The sky was like a dirty window, gray with a grime that let no sun cut through. Light the color of lead fell into the dining room as Mrs. Farley threw open the drapes. “Look at it,” she muttered, shaking her head, “bright and clear for a week, and more good weather predicted, and now look at it.” Sounds of early Mass seeped in from the church. “And on Sunday too.”
“That’s right,” said Gregory, “it is Sunday. I’d forgotten.” He rubbed a hand over his stubbled, fatigue-pale face. “I wonder how Father Stefanski’s assistant is getting along?”
The Bishop, pouring himself a cup of coffee, said, “Well enough, I should judge, by the sounds. Don’t worry about that.”
Mrs. Farley uncovered a small mountain of buttered toast. “Tuck into that now,” she said.
“Just coffee for me,” said Gregory, still bewildered by the dream.
“It’s been coffee all night, Father,” said the housekeeper sternly, “and nothing to eat since early yesterday. You’ll eat a bit of toast too this morning or I’ll have you sick on my hands.”
“A good suggestion,” agreed the Bishop. He quickly said grace and reached for the toast. Gregory began to toy with a slice, and soon was wolfing it down.
“I can have scrambled eggs ready in a jiffy,” said Mrs. Farley.
“No, really,” said Gregory.
“Eggs don’t agree with me,” announced the Bishop, “nor I with them. But a little jam? . . .”
Nodding, Mrs. Farley left for the kitchen.
“How many times did we perform the ritual?” asked Gregory. “I lost count.”
“Six, I believe,” replied the Bishop. “Six times completely, that is. I’m not counting the times we were interrupted by her and had to start from the beginning again.”
“How long do you think it will take?”
The Bishop shrugged. “There is no way of telling. One such case took ten days, as Mrs. Farley has told us. Another took twenty-three.”
“Twenty-three days!”
The Bishop nodded. “Earling, Iowa, 1928. The opponent was formidable. He still is.” He looked up at the younger man as he said this. Gregory did not respond. “You still doubt? Even after he told you his name?”
“I still—”
Mrs. Farley came back, bearing several jampots. “There’s strawberry, damson plum, and—yes, apricot,” she said as she set them on the table.
“Thank you,” said the Bishop. Mrs. Farley returned to her kitchen.
“I still reserve judgment,” said Gregory. “His name was spoken by the lips of a human being.”
“Lips moved by him, moved like the lips of a puppet to form his words, not hers.”
“Perhaps. But perhaps the words were hers. Those names of Satan—she could have read them somewhere, anywhere. She likes books.”
“And the filth?”
The filth had come in a torrent after a while. It came in the form of epithets first, and then, when the agony climbed to unbearable peaks, it took the form of offers; offers so vile and so increasingly recondite that Mrs. Farley had to be sent from the room. “In what books did she read that stuff?” asked the Bishop.
“There are such books,” said Gregory. “For that matter, she could have read it on any of a dozen fences between here and her home—with very graphic illustrations to explain any words she might not know. And as for the rather flowery way she talked—it’s the standard period speech you can find in every hack historical novel and swashbuckler movie. She could have picked it up from late TV.”
“But why?”
“Why?” Gregory shrugged and sat back in his chair. “Why, in Salem, did hysterical young girls feign convulsions and declare a spell had been put upon them by old widow so-and-so, only to break down later when it was too late, when old widow so-and-so had been burned to a black crust at the stake, and admit they had been lying, that it had all been a figment of their girlish imaginations? I don’t know the answer to that one either. But it certainly was a surefire way to become the center of attention!”
“Then you think this girl—”
“I reserve judgment, that’s all. I reserve judgment. There was another, you know, another who demanded solid, seeable, touchable proof. Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into his side—I will not believe. And proof was given to him. Then he said to Thomas, Bring here thy finger, and see my hands; and bring here thy hand, and put it into my side; and be not unbelieving, but believing. Thomas answered and said to him, My Lord and my God!”
“Yes,” said the Bishop, pouring himself another cup of coffee. “Very much to the point and very well quoted, but why don’t you quote the rest? Jesus said to him, Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed. Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed.”
“All right,” snapped Gregory, rising and walking to the window. “Blessed are they. But proof was not denied Thomas. Nor was sainthood denied him. And yet he doubted. When others were ready to accept everything at face value, he withheld. I admire Thomas. He is my favorite among all the apostles, all the saints. I feel a kinship with him.”
“Fine,” said the Bishop, “as long as you don’t feel yourself his equal. It is not everyone God considers worthy or important enough to be provided with physical proof, Gregory. Don’t make the mistake of overestimating your own value. Don’t try to place yourself in the company of the apostles. It won’t work. The apostles were one thing, you and I are another.”
