Surprisingly Simon nodded his head. “Is that what this is?” he asked somberly.
“I’m afraid so. They have nearly a hundred and fifty chapter houses in the southwest. They’re a group more powerful and more important than most people realize.”
“Would someone mind telling me what this is all about?” I asked.
“You will know soon enough, my friend,” Simon said, as a great stone villa came into view ahead. It stood on a flat bluff between two mountains, a relic of the Spanish conquerors forgotten by later men.
But the thing that riveted my eyes was on a hill just beyond the house. It was a great wooden cross, much too large to be simply the marker for a grave. There seemed to be some sort of banner or scarf attached to it, drifting gently in the breeze. “What’s that?” I asked.
Father Hadden didn’t even lift his eyes to it. He must have seen it many times before. “The cross,” he said simply. “You’ll see more of them inside.”
We parked in a worn brick driveway in front of the place, and I wondered about the absence of other cars. Certainly the people here must arrive somehow. Did they fly in on broomsticks or something?
There was a little cross over the door, too—a plain wooden one—and I suddenly supposed that this must be a monastery of some sort. I was about to put my thought into words when the great glass-and-metal door swung silently open in answer to our ring. The man who stood there wore a black hood over his head, a hood with only two eyeholes staring out at us. He was naked to waist, and there were a number of great bloody scratches across his chest. In that moment I thought I’d stepped into a madhouse, but there was worse to come.
The hooded doorkeeper led us in without a word, down a dim, dank hallway lit only by stained glass windows high on each side. Father Hadden hurried along with him and I could see they were speaking in low tones about the tragedy we had come to witness.
“What in hell is this anyway?” I whispered to Simon. But already we were starting down a flight of stone steps, and in a moment we found ourselves in a low, dark basement lit here and there by flickering candlelight. My first impression was that we were in a great storeroom full of life-size crucifixes. But then I realized with a chilling start that the figures on the crosses were alive, horribly fantastically alive!
There were perhaps twenty of the crosses in the room, reaching from floor almost to ceiling. And on each a nearly naked man was tied, his arms outstretched in the familiar attitude of Christ. Most of them wore only the black hoods and white loin cloths, though some had compromised by wearing bathing trunks. All had their arms and legs tied to the crosses with thick horsehair cords, and some showed the red marks of scourging on their bare chests and thighs. It was a scene from hell.
“What is this?” I gasped out. “A lodge initiation?”
“If it were only that simple,” Simon mused. And then Father Hadden shone his light on the cross at the far end of the room—and we saw there the greatest horror of all.
The last cross in the line had a man tied to it like all the others—a man wearing a black hood—but this one was different. From the left side of his body, slanting upward into his chest, protruded the slim steel shaft of a Spanish sword. …
“What is it, Simon? What is this madness?” I asked him later as we sat with Father Hadden in one of the upstairs rooms.
And Simon Ark closed his eyes and stared off into an unseeing world of his own mind. “The Brotherhood of Penitentes,” he began, very softly, “is an old, old society. Some trace its origin back to the Franciscan missionaries or even before. In a virgin country without priests or churches, perhaps it was only natural that some of the more passionate Spanish men should turn to self-torture as an act of devotion. A hundred years ago the practices of the Penitentes were so widespread and so brutal in the southwest that the Catholic Church was forced to ban such groups. But of course it didn’t stop them. They continued their rites of self-scourging and crucifixion in secret, wearing hoods to conceal their identity from the public, and sometimes from each other.”
“But if the group is banned by the Church, why does Father Hadden here deal with them?”
The priest himself answered my question. “A few years ago it was decided that the practices of the Penitentes had softened considerably, consisting now only of processions and mild scourging during Holy Week. They have again been recognized by the Church—or at least most of the chapters have been. Unfortunately, this morada is one that was not received back into the fold. Its practices continue as staggeringly brutal as they were fifty or a hundred years ago. You saw the basement—some say there have been times when the crucifixions were performed with nails rather than merely ropes. …”
“There have been deaths before?” Simon asked.
“There have been deaths,” the priest agreed. “Hushed up, but I hear of them sometimes. Never anything like this, though. I ask myself how it is possible that one of these men, in the midst of a religious fervor so great that it drove him to emulate the sufferings of Christ, could possibly commit murder.”
“Who was the man?” Simon asked. “I noticed your start of surprise downstairs when you removed the hood.”
“That is the thing that makes this all the more frightening,” Father Hadden answered. “The man is the owner of the Oasis.”
“The bar you mentioned earlier?”
The priest nodded. “The Oasis is all things to all men—drink, sex, sin, gambling. And Glen Summer is, or was, its owner and manager. His was the greatest sin of all.”
Simon frowned and was silent for a moment. Somewhere outside a cloud lifted from the sun and a single ray of light shot through one of the stained glass windows, bathing his face in a purple hue. “You believe a man like Summer would come to a place like this to atone for his sins in secret?”
“I believe it, Mr. Ark, because these others tell me it is true. But imagine what the people and the public will think! They will never believe it—they will never believe that good and evil can live side by side in the same man. They already circulate fantastic rumors about this place, and now they will claim Summer was kidnapped and murdered in some sort of religious ritual.”
