Deus Vult

by Declan Finn

  Minniva looked at me, then at everyone else. “How many times has this happened?”

  Mariel sighed as she cupped my cheek with her hand. “I’ve lost count.”

  I thought over the last moments before everything turned to pain. I looked at Pearson. “You said something about a professor? Dunwich University?”

  Pearson nodded. “Professor Noah Whateley,” he answered. “Makes Peter Singer look like Mother Theresa, is I believe what I said.”

  Minniva frowned. “Who’s Singer?”

  Pearson closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “Bioethics professor over at Princeton University. Probably evidence that evolution is reversible. Singer’s entire deal is the right to life is tied to pain and pleasure. Abortion is perfectly fine, since ‘they’re not rational or self-aware.’ Thus under that rationale, they can hold no preferences. The baby can’t object. Therefore, a mother’s preference to have an abortion automatically takes precedence.”

  Minniva’s face went through several iterations as she processed this. Her brow furrowed, and her mouth bunched up in thought. “Okay? I guess?” She shrugged. “It doesn’t sound any different from any other argument.”

  Pearson held his hands up, acknowledging that. He didn’t argue any position of the faith but moved forward. “Singer also applies this to newborn babies. ‘Killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person.’ And he has clarified that even if life does begin at conception, that isn’t ‘sufficient to show that it is wrong to kill it.’ ”

  Minniva’s mouth dropped, and she raised a hand, about to speak. She paused, then shook her head. “Listen. I am a glorified sales rep. I don’t know much outside my field. But, um, doesn’t that sound like an argument used by every other ethnic cleanser?”

  I tried not to laugh at her phrase. “Ethnic cleanser” made it sounds like taking bleach to a family tree. Maybe something to mix with amniotic fluid in utero to make certain that there were no genetic defects.

  Pearson nodded. “Oh yes. He’s all for infanticide. He’s all for euthanasia–I think he even coined the term non-voluntary euthanasia.”

  Minniva was speechless. Her hand came up and waved around, as though she were in the middle of a rant, but nothing came out. “What? Non-voluntary? Tell me that’s not actually something a real human being has said after 1945.” She pointed at Pearson and his Roman collar. “You. Don’t you have a phrase for this? Sanctity of life or something? Doesn’t all that go against … this?”

  Pearson smiled, almost a laugh. “Oh, Singer agrees. He thinks it’s outdated, unscientific, and irrelevant. He says he’s far more interested in elevating animals, not lowering humans. We won’t go into Holocaust Surviver and Nazi Hunter Simon Wiesenthal’s opinion of him. Though he was fairly nice about it.

  “But despite all of that, Singer took care of his aging mother until the very end. She had Alzheimer’s. He could never explain why. Not even to himself.” Pearson rolled his eyes. “Because apparently, he didn’t even consider that caring for your parents is a naturally-occurring process. But that would require he consider a natural law that wasn’t pure pain/pleasure.”

  Minniva grimaced. “And what about this Noah Whateley guy?”

  “Oh, he thinks that you can kill any offspring up to age ten without any consequences since no child is really rational until then. Maybe the harshest penalty is like for the first offense at animal cruelty. At the other end, he insists that anyone over the age of 75 has a duty to die. If they don’t exercise that duty themselves, then it should be inflicted upon them. After all, they would eat up Medicare after a while. If you have cancer of a certain stage, insurance shouldn’t be obliged to pay for it, nor should anyone else. He’s for ethnic preferences in terms of medical care–triage should be less about who is most likely to be saved and more about the color of people’s skin. Since white people have more privilege, their obligation is to die whenever possible. The fewer people there are, the more resources there are. It’s very much recycled Malthus and Ehrlich, only with more Gaia and environmentalism thrown in.”

  Minniva, the head of sales, just stared blankly as Father Pearson threw in more names she didn’t know. The priest sighed and said, “He thinks that the villain Thanos is the real hero of the Marvel movies.”

  “Oh.”

  The nightmares that evening weren’t strictly nightmares. They were more like flashbacks.