“Oh?” Gregory turned from the window and sardonically echoed the Bishop’s earlier words: “Have things changed that much? Love, hate, fear, pity, right and wrong, good and evil? Has God changed?”
The Bishop gently set his cup upon its saucer. “Touché, Gregory,” he said. “You win this round.”
• • •
It was all most distressing, thought Mrs. Barlow as she left the church. The fact that her new outfit had drawn admiring and envious glances from the congregation, the reassuring knowledge that she was, at forty, still the handsomest woman in the parish: these were not enough, this morning, to counteract the items of disturbing interlocking information she had been receiving of late. First, there was the thing Mrs. Dunham had told her some weeks before. Then what the Chandlers had spoken of just this morning. Not to mention the business about last night’s dinner. And now this . . .
A nervous young boy of a priest replacing Father Sargent at Mass. Without so much as an explanation. Mrs. Barlow did not like the unexpected. She lived an ordered life, and saw no reason why others should not do likewise. For this, she was respected, looked up to; it was her capacity for discipline and organization that had made her a leader in the community, and she owed it to the community to look into this matter. It was expected of her. She asked—rather, she told—her husband to go home; she would follow shortly, she said.
Then she walked directly up to the rectory door and rang the bell.
Mrs. Farley opened the door. “Ah, good morning to you, Mrs. Barlow,” she said.
“Good morning. Is the Father in?”
“He can’t see anyone right now, ma’am,” said Mrs. Farley, following instructions.
“He’s not ill, I hope?”
“Oh no, but—”
“You see,” Mrs. Barlow cut in, “we’re all worried about him. Won’t you please tell him I would like to see him?”
“But the Father said—”
“Please tell him I am here.” The pronunciamento had been delivered and Mrs. Farley bent under the weight of its authority.
“Well . . . won’t you step into the living room, please, ma’am? . . .” Mrs. Barlow was admitted to the rectory.
Left alone for a moment in the living room, she glanced about, like a detective making mental notes, looking for telltale clues. She was soon joined by Gregory.
“Good morning, Mrs. Barlow,” he said. “Won’t you sit down?”
“Thank you, Father.” She sat on a hard chair, her back straight, her ankles primly crossed. “I have just come from Mass. I was surprised to find another priest conducting the service. I feared you were perhaps indisposed.”
“No, no,” Gregory assured her, “but thank you for your concern.”
After an uncomfortable pause—she had given Gregory his cue, and his response had failed to measure up to her expectations—she said, “Everybody was disappointed not to see you this morning, Father. Some of our friends knew we had expected you for dinner last night and asked me why you weren’t saying Mass. I didn’t know what to tell them. We all assumed you were not feeling well. Are you sure you are all right? You look not quite yourself.”
“I’m fine, Mrs. Barlow,” said Gregory, passing a hand somewhat self-consciously over his unshaven face. “Just a little tired, I guess. I’m sorry about last night. Perhaps Mrs. Farley didn’t explain that I’m involved in some special work; a kind of instruction; it will prevent me from saying Mass for a few days.”
With a tolerant smile and disarming graciousness, Mrs. Barlow said, “I suppose it must take a lot out of you, being up all night.”
“Yes, I—” Too late, he realized he had fallen into a trap.
“Some people I know were up rather late, too, did not get home until three this morning, as a matter of fact. The Chandlers?”
“Oh yes.”
“They said they saw lights in the rectory at that time.”
Noncommittally, Gregory said, “That’s right.”
“They also said—but I find this hard to believe—”
“Go on, Mrs. Barlow.”
She made an embarrassed little gesture with shoulders and hands. “They said they heard sounds. Rather unusual sounds for a rectory. Loud laughter, feminine laughter, and high-pitched shrieks, and things being smashed, like glasses or bottles . . .”
“Oh?”
“They said it sounded like—” she laughed politely “—a wild party.”
Gregory echoed her polite laugh. “There was no party here last night, Mrs. Barlow,” he said, “wild or otherwise.”
“I see.” She frowned nervously down at her new kid gloves.
Gregory could hear footsteps in the bedroom above. He knew the Bishop was impatient to resume the exorcism. He said, “Is there anything else, Mrs. Barlow?”
“Only this.” Her manner became more direct. “I think you should know that I have a good many friends, rather influential friends, and not all of them belong to this parish.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t follow you.”
“Perhaps you remember the Dunham family,” she suggested.
“Dunham.” His mind tasted the name, and with identification came despair. “From St. Francis . . .”
“Yes, from your old parish.” The dagger had been plunged into him. Now, ill concealing the relish she felt, she could not resist giving it a little twist: “In short, Father, the reason for your recent transferal might be classed as an open secret.”