I could see that Simon agreed with him. “It would be a fairly logical assumption, Father. But we have no choice except to call the local police. The murderer might not be so difficult to discover, after all. It must be one of those men downstairs.”
“But which of them, Mr. Ark? Which of them?”
Simon rose slowly from the chair and began to pace the floor, frowning. “If we sit in on the police questioning, we might learn something. How many are there downstairs?”
“Eighteen men, plus the one who let us in.”
“Who was he?”
“Their leader, in a way. His name is Juan Cruz. He’s Mexican, studied for the priesthood for a time, but was dropped because of practices like these. He drifted into the States about ten years ago and joined the Penitentes. I fear Cruz is the one who keeps this little group banded together. Without him they’d surely listen to me and funnel their passionate piety into more normal outlets.”
“You think this Cruz may have killed Summer?”
“Normally I’d answer yes to that. He was the only one not tied to a cross when we arrived, and certainly such a deed wouldn’t be beyond him if he thought it would bring some good. I have had many long talks with Juan Cruz and have yet to convince him that the end does not justify the means.” The priest paused and then continued after a moment. “And yet…I do not think he would endanger his group of Penitentes here by committing a murder during one of their rites of penance. He would kill Summer under certain conditions, but he would pick another time and another place.”
As if on cue the basement door opened and Juan Cruz appeared, fully dressed now and carrying the black hood he’d removed earlier. He was a bulky man, distinctly Spanish in appearance, with glistening black hair and tiny eyes to match. I disliked him immediately, but not for any action or word. Rather i
t was the dislike one often feels for a person of obvious superiority.
“They are all untied and dressed now,” he said quietly.
“Then we must call the police,” Father Hadden said. “There is no other way, Juan.”
“I suppose not,” the bulky man answered.
Simon Ark stepped once more into the purple spot of light that filtered down from above. “Do you know of any of these men who might have had a special reason for killing Glen Summer?”
“Certainly not,” Cruz answered. “He was a sinful man, but he was seeking the way back to God. I doubt if anyone else was even aware of his identity. That’s the purpose of the hoods, you know.”
“Who are the other eighteen?” Simon asked.
“For the most part they are simply poor Mexican laborers who have lived in sin for many years. A few are Americans, like Summer.”
“With the hoods to conceal identity it would be possible for an outsider to gain admittance, would it not?”
“Possible but most difficult,” Cruz replied. “I am careful.”
“The body has not been disturbed?”
“No.”
“Then I suggest we call the police immediately,” Simon said. “Too much time has already elapsed since the killing. Father Hadden and I will remain here while they question you and the others.”
Cruz nodded reluctantly and went off to the telephone. I noticed Simon motioning to me and I walked over to where he stood. “My friend, you can serve no purpose here, but you might serve a very useful one elsewhere. Perhaps you could take Father Hadden’s station wagon and drive to this place called the Oasis. You could be there when the word came in about Glen Summer, and you could see what reaction there was. It might be most interesting.”
It was agreeable with me, if only to get me away from the atmosphere of that place. Simon told Father Hadden of our plan and the priest nodded in agreement. “Take my car and see what you can learn,” he said. “You might especially observe the reaction of Summer’s wife, since I doubt very much if she knew he came to this place.”
I left them there and headed the dusty station wagon back down the road to Santa Marta. About halfway into town I passed the sheriff’s car, filled with grim-faced men, and a moment later the town’s ambulance-hearse followed.
It took me a little time to locate the Oasis, a few miles outside of town. It sat back from the road a ways, a long low building with a parking lot and a few trees around it. Now, in the afternoon sunlight, there were only two cars parked there, and the business seemed slow for a den of sin. I parked the station wagon and went inside.
The place was not unlike a thousand other bars back east. It was a neighborhood sort of joint, even out here in the middle of nowhere. Booths along one wall, the damp and glistening bar along the other. And curtains over an entrance to a back room. A bald bartender with a gray mustache was polishing glasses casually behind the bar, and the only customer appeared to be a good-looking blonde girl propped up on one of the bar stools. She was wearing a loose white blouse and blue shorts that were much too short. I guessed her age at twenty-five or younger, and the way she eyed me when I came in told me she wasn’t presently attached.
“What’ll you have?” the bartender asked without putting down the glass he was polishing.
“Beer,” I mumbled. “Too hot for anything else.” I picked out the stool just two away from the girl and lifted myself onto it. After a moment I asked, “Glen Summer around?”
The bartender placed a bottle of beer and a glass in front of me. He took his time about answering, as if trying to determine the reason for my question. Finally, he said, “Nope. Gone away today. Back tonight.”
“How about Mrs. Summer?”
“She’s in the back. Want I should get her?”
“No. Maybe I’ll wait for Glen.”
The girl in the blue shorts slid off her stool, her shapely thighs bulging a bit under the tight fabric. She picked up her glass, moved it over a bit, and sat down next to me. “Mind?” she asked in reply to my look.