  Every minute of my sleep was an endless stream of my deaths. Not the painless moments of bloodless death in Rikers, where an artery had been nicked during a firefight. No. It was the painful, horrific ones. All of them. The impalement on bars ripped from concrete. Twice. Being beaten to death by an angry mob with cricket bats. Being burned alive with Molotov cocktails as the fire slid down my throat like a snake made of napalm. Or when the shadows of London came alive and speared my hands and sides, reeled me in and ate me alive.

  And, of course, last night. The bugs. The rats. The thing in the dark.

  All of those incidents were comparatively quick the first time. Unlike the original deaths, these nightmares moved painstakingly slow. First time through, these had been over in seconds–at most, minutes. Each death in my dream allowed me to appreciate every second. Each individual spear to my chest felt like a separate and particular instance. Instead of a quick spear of darkness, they were slow drills. I felt each bite of bug and rat.

  No matter how many times I had been killed in action, I had always walked it off. In part because my deaths, though vivid and real, had always been quick. Had I been awake for this experience, I’m certain one theory would be PTSD catching up with me.

  But during my sleep, I had known, for a fact, that I had woken up in Hell.

  I woke up with a start at 5:30 in the morning as my alarm went off. I shot straight up and scrambled to put my back against the headboard. I looked around for the nightmares waiting for me. My breath came quick and pulsing, like I was in the middle of a speed record while lifting weights.

  Mariel was already awake and watching me. Her eyes were wide and startled. “Tommy. You’re bleeding.”

  I looked down. Blood covered my side and my arms. Only some of it got on the sheets. I brought my hands up to my face. I saw right through the holes in the palms. The scars had opened up and turned into holes that punched right through my hands.

  I winced, but flexed my fingers. There was no pain. I reached for and ripped off the blanket to check. The scar in my side had also opened up. The same with my feet.

  The door burst open, and Lena charged into the room. She looked around for a threat, then locked onto us. “Hussar. Are you okay?”

  I held my hands up with a smile. “Don’t shoot. Nothing … all that wrong. I think.”

  Lena smiled. “Stigmata! Yay!”

  I winced internally this time. I was not interested in showing off … anything, really. Stigmata was usually empathy with the Crucifixion taken to such a degree that the wounds of the Crucifixion manifested on the one doing the meditating. It was the sort of thing that appeared on someone who would become a saint.

  My first thought was how to cover it up.

  Don’t get me wrong, even at the time I knew that it was an honor. God wouldn’t allow such a thing to happen unless He thought I was deserving.

  However, one of the few things I prided myself on was that I didn’t shove my faith into other people’s faces. Yes, I was at every church function that didn’t drive me insane, but I was support. I was background. One of my biggest takeaways from the bible was Jesus’ suggestion that one should avoid praying in public on street corners but to go pray in a closet. (You’d think the closet would be extreme, but during the time of Jesus, it may have been the only way to get even a modicum of privacy within one’s own home.) While I didn’t go pray in a closet, I tended to keep my rosary out of sight, or otherwise spend my time trying to blend into the background.

  Displaying stigmata? It wasn’t quite the exact opposite.

  T
here was another problem I had to consider–the amount of fights I got into. Making a fist would at least put one finger in the wound. I didn’t know if there was concern about lint in stigmatic wounds.

  “I’m going to need some bandages. And gloves.” I smiled at Lena. “You think you can manage that?”

  Lena nodded eagerly and ran off.

  I swung my legs out of bed and bit back a groan. Trying to move made me feel like I was still in the body that had been dismembered last night. My joints and muscles hurt.

  I said a quick Our Father as I willed the Soul Ring to kick in and heal any wounds in my arms (not my hands, I wasn’t going to spit that in God’s face). It didn’t work. It only took me a second to realize why it didn’t work–I wasn’t actually hurt. I didn’t know if the pain was spiritual or psychological, and I didn’t want to ask too closely.

  “Did you sleep well?” Mariel asked. “You were thrashing in your sleep.”

  “Bad dreams,” I told her as honestly as I could.

  Mariel let out a breath. “Whew. Well, not surprising, considering what you’ve been through.”

  I smiled as reassuringly as I could. “Probably.”