There was more movement upstairs than seemed good. Perhaps they were having trouble with the girl. Gregory found it difficult to pay full attention to Mrs. Barlow.
“Father Halloran was a very respected man here,” she was saying. “Any replacement of his has to fill a terribly big pair of shoes. We are broad-minded people in this parish, Father Sargent, none more broad-minded than myself, and we can overlook certain things, but when the replacement himself requires a replacement because of some ‘special instruction,’ and when there are rumors of wild parties, and when I find you unshaven on Sunday morning, unable to say Mass, what am I to—”
“Shit!”
The word, high and clear and in an unmistakably female voice, cut through walls and ceiling. It was followed by a curve of ribald laughter.
Gregory felt his palms ooze clammy sweat. Mrs. Barlow sat as if chiselled out of obsidian.
“What was that?” she asked, finally.
“Nothing . . .”
“What was it? Who was it?”
“Please,” said Gregory. “Whatever you’re thinking, you’re completely wrong. It’s someone I’m helping, someone who—”
“It came from upstairs.”
“I know, but—”
“Who do you have upstairs, Father?”
Gregory said nothing.
“Father, I have asked you a question, and as a leading parishioner—as well as in light of what we know of your career at St. Francis—I feel I am entitled to demand an answer. Who is that woman upstairs?”
“Mrs. Barlow,” said Gregory wearily, “you force me to tell you it is none of your business.”
“None of my—” A slap across the face could not have stunned her more. “Very well, Father Sargent,” she said at last. “I see I am not welcome in your—seraglio!” She turned and walked swiftly to the door. Before she left, she fired a parting shot. “Bishop Crimmings will hear of this.”
“He—” But she was gone.
The spare bedroom now had a strong carbolic odor. After Susan’s sickness of last night, Mrs. Farley had thoroughly scoured it with purging soaps and chemicals. Susan had been scoured, too. After she was safely inert from exhaustion, the housekeeper had peeled off her wet, befouled clothing, dumped her limp body into the tub in the adjoining bathroom and scrubbed her from head to foot. Then she had washed the girl’s clothes and hung them on the shower rod to dry. They were still dripping there, and Susan, tied again to the Procrustean bed, was clad in a single improvised garment which Mrs. Farley had made out of one of her own old cotton housedresses and a quantity of safety pins.
The disturbance the girl had created during Mrs. Barlow’s visit had been fleeting, Gregory noted as he walked into the bedroom, for she was now calm and breathing evenly. The Bishop asked about the visit, and Gregory told him quickly.
The Bishop saw the depth of Gregory’s depression in his face, and tried to make light of Mrs. Barlow and her lurid suspicions. “I wonder what she’ll think when she finds out you and I are partners in crime?” he said.
But Gregory could only think of his old disgrace, which he had thought was left behind him. “A fresh start, in a parish where nobody knows me . . . isn’t that what you said?” He looked imploringly at his bishop. “Your Excellency, how can I go on?”
“As we all go on, Gregory,” said the Bishop, kindly, “hour to hour and day to day, taking problems as they come and solving them. As they come: that’s important. First things first. Mrs. Barlow can wait. We have a more urgent problem we have not yet resolved.”
“Let’s get to it, then,” said Gregory, dutifully but without enthusiasm.
The ceremonial candles had burned down considerably. Stalactites of wax now hung from them in fantastic patterns. Gregory re-lit them. Mrs. Farley walked in and began to close the drapes, but Gregory said, “No need to do that in the daytime. We may as well take advantage of what little sunlight there is today.”
Mrs. Farley nodded. “A storm brewing for certain,” she said, jerking her head in the direction of the darkening sky.
Gregory took up the Rituale Romanum and stood over Susan. In a quiet voice, he began to read. When he came to the words “deliver us from the devil’s tyranny with great show,” Susan opened her eyes.
“With great show,” she said. “What manner of show will that be, I wonder? A glorious choir of the heavenly host, singing celestial chanties? Battalions of harps, filling the air with divine arpeggios? A display of fireworks, perhaps? Rockets’ red glare, bombs bursting in air?” She laughed derisively.
Gregory started from the beginning again. He got as far as “and capture the dragon . . .”
Venomously, the girl snarled, “You needn’t continue! I know it all by heart! I ought to—I’ve heard it often enough all night long. Capture the dragon, the ancient serpent who is Satan . . . Do I look like a dragon? Do I look like an ancient serpent? Lies and delusions, fables and myths!”
“. . . Capture the dragon, the ancient serpent who is Satan, and send him in chains into the Abyss, that he may no longer seduce the nations.”