“Why should I?”
“I need somebody to talk to. This town is dead dead dead.”
“So I’ve been noticing.”
“Nothing to do with your afternoons but drink them away. The Oasis is the only civilized place for fifty miles.”
She’d had a few drinks but she was far from drunk. Just unhappy, I decided. “You live in Santa Marta?”
“Nobody lives in Santa Marta. They only exist. A month ago I was working up in Denver. I lost my job and decided to travel south, and this is as far as I got.”
“What keeps you here if you don’t like it?”
She waved an arm in a vague gesture. “Oh, things. You know.”
I didn’t know, and I could see I wasn’t going to find out. “You know Glen Summer?”
“Sure do! He’s a swell fellow.”
“And his wife?”
“She’s a bitch, but that’s the way it usually turns out.”
I took a swallow of beer. “I came down through the mountains, past a big old house with a cross nearby on a hill. What is it, a convent or something?”
She peered at me from under half-closed lids. “A bunch of crazy religious nuts. They go up there and beat each other with whips and stuff. Supposed to be good for their souls.” She gave a little chuckle. “If they did it in New York they’d be locked up in ten minutes.”
“You from New York?”
“I’m from everywhere. You’re just full of questions, aren’t you?” She signaled the bartender to pour her another drink.
The only thing I’d decided about her was that she didn’t know about Summer and the Penitentes, and that wasn’t much. “What’s your name?” I asked, figuring there was nothing suspicious in the direct approach.
“Vicky Nelson,” she answered. “Twenty-four and unmarried.”
I told her my name, said I was from New York, but skipped the rest of the vital statistics. Before we could get in any more conversation I noticed a distant funnel of dust through the window. It was a car, traveling fast in our direction. A good guess told me it was the sheriff and I was right.
He was short and fat—why are sheriffs always fat?—and he wore a holstered revolver low on his hip like some left-over cowboy. He’d come alone to break the news to Mrs. Summer, and I figured that made her a pretty important person in his opinion.
“Delia around?” he asked the bartender.
“She’s in back, working on the books, Sheriff.”
“Get her for me. It’s important.”
The bartender muttered something under his breath and put down the damp cloth. As he went through the back curtains I caught a glimpse of multi-colored metal monsters lining the wall. The place was a little Las Vegas, complete with slot machines, and I was sure gambling wasn’t legal in this state.
After a moment the curtains parted once more and a tall middle-aged woman appeared. She might have been pretty once, but that day was long past. I discovered later she was only thirty-five, but just then I would have guessed her for over forty. “Hello, Sheriff. What’s the trouble?” she asked.
“I’ve got some bad news, Delia,” he said, ignoring the audience of Vicky and me. “It’s about Glen.”
“God—what happened to him?”
“Somebody killed him, Delia. Up at the morada. …”
“Killed him!” she gasped, her voice cracking. “At the morada?” I don’t know which surprised her more—the fact of her husband’s death or its place of occurrence. “What was he doing there?”
“He was…with them, Delia. He was taking part in their…rites, and somebody stabbed him with a sword.”
“I don’t believe it,” she screamed out. “You’re lying!”
The bartender came around the row of stools and took her arm. “Steady, Delia. Let me take you in back.”
The sheriff finally noticed us sitting there and nodded in agreement. “Let’s all go in back,” he decided. And the three of the
m disappeared through the curtains.
“Glen Summer—dead!” Vicky Nelson said when we were alone. “I just can’t believe it.”
“He was a good friend, eh?”
“He was a good guy. I’d only known him these few weeks but he was a good guy. Say, how come you were asking about that place where Glen got killed, mister?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Just coincidence. What have you heard about it?”
“Like I said, they’re huts. I sure didn’t figure Glen Summer for one of them.”
The sheriff came out of the back with Delia Summer and they got in his car. Her eyes were red but she was holding up well. The bartender returned, too, stepping behind his polished counter and picking up the damp cloth as if nothing had happened.
“Summer’s dead?” I asked him.
“Yeah.” He picked up another glass.
“How’d it happen?”
“Don’t know a thing, mister. You’ll have to ask the sheriff about it.”
“Thanks,” I said, and slid off the stool. I could see I wasn’t going to learn anything more here. “You want a ride anywhere?” I asked Vicky.
“Guess not, thanks. I need a few more of these.” She held up her glass. “See you around.”
“Yeah.” I went out and climbed back into Father Hadden’s station wagon, I didn’t want to go back to the villa in the mountains so I drove to the church where we’d first met the strange priest. It was only then, sitting there in the street before the great stone towers that I remembered the thing that had brought Simon and me to this place.
Father Hadden believed that he was a medium. That was an interesting thing to think about, at least. I didn’t remember ever hearing before about a priest who could communicate with the dead, though it did seem logical that if such things were at all possible a priest would be the person to do it.
I lit a cigarette and tried to conjure up a phantom in the smoke. If Father Hadden could talk to the dead, why couldn’t he talk to the departed Glen Summer and find out who shoved the sword into him? I filed away that thought for further conversation with Simon.
The Judges of Hades Page 8
