Golgotha Falls

by Frank De Felitta

  The struggle was joined. It would be elemental, brutal, and without compromise.

  “You fool!” Eamon sneered, lip rising. “It is Satan’s church!”

  “It shall be made Christ’s,” Francis Xavier said calmly, and then, addressing Eamon within the body, added, “through you.”

  But the power twisted Eamon’s lips into a hideous grin, revealing the dark tongue and sharp white teeth.

  “Look what has come,” he shouted triumphantly, “through me!”

  Eamon raised an arm, gesturing around the church walls. A grim twilight descended from the rafters. The light level in the church fell. As the gloom deepened it grew cold, and Francis Xavier’s breath steamed white. Blue luminescences, like tiny barracudas, glided around the church pillars and fed off the defiled altar. The sickly yellow lamp flared supreme over their heads.

  “Don’t you realize now who brought you to Golgotha Falls?” Eamon demanded.

  “The Holy Spirit.”

  Eamon laughed, and the blue, parched lips looked almost black under the altar lamp.

  “No,” he chuckled rudely. “My messengers.”

  Eamon pointed to the Gothic windows. There, silhouetted against the light of day, clustered the winged shadows. They were the messengers of defilement and death that Francis Xavier had seen at San Rignazzi.

  The winged shadows that had led him from the suburbs to the white church swarmed lazily into the church, intimately clustering on Eamon’s shoulders, then fading into the dark gloom.

  In the cold darkness the ruby tints of Eamon’s eyes burned fiercely at Francis Xavier.

  “I watched you as a child, Giacomo Baldoni,” he whispered with a primordial hatred. “I whispered in your ear in Boulogne.”

  Francis Xavier recalled the ambiguous, chilling breath that had made him leave the disease-ridden crypt so long ago.

  “I chose you as my own,” Eamon said. “I followed you throughout your whole career.”

  Francis Xavier remembered now the deaths of the religious, the recently baptized, the devout priests who had attended his rise toward the chair of Saint Peter.

  Eamon stepped closer, his breath foul, his eyes gleaming and derisory.

  “When the archbishop of Genoa stumbled over the Sistine Chapel floor, pointing at you, saying, ‘It is you, it is you,’ who did he see in your eyes?”

  “The Holy Spirit.”

  Eamon showed his teeth in a soundless laugh that hissed into the dead silence of the church.

  “It was me he saw!” Eamon laughed shrilly. “And he was mightily surprised!”

  Francis Xavier smiled softly, looking Eamon directly in the eyes.

  “You lost that election,” Francis Xavier said gently.

  Eamon recoiled. In the simplicity, the unbreakable assurance of Francis Xavier he felt an unbearable obduracy.

  “Who led you to Golgotha Falls?” Eamon roared, outraged.

  “The Holy Spirit.”

  “I led you here!”

  Eamon suddenly raised a hand and held it over the black rosary in Francis Xavier’s hand. It grew slowly weightless. Francis Xavier, pale, watched it twirl, unheld, in the dark atmosphere of the church.

  “Look at your vision of the Resurrection!” Eamon yelled.

  Eamon pointed to the thermovision camera on its twisted tripod in the shadows. On the screen Francis Xavier saw a skeletal figure rising, holding a gold crucifix: his vision out of the storm that brought him down in Boston.

  “Mimicry,” Francis Xavier said calmly, turning back to Eamon. “You mimic the signs of the Holy Spirit. But it was the Holy Spirit that led me here. And for one purpose.”

  Eamon listened warily. Francis Xavier watched the foxlike face show agonies of hatred, doubt, and a brutal impatience. He also saw, beneath that, the vulnerable and delicate soul of a frightened priest.

  “To expel you from the priest’s body,” Francis Xavier said calmly.

  Eamon exhaled a bluish stream of cold vapor, laughing in derision.

  “And from his sanctified church,” added the Pontiff.

  Peals of laughter shook Eamon’s body. He raised his arms lovingly toward the unholy altar lamp.

  “My church!” he roared. “My priest!”

  The altar lamp swung wildly. Veils of burning oil slipped from the reservoir basin. Small balls of fire scattered, stinking, onto the church floor and around Francis Xavier’s feet.

  “MY WORLD!”

