himself. And now, at long last, he had come to defeat the evil within himself and within the church.

  “The ancient enemy surrounds the church,” he said louder, “and infects the land with misery.”

  Suddenly, he angrily flicked droplets of Gregorian water at the door. It mingled with the distilled rainwater dribbling past the iron lock.

  “Repel, O Lord, the power of evil! Let the unholy one take flight by the sign of Thy name!”

  Raising the crucifix, he slowly, grandly, made the gesture of the cross.

  He relaxed, watched the droplets of Gregorian water sparkle in the cloudy light and then, in spite of himself, smiled.

  “Good,” he confided. “Very good. Let us lustrate the church.”

  The Jesuit went to the corner and again spattered it with Gregorian water.

  “In the name of the Judge of the living and the dead!” he proclaimed. “In the name of the Creator! In the name of the Archangel Michael who threw you down into hell! Depart the Church of Eternal Sorrows! Be defeated by the sign of the cross!”

  The nausea hit Mario again, squarely in the solar plexus. Like a gravitation field, the litanies were pulling him back into preverbal levels of psychic dependence on the authority of Father Pronteus. He who had so deeply betrayed him.

  Mario peered into the windows. The instruments were humming smoothly, the thermovision aimed generally at the altar. The nausea faded. These were the instruments of his own mind, his liberty, his defiance. He felt better. The old bitterness once again sharpened his brain.

  The Jesuit handed the Gregorian water to Anita. The wind now whipped her blouse back, revealing the soft, swelling contours within. The Jesuit quickly turned away from her, insensated the clapboards and moved t
o a spot about ten paces further along the south wall. The red robe flapped like a great crimson bird in the wind. Once again, he took the Gregorian water from Anita.

  “In the name of the Judge of the living and the dead!” he repeated. “In the name of the Creator!”

  Anita’s vague shadow in the cloudlight, falling against the church wall, undulated among the clapboards and the shapes were meta-morphic.

  The compulsion to turn and see Anita was like a physical torment. Father Malcolm’s body trembled, his mind searched for clues. Instead, he flicked the Gregorian droplets at the sliding, unsatisfied shadow.

  Out of the corner of his eye, the Jesuit saw that the rain, not yet heavy, had already made the rectory path a living tongue of mud. A gray morass, indistinguishable from the clay banks, sucked at the church foundations.

  A dead bird floated around and around in a silent, thick eddy.

  Avoiding Anita, he reached back for the vessel.

  “Please, Anita. The Gregorian water.”

  “I’ve been thinking, Father Malcolm. I could put this to better use.”

  “What use?”

  “I could use it to lubricate myself.”

  Paralyzed, the Jesuit dared not look. He knew it couldn’t be real, that he was hallucinating, still he could not look at her. Along the bottom of the church, the red-brown dirt oozed like soft feces.

  Father Malcolm softly intoned the Eighty-sixth Psalm.

  “Give ear, O Lord, unto my prayer;

  and attend to the voice of my supplications.

  In the day of trouble I will call upon Thee:

  for Thou wilt answer me.”

  “It would be my holy douche,” Anita’s sultry voice insisted.

  The Jesuit whirled, his face pale and contorted.

  The image was Anita’s, but infested with evil, unholy. Her tongue flicked rapidly left and right. Her eyes were preternaturally bright and the white teeth bit the moist red tongue.

  She smiled a lascivious smile.

  “Made you look, didn’t I?” the hallucinatory image purred.

  Father Malcolm shuddered. It was as though a spike had been driven into him. His eyes filled with tears of rage.

  A crack of thunder, like a gunshot, sounded through the valley.

  When he turned for the Gregorian water, he saw that Anita again appeared normal, and solicitous, yet he held the crucifix between her and himself.

  The Jesuit trembled and swayed in delirium. Mario went to him—grabbed his arm to steady him.

  “Father Malcolm,” he said gently, “are you all right?”

  “Tricks, Mario. Just tricks. I’ve encountered them before.”

  The Jesuit pushed past Mario, and the rain flew off the ends of the crucifix in the wind.

  “Mario!” Anita gasped, pointing.

  On the church door, where the Gregorian water had been flicked, scorch marks had eaten into the wood.

  Psychic projection, Mario instantly thought. But so real. So very real. What other horrors will the man’s brain spew out once he gets into the church?

  The Jesuit rushed to the door.

  “I exorcise you, unclean spirit!” he roared into the driving wind and rain. “Be now uprooted and expelled from the house of God!”

  The red chasuble was stained along the bottom by mud. Father Malcolm stood staring at the door, pummeled by the storm.

  “Give way to our Lord, Jesus Christ!” he demanded. “Give way to the God who abides in this church!”

  The rain came now steadily, cold and hard, making the incense sputter and fume. Then the Jesuit turned from the door and looked around at the bending trees and at the graveyard. Finally, cautiously, he was satisfied.

  Slowly, he stepped through the mud, threw the brambles away with the base of the crucifix pole, and addressed the door.

  “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” he declared, “I enjoin the Church of Eternal Sorrows. Receive the righteous and the holy!”

  With one knock of the base of the crucifix pole, he sent a shock rattling into the vestibule. He struck a second time. Then he struck a third time.

  He nodded to Mario.

  Mario leaned forward to unlock the door. The iron tumblers had jammed. He braced his legs and put all his strength into turning and violently the lock gave way. The door slowly swung inward.