  As Lena came in, and she and Mariel worked on bandaging me up, I dwelled on my night of horrors. Only one solution came to me: demonic assault. I’d had the experience only once before, and that sucked. It seemed whatever we faced had had enough and had sent up a flare for help. And Hell obliged.

  After they finished wrapping up my hands and feet, I thanked them and told them I was going to church.

  Lena patted me on the leg. “I will go with you.”

  “You don’t have to–”

  She waved away my objections like I was talking nonsense and ran off for her bedroom.

  14 Campus of Shadows

  A quick visit to morning mass cleared up most of my aches and pains. I had a coughing fit so hard that I had to leave mass for a few minutes. I coughed up three nails that dissolved on the pavement.

  So I was cursed on top of that. Yay.

  By the time mass ended, I easily able took communion. Since Lena and I were the only people on our side of the church, the two of us finished off the chalice.

  As we walked out of the church, Lena patted me on the hand as though I were a lost puppy she had to console.

  Breakfast was more like a war meeting.

  The first topic was the priority. That was getting Minniva to safety.

  Minniva wore a heather gray, short-sleeved light mock turtleneck that fit her more like a tunic, plus dark blue yoga pants obviously borrowed from Sinead. Her navy high top sneakers looked more like Jeremy’s, but I wasn’t going to ask. We weren’t going to ask her to run around in the scarred Louboutins she’d arrived in. She twitched a little but seemed relatively calm. Mariel had opted for something more practical than yesterday. She wore black jeans and charcoal cotton shirt with rolled-up sleeves. Paired with old Blundstone steel-toed boots I hadn’t seen in a while. Grace was loosely draped in a cotton blanket while sporting a Tardis blue “Relax, I’m the Doctor” onesie Jeremy had picked up somewhere. Jeremy was, of course, wearing an Iron Man t-shirt and jeans. He gestured at the brassy image of an armored Tony Stark and gave me a thumbs-up to let me know he wore it in my honor. Sinead wore a cream-colored long-sleeved tee and dark slim jeans, plus her ever-present Israeli army boots.

  Sinead shrugged. “I have no problem with driving her out of the area. A few hours in the car should get her away somewhere safe.”

  Mariel frowned as she held Grace. “I don’t like you two going out by yourselves. You’ll be a moving target. I think you should have more backup.” She tilted the chair back from the dining room table. “Though on the other hand, I’m not sure how we’d mix and match.”

  I winced at her predicament. If we didn’t have a newborn, I would have suggested that Jeremy go with all of the ladies into one car. That way there would be enough firepower in one car.

  Then again, there was a way of doubling the firepower with Sinead as well as maintaining manpower in the house.

  “Lena, would you mind going with Doctor Holland and Miss Atwood?”

  Lena looked up from her breakfast, delicately trying not to get anything on her pink dress. She nodded eagerly. “Of course, Hussar. I hope that they come for us. I want to see what happens when I blow out tires at nearly a hundred kilometers an hour!”

  Jeremy grinned. “That would be so cool.” The two children high-fived.

  Alex casually sipped his coffee. “I think the kid’s gonna fit in perfectly around here.” Alex was in his usual cop casual uniform of khaki pants and golf shirt, this time a green and white number from the Connecticut branch of the National Association of Fire Investigators. I turned my mind away from speculating on how he managed to acquire it.

  “Once we’re done getting Minniva to safety, I think we should go to the beach,” Mariel said casually, trying to deflect from the violence of children.

  Pearson merely rolled his eyes over his mug of tea. “And what about our day’s objective? Hmm? Mister Herbert West?”

  I shrugged. “Actually, I thought we could swing by Dunwich University. Last night made me curious what a guy like Matchett could get out of donating so much money to a college professor involved in bioethics.”

  Pearson frowned distastefully. “Wasn’t last night more than enough? Do you really want to know more about the man?”

  I smiled. “Think of it this way. It’ll be some intelligence gathering. And we’re going to need as much intelligence as possible when it comes down to it. West will be an interrogation. Possibly a firefight and an interrogation with pliers. Whateley will just be reconnaissance.”

  Alex and Pearson both looked at me like I was insane. Alex replied, “Did you just say ‘how hard could it be?’ I’ll go get my chemicals.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Father Pearson, what’s the word on the package from Rome?”