“Seduce the nations?” She laughed lasciviously. “Ha, dissembler! It’s not the nations you’re afraid I’ll seduce, is it? It’s you!”
Gregory read on, heedless of her interruptions. He read rapidly, crossing himself sketchily between phrases, at the points indicated in the text by small crosses printed in red. His reading was punctuated by her progressively rising laughter and by the muffled, distant thunder that had begun, complementing the first feeble lightning flashes of the coming storm. This time she let him get as far as “The blood of the martyrs and the pious intercession of all the saints commands you.”
Then, “Command away!” she bawled.
Gregory pressed on to the end, anxious to finish. When he was through, she asked with scorn, “Why should I fear your babbling?”
Gregory picked up the crucifix. “And this,” he said, “do you not fear this?” His hand shot toward her face.
“Take it away!” she screamed. He did. When she spoke again, a fraction of her arrogance was lacking. “You stop at nothing, you priests. When are you going to bring out the red hot irons and the pincers? They’re next, I suppose!”
“I don’t need them,” said Gregory. “I have this.”
“Don’t bring it closer!”
“I won’t. Unless you force me to.”
“What is it you want to know?” she asked, sulkily. “You’ve already heard my name.”
“Yes,” said Gregory. “And I’ve heard you deny it a few hours later, too. But if you are Satan, I want to know why you are tormenting this girl.”
“You are her tormentor!”
“Answer me!”
“Well . . . why shouldn’t I tell you?” she said, half to herself. “I have possessed her so that I may drive her to suicide.”
“Why?”
“So that when she kills herself in her despair, she will become damned and be mine forever. Mine and his.”
“His?”
“She will dwell with me through eternity in the fire that gives no light, dwell with me and with him who cursed her.”
“Him who cursed her?”
“Him who summoned me by his fearful curse; him who said, in heartfelt malediction, To Hell with you; to Hell and the Devil with you; damn you, damn you to Hell!”
Gregory pulled up a chair and sat down. “Who said this? And why?”
“Oh,” the girl drawled slyly, “you might have said it, too. Just think, Father. Look at this pretty little wench so helpless on the bed beside you. See how sweet she is, how sweet and pink and round and soft. You say you are a man? Now just imagine—man!—that you were alone with her (you never have been alone with her, have you?), and in a position of authority, a position to command respect from her (you are in such a position, are you not?), and just suppose you decided to show her how sweet you thought she was and how affectionate you felt toward her. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” said Gregory. “Go on.”
“But she eludes you,” said the creature on the bed, “thwarts you, frustrates you. Again and again. And the feeling you have for her wells up within you until it is like a geyser at the point of eruption. And it seems, for a moment, that you will succeed, that you will break down her resistance by sheer physical force; but no, still she manages to hold you off. Do you see?”
“Yes, yes . . .”
“Well,” she concluded, “might not even you, Father, be tempted to curse her? To damn her soul to Hell and the Devil in your frustration?”
“Who was it?” asked Gregory. “Who tried to rape you?”
“Rape me?”
“All right then, rape her,” conceded Gregory, impatiently. “Who was it?”
“Ah,” said the girl, “how greedy you are. I answer one question and it only leads to another. Even the Inquisition was kinder than you are, Father. It lets its victims rest—for a little while, at least—after they had given satisfaction.”
Gregory was edgy with lack of sleep. The evasions of the girl tied to the bed were beginning to act like sandpaper on his nerves. He breathed deeply and said, with the appearance of patience, “Answer the question.”
The girl continued to toy with him. “And what if I don’t choose to?”
A flash of nearer lightning made Gregory’s face livid as he growled, “Answer the question!”
“You don’t know what you’re asking . . .”
Thunder, still blurred with distance, briefly cupped the rectory in its black sound.
“Tell me who tried to rape her!” Gregory insisted.
“Don’t make me answer!”
“Answer!”
“I’ll do anything! Anything for you! Listen, I’ll let you—”
“Enough of that!”
“You’ll like it—”
“Who was it?”
“—but you won’t like the answer to that question! Believe me, you won’t like it at all!”
“I don’t care! Tell me who it was!”
“Be satisfied with what you already know!”
For an instant, Gregory saw the weird sisters again, for what Susan had just said was uncomfortably like what the witches had told another relentless interrogator when he had pressed further questions upon them: “Seek to know no more!”
Lightning drenched the room with a baleful searing bluish white. “In the name of Jesus and Mary the Immaculate,” shouted Gregory, “tell me!”
“What if I told you it was—” Thunder ripped the sentence in two with an ear-smiting crack. “—Father Halloran?”
“Liar!” cried the Bishop, as the rain was unleashed against the window with a patter, then a swelling hiss, then a heavy, steady, unrelenting roar.