  A black, corrosive air leaked out. Mario fell back, coughing.

  The Jesuit, horrified, raised the crucifix.

  Slowly, he stepped into the vestibule. At the near wall was a heavy wooden box. The Jesuit held the crucifix high in front of them and gestured toward the box.

  “The stoppered chalice,” he whispered. “Bring it to me.”

  The Jesuit took it and poured the shimmering holy water into the gleaming basin.

  From deep within the church came a low, trembling groan, an obscene murmur of gratification.

  It was dark everywhere but the vestibule. The Jesuit advanced toward the interior, but paused. From the church came a stench of corpses and a demented giggle. It was the sound of furtive, hastened delight, a perverted breathing.

  “Satan is here,” Father Malcolm murmured. “And sensible to us all.”

  They stepped inside. It was dry, warm, and utterly still, like being in a recently shut-off furnace where the black oils still clung to the walls. Mario saw that the instruments were running smoothly. Whatever the Jesuit was going through, he reflected, its external manifestations were going directly onto film plates, videotapes, and the slowly rolling drums.

  “Look on the cross of the Lord!” Father Malcolm proclaimed. “In the name of Jesus Christ through the intercession of the Immaculate Virgin, the blessed apostles Peter and Paul and all the saints of heaven, upon the authority of our office, we undertake the expulsion of diabolic infestation!”

  A green slime dribbled over the front of the vestment. Father Malcolm took a white handkerchief from a hidden pocket and wiped it away. Mario looked up. From invisibly tiny strands of silk, a half dozen green caterpillars twirled slowly, slowly in the breeze.

  The Jesuit paused. He heard his uncle’s voice.

  “—yes—yes—Eamon—when you worship—a donkey is good—is good—is good—but a goat—is best—is best—is best—”

  Father Malcolm recognized the slightly breathless Boston accent. The church receded into silence.

  “He’s in good form today,” Father Malcolm said, knowingly.

  The Jesuit then clenched his jaw, raised the crucifix, and stepped into the blackness.

  “May God rise up,” he called. “May His enemies be dissipated.”

  Something slowly glowed along the north and south walls. The two crucifixes. The Jesuit’s knees buckled.

  The Christs, moments before resplendent and gold, now appeared deformed, humpbacked and tumored; the legs and faces were eaten by scabs, asymmetrical, scourged.

  Milk dripped from their loincloths.

  “Oh, no—” Father Malcolm moaned. “Such desecration—”

  The Jesuit struggled to his feet, glanced at Mario and Anita, but they seemed not to notice.

  Anita slipped toward the thermovision. She panned the camera slightly to include the priest. Vibrating swirls of viridian rose from Father Malcolm’s biretta and the crucifix, still cold from the rain.

  Father Malcolm’s face tensed. The perspiration mingled freely with the rainwater running down his neck. He held the crucifix high.

  “Cease to injure this church!” he shouted. “Go, Satan! Be humiliated! For God so commands thee!”

  In the bishop’s throne, the raised wooden platform with its small circular stair that overlooked the altar, in full ocher and crimson vestments, reclined the shaggy-headed, full-horned form of a goat.

  The goat’s tongue, abrasive and pink, showed itself to the Jesuit.

  He dashed droplets of holy water against the bishop’s throne.

  “Be defeated, ancient Serpent!” he called. “The Mother of God the Virgin Mar
y commands you! The blood of the martyrs commands you! Be uprooted and exorcised from the house of God!”

  There was a sibilant, silly echo.

  “—God—pod—mod—fod—lod—rod—tod—”

  Then the echo was gone. The Jesuit, in his agony, did not notice that Anita and Mario had slipped behind the instruments to monitor him.

  The temperature gauge showed a ten-degree drop.

  The Jesuit listened. There was only the diminishing rain thudding into the ground outside.

  “Be defeated, all enemies of the cross!” he called defiantly.

  The provocation went unanswered. Exorcisms have ebbs and flows. The Jesuit felt the momentary recession of the malevolent presence, as though it had retreated for reinforcements.

  “We’d better move very quickly now,” the Jesuit whispered, and hurried to the nearest wall, the wall where the laser camera was stationed. In his left hand, he held the vial of chrism. With that mixture of holy water and balsam, he inscribed a cross against the wall.

  He took the censer from the floor and insensated the inscribed cross.

  Twelve places the Jesuit inscribed a chrism cross, twelve times dedicated the church to God, and at each place around the church left a burning candle to signal the presence of sanctity.

  The twelve tall gold candles, set in shallow pewter bowls, dispersed the gloom along the walls.

  The Jesuit was perspiring heavily. He traced a St. Andrew’s Cross on the floor near the altar using sand and ash. On the beam of the cross, he inscribed the Latin and Greek alphabets.

  Father Malcolm looked around the church. The candles flared in the occasional breeze from the exterior, but burned strong and confidently. Anita changed the tape in the thermovision.

  The grounds and the walls, exterior and interior, had been made sacred. Mario felt the same claustrophobia he once had felt in the orphanage.

  The Jesuit reached into a black trunk and pulled out the altar linens. He spread the appendium so that the ocher Alpha and Omega faced the front. The top linen, immaculate and smooth, covered the limestone, and at the rear the pall. He began flicking Gregorian water liberally, lustrating the base and floor around the altar.

  With a strong voice, he chanted the Forty-fourth Psalm.

  “Thou hast saved us from our enemies