  The tortured laughter of the Jesuit rang out into the hard sunlight of Golgotha Falls. It was a mesmerizing sound. The kneeling crowds before the church clasped their hands before them. Several policemen sank to their knees and removed their caps. The cynics of the television teams also found themselves moved, as within the church the windless atmosphere shook with the demented laughter of the fallen priest.

  “Per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum Filium tuum—”

  Cardinal Bellocchi’s exquisite voice rose in ascending scales, confident and masculine, leading the priests and the Christians gathered before the church, who signified;

  “Qui venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos—”

  From within the church the clear voice of Francis Xavier joined the prayer.

  “Propitius esto, exaudi nos, Domine—”

  Cardinal Kennedy and Bishop McElroy translated in English. “From all evil, deliver us, O Lord.”

  “Ab omni peccato, a morte perpetua—”

  “From all sin, from everlasting death.”

  “Per mysterium sanctae Incarnationis tuae—”

  “Through the mystery of Thy Holy Incarnation.”

  The WABC sound recorders registered all.

  Then, as if by some innate sense, all heads raised from their prayers and looked upward into the east. Massive, boiling cloud formations moved toward Golgotha Falls.

  Anita stood in the cemetery, a sudden wind whipping through her hair. Dean Osborne, standing beside her, loosened his tie and removed his coat.

  Anita noticed how pallid his face had turned, how his hands trembled.

  “Something extraordinary is happening,” he whispered.

  Anita scrutinized the eyes grown dark, excited, eager, extraordinarily eager as he scanned the skies, the crowd, the pale and gleaming church.

  “I studied mass psychology,” he said. “My God, Anita, something unprecedented is going on here!”

  Anita listened to the chanting emerging from the church and the responses of the throng. She gazed at the uplifted faces, even the children’s, suffused with a belief she found stirring.

  “Is that all it is?” she asked. “Mass psychology?”

  Dean Osborne brushed his hair down against the wind and watched her step away to study the faces of the crowd.

  “You can feel it,” Dean Osborne maintained. “What these people feel. It charges the air.”

  Dean Osborne stepped up to Anita and took her elbow.

  “Their reality has fused into a collective emotion,” he explained. “By God, I recognize it now!”

  “Their reality?” Anita said gently, looking him directly in the eyes. “Why isn’t it—simply—reality—?”

  Taken aback, Dean Osborne was momentarily stopped. He let go of her arm. Anita turned to the crowds again.

  “The ultimate reality . . .” she whispered.

  Dean Osborne nervously paced the edge of the cemetery. Fragments of theory, ideas now ten years out of date, surged through his brain. Yet he felt extraordinary in the presence of such a mass phenomenon.

  He even felt, though easily resisted, the temptation to kneel and pray with the crowds.

  Mario pressed his face against the squad car window. Figures in the cemetery reminded him of Anita and Dean Osborne. Hallucinations? Mario shook his head, trying to clear his mind. When he looked again he was certain it was Anita. The beefy body of a policeman blocked his view.

  “Nice ass,” he commented. “She a buddy of yours?”

  “Yes,” Mario replied quietly.

&nbs
p; “What’s her business, blowing up bridges?”

  “She’s a parapsychologist.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “A scientific discipline.”

  “Well, whatever it is,” the policeman leered, “I might just enroll in it someday.”

  But Mario wasn’t listening. Had that really been Dean Osborne? What could bring him to the Golgotha Falls site?

  Pope Francis Xavier and Eamon became visible through the Gothic window. In the altar light the two seemed caught in a momentary stasis. Mario felt the old sensations of reverence toward the Holy Pontiff rise despite all the years of psychoanalysis and scientific training. In some deep corner of his heart, Mario realized, the Church had indeed sunk its shaft. With a start he saw Francis Xavier suddenly leap forward, grab Eamon’s right wrist, and pull it toward him.

  “I have come for you, Eamon Malcolm!” he whispered, searching for the lost soul within the cagey face.

  Eamon tried to shake off Francis Xavier’s grip. But the strong hands of the peasant tightened around the wrist. Francis Xavier’s deep gray eyes bore into Eamon’s.

  “Pray with me, Eamon!” Francis Xavier commanded. “Give your soul back to Christ!”

  Eamon wrestled against the grip, but to no avail. His nostrils ran with mucus. His bloodshot eyes looked back in mute horror.