  He checked his phone. “I got a message at three this morning. It’s en route. And it’s a nine-hour flight from Rome.”

  “Noon then. Good. We have time to kill.”

  Dunwich University was a pleasant little campus. The buildings were all made of stone, and relatively short. Some of the smaller buildings were modified homes and cottages. They had their own little stone chapel with a small graveyard in the back. While paths lead throughout the campus, everything else was grass. Most of the paths weren’t wide enough for five people to walk shoulder-to-shoulder down the walkway.

  There were only a handful of students actually out and about. They seemed standard for late teenagers and early adults. Some sat on wooden benches, chatting amicably with books in their lap. Others wandered the campus, backpacks fully loaded and heavy with books. There were even the usual smattering of students with their smartphones out, staring blankly into them, as though the phones were smarter than they were.

  And every so often, there would be a shirt, or a flier hung up on a tree or a bulletin board, that referred to the university as “Old Miss” or even “Old Missy.”

  How do you give a University a nickname like “Old Missy” from “Dunwich”?

  “What do you figure?” Alex asked. “A hundred students?”

  Pearson shook his head. “No. Not quite. I’m thinking more along the lines of two or three hundred. You’d be surprised how many people you can fit onto a campus. Especially if you have night classes.”

  I said nothing as the two of them continued to bicker over the campus population. It was one of those places that felt comfortable to a city dweller like me, but laid back enough to be considered almost a vacation. It wasn’t anything like Oxford, but it felt similar. It was, externally, peaceful.

  For no reason I could give, the campus felt … off. There was no smell of evil. There were no strange sounds, unless one thought that the breeze was odd.

  It took a moment for me to realize that the armor was giving me a tingling sensation.

  Okay, okay, I thought. I know. So
mething’s wrong here. We figure out what, and we can proceed.

  The building for the bioethics department was another house. It was a nice home. It was two stories, with a lot of windows, with metal siding, painted yellow.

  Pearson knocked first.

  After a minute, a man in a smoking jacket appeared at the front door. He had just barely entered middle age. He was a big man. He had four inches on me in height, and about a foot in width. His forehead was so broad, it nearly looked like he was balding. His hair was a light brown, or a dirty blond. It was a little long, only a few inches from being tied together in a ponytail. His facial hair was somewhere between “five o’clock shadow” and “goatee.”

  “You seem a little old to be students,” he said.

  “We’re not,” Alex told him. He flashed his badge so fast, no one could have read that he was from the NYPD. “And you are?”

  He smiled easily. His hands in his pockets, he seemed calm. “Professor Noah Whateley. Chair of bioethics for Old Miss.”

  Whateley seemed unconcerned with our presence. If two cops and a priest showed up on my doorstep, I would assume that Alex had died when I wasn’t looking and had been shot in the line of duty. If I were a civilian, what would be the first thing to come to mind?

  Pearson nodded. “We’re doing a little bit of research on one of your benefactors. A Mister George Matchett?”

  Whateley shrugged. He didn’t even bat an eye. In fact, he glanced at me and smiled a little. He knew something I didn’t, and he enjoyed the secret. “Yeah. Sure. I know him.”

  “What we were wondering is what could he have contributed to?” Alex asked. “Matchett himself doesn’t seem to be very much in the biotech industries.”

  Professor Whateley glanced at me again as he answered. I hadn’t even asked him a question yet, so what could he have possibly found so interesting about me?

  “George Matchett simply approves of my philosophy in bioethics.” He turned his gaze to Father Pearson. “You may have heard of some of my positions on the chaff in our society?” He waved his hand dismissively, as though banishing refuse to the outer darkness. “The under-ten and the over-seventy crowd can easily go. It’s not a terribly uncommon thought within our society, but most people seem to stop there. Yes, these people are parasites on society. Yes, they contribute nothing while consuming many of the goods and services we use. Ask any new parent what the cost of a child is like. Ask anyone with overweight and senile parents what it’s like when they fall down, and the caretakers need a derrick to pick them up off the floor. However, no one seems to wonder, why only restrict this by age? It’s only natural that’s what we should be thinking.”