  Astounded, Francis Xavier saw in Eamon the priest he once must have been. A passion seemed to burn within that knew no bounds. It had no trappings of ecclesiastical power. It flared with a terrifying, vulnerable purity.

  “Let me go!” rasped the foreign, obscene voice out of Eamon’s lips.

  Francis Xavier looked deeper into those blue, supplicating eyes. Suddenly the mission to Golgotha Falls was revealed. The endless incognito visits to grottoes, crypts, and parish churches around the world had had but this as their goal: to find the fierce, eternal flame of faith that had once consumed him so utterly as a boy in San Rignazzi.

  “Pray with me, Eamon!” Francis Xavier whispered again. “As a child prays. Without reservation. Your whole heart must believe; you must call for Christ to enter your heart again!”

  “I—can’t—” Eamon faltered, a cracked human voice rising momentarily from its imprisonment.

  Francis Xavier’s eyes brightened at having achieved the slight contact with Eamon’s inner spirit.

  “Then I shall show you how, my son,” he said very gently.

  Francis Xavier guided Eamon down, down to his knees before the altar. Gently the peasant hands folded Eamon’s into the attitude of prayer. Francis Xavier smiled encouragingly.

  Suddenly a terrible nausea swept through Eamon and he doubled over. Francis Xavier raised him again.

  “Holy Father,” Eamon managed to whisper. “I shall surely die.”

  Francis Xavier, astounded at the intensity of Eamon’s torment, recognized a rare and extraordinary gift of faith.

  “He who believes in Christ,” Francis Xavier said lovingly, “shall never die.”

  From deep within the confinement of an evil so abhorrent that he longed for death, Eamon saw the gleaming pectoral cross, the immaculate vestments, and the distinguished, dreamlike Sicilian face in the darkness of the church.

  Dimly, Eamon understood that he himself had been chosen as the vehicle of a struggle so profound it threatened the earth itself with destruction.

  Freely the charisma of Francis Xavier came flowing in, burning away the corrosion, and Eamon dared to rise, spiritually, toward that force.

  Francis Xavier folded his hands in prayer and eyed Eamon significantly.

  “Say as I do, Eamon,” he whispered.

  Eamon felt the devil rise within himself. It formed an indomitable wall of vileness, an arrogant, suffocating power, and he began to choke. Eamon closed his eyes and felt himself slipping back into the deep tunnel of imprisonment.

  “Propitius esto, parce nobis, Domine,” Francis Xavier began.

  The words penetrated Eamon like a beacon. With cracked lips, terrified of revenge, Eamon suddenly placed his faith in Francis Xavier.

  “From all evil, deliver us, O Lord,” Eamon repeated in English.

  Visions of white chameleons, bellies trailing blood, assailed him behind closed eyes. The force that imprisoned him sent clouds of insects, vile hallucinations, to plague the devout brain.

  In the silence he felt the proximity of Francis Xavier.

  “Ab omni peccato, a morte perpetua,” Francis Xavier said calmly.

  “From all sin, from everlasting death!”

  It was a plea from Eamon’s heart, so anguished that Francis Xavier opened his eyes and studied the face of the tortured priest. It was a subtle echo of his own desperate wanderings to grottoes and crypts and parish churches.

  “Per mysterium sanctae Incarnationis tuae,” Francis Xavier continued boldly.

  But the devotion was broken. Eamon slipped down, back to the dark well in which he was drowning. On the Jesuit’s face once again was the malevolent, triumphant snicker.

  Eamon darted out his black tongue and crossed himself with a foul gesture.

  “By the—m-m-m-mystery of the holy In-In-In-Incarnation-n-n,” he mocked.

  Distraught, Francis Xavier closed his eyes, searching again for the meditative strength.

  “Per adventum Spiritis Sancti, in die judicii—”

  Eamon laughed loudly.

  “The D-D-Day of Judgment!” Eamon roared sarcastically. “Where is your fucking Day of Judgment, Baldoni?”

  Francis Xavier felt the Jesuit slip away into the vile blackness, a rebuke to himself, and suddenly he realized the risk.

  If he, as head of the Roman Catholic Church, could not perform the exorcism due to a flaw in his own spiritual nature, then all was lost.

  Blue luminescences swarmed at Francis Xavier’s face and vestments, alighting on the gold cross, feeding at long last on the Sicilian.

  Eamon came close, confident and arrogant.

  “I deceived you with child’s tricks, Giacomo Baldoni, playing on your vanity,” he hissed.

  Francis Xavier groped for some prayer to concentrate on, losing his way, then began stuttering the Litany of Saints.

  “Your ceremonials stink of vanity!” Eamon shouted, drowning out the litany. “Your vestments hang heavy with gold!”

  Francis Xavier felt the déjà vu. It was like a wave of encompassing darkness. He lost balance, reaching for the defiled altar linen.

  “Rome sits on its gold bullion while children starve!” Eamon shrieked. “The Pope runs to grottoes and caves and parish churches, searching for the lost soul of his own religion!”

  “Sancte Michaello, ora pro nobis. Sancte Gabriello, ora pro nobis. Sancte Giuseppe, ora pro nobis,” Francis Xavier gasped.

  “You are lost, Baldoni,” Eamon shouted. “Lost under the wealth of two thousand years! Lost under the pomp of your own vanity! Lost under the weight of politicians who betrayed the simplicity of Christ! Lost, Baldoni, like a sheep in the San Rignazzi river gorge!”

  . . . Lost . . . Lost . . . Lost . . . came the mournful echo from the apse.

  Eamon smiled disdainfully. He flicked at the gold buttons, the gold pectoral cross on the white vestment. He traced his finger along the gold embroidery of the immaculate white cape.

  “Pimp,” Eamon whispered. “Pimp of Christ!”

  Francis Xavier felt a great heat invade his brain. The doubts seeded by the supreme trickster were blossoming into corrosive despair.

  “Where is your Second Coming?” Eamon taunted. “Where is your Resurrection?”

  Desperately Francis Xavier floundered among the images of San Rignazzi. In that harsh landscape he saw his father, whose body grew stronger with each bad harvest, whose voice in the church sang louder with every death, every illness, every disease of the olive groves. For prayer is a weapon, he had been taught, and it attacks Satan in the very abode of evil: the wavering and despair of the human heart.

  Silently Francis Xavier called on his father�
�s faith.

  “Sancte Joannes Baptista, ora pro nobis. Omni sancti Angeli et Archangeli, orate pro nobis!”

  But the power seeded in Eamon perceived a subtle quality of fear and doubt in Francis Xavier.

  Eamon leaned over the crouched form. “You’re naked, Baldoni,” Eamon whispered. “All your vestments, all your gold, all your Vatican riches cannot assuage your misery now!”

  Vague auditory hallucinations stirred behind Francis Xavier.

  When he turned to look over his shoulder, he saw to his horror a congregation of deathly waxen figures sitting in the pews, skins varnished in a disfiguring, obscene manner, in old-fashioned Victorian dresses, scraggly hair under shredding bonnets.

  Hooves thundered in the aspe. Francis Xavier whirled. A lascivious goat leaped among the shadows, pink tongue flicking wetly, a priest’s cassock caught on its horns.

  Francis Xavier closed his eyes, trembling, but Eamon’s voice continued hot in his ears.

  “We are joined this instant, Giacomo Baldoni,” he breathed. “From this hour, whatsoever you say, it shall be with my tongue. Whatsoever you decree, it shall be with my signature.”

  Suddenly there was a subtle stillness behind the altar. Francis Xavier opened his eyes.

  He saw his own likeness, resplendent on the Vatican throne, holding the Shepherd’s Crook, and the vestments glistened like a thousand stars under the altar lamp. But the smile on the face was twisted. Two ram’s horns curled up from under the pontifical miter.

  “Dear Christ—” Francis Xavier gasped, shielding his eyes with his arm, his voice rising in an agonized cry, “HELP ME!”

  Eddie Fremont wandered alone on the ridge above Golgotha Valley. The praying throng drew him, called him away from the cars, pickup trucks, and station wagons stranded behind the police barricades.

  The strange day, the strangest in young Eddie’s memory, had begun in the darkness with the radio announcing something extraordinary at the Boston airport. Then came the rumors from neighbors, and the race to the industrial parking lot packed with workers, priests, and nuns. And the strange sense of illumination when the distant Holy Father, a figure in white under the storm clouds, blessed them all.