Purgatory

by K M Stross

  The letter stopped, to be continued on another page. Cross opened the second letter, expecting a continuation. But this letter was dirtier, scribbled on a piece of plain white paper. With no lines to dictate order, the words were written haphazardly in every direction.

  If we say that we have no sins, we deceive ourselves. If we tell others that we have no sins, we deceive ourselves. I have sinned, but I will be saved. I am a bad person. This place has forced me to sin on a daily basis. Staying in this church during the evenings, alone, hearing strange sounds and seeing things that I shouldn’t see. It forces me to drink. I must drink to fight back the sounds coming from the basement. There are sounds outside. I constantly smoke and hope my heart will speed up and eventually burst. I will not be forgiven if I commit suicide. Father Aaron believed little in forgiveness. His belief was of penance, of Old Testament justice, and I can only imagine what penance he would force me to perform for my sins.

  And yet, was he? When I spoke to his friend Michael Washington at the seminary, it seemed as though Aaron was an idealistic, quiet young man. What changed when he got here? Was it the strange noises? The visions?

  Ignorance is bliss. Ignorance is bliss. I equals B, it’s a chemical formula just like the ones I found in Father Aaron’s desk. The more I’ve learned about these so-called miracles, the more I worry. I cannot send any of my letters to the Vatican because I am too afraid to go outside. It’s always dark. There is no sunlight anymore. This church wouldn’t let me leave, anyway. Better to stay here with the blood of Christ and my carton of cigarettes. In the basement, there is a supply closet with a rope that can be fitted into a noose. To hell with hell.

  Cross turned the page over but found no more writing. He carefully thumbed through all four books, searching for any more loose pages. There were none. Everything looked untouched, and he left fingerprints in the dust. Sheriff Taylor had, at best, glanced in this office and then left it alone. There was no crime scene investigation, no confiscation of documents that might pertain to the case.

  “It’s dead,” he whispered. “There is no case.” Sheriff Taylor was leaving it open, in his words to do the “poor bastard” a favor. Cross searched the desk for some sort of keystone that would help everything fit together. The chemical formulas that Father McCormack mentioned. They weren’t in the desks. There was nothing in the desks, only a brass container in the bottom drawer along with a sacramental sash and Bible.

  But someone had been here. The books had been stacked, and the office supplies in the desk drawer were rifled through. There had been chemical formulas in here, Cross was sure of it. But someone had found them and removed them.

  Who?

  A shadow appeared in the window, causing Cross to fall back against the desk. His feet twisted under the desk chair’s leg, sending him into a tumble into the file cabinet against the wall. His hand was on his boot, holding the knife handle while his right eye scanned the direction of the window for whoever had passed by. He held his breath, waiting for the shadow to reappear.

  A small, solitary black crow hopped onto the desk. It glanced at him, squawking once before making its way to the stack of books and poking at one of the used cigarette butts with its beak.

  “Goddammit,” Cross muttered, pushing himself to his feet. He felt a sharp pain at the small of his back where it had bumped hard against the filing cabinet. “You scared the shit out of me.”

  The crow continued toying with the cigarette butt, pushing it around with its long yellow beak and caring little about the human in the room. Cross sat down on the desk chair and opened the bottom drawer, grabbing the brass container. He opened it and pulled out a sealed plastic bag of communion bread. He opened it and took one of the bread wafers, breaking it in two and tossing it in front of the crow. It jumped back a step, then slowly eased its way toward the wafer.

  “Body of Christ,” Cross said with a smile. “Given for you.” He watched the crow peck away at the wafer, then threw the other half at its feet.

  The crow cautiously stepped up to the other half, cocking its head and glancing at Cross.

  “Brandon Lee,” he muttered, wishing Cantrell was around to hear the obscure movie reference. “My own personal protector.”

  The crow stopped pecking the wafer and glanced up.

  “Last time I was here, I lost track of time,” Cross said. He rubbed his left eye. “That ever happen to you? Or am I just losing it?”

  The crow pecked at the wafer.

  Cross grabbed a yellow pencil sitting on the edge of the desk and pointed the eraser at the Brandon’s left wing. “Thirty centimeters.” He pointed lower, at the crow’s tail. It cocked its head, hopping away from the eraser head. “Twenty centimeters. Impressed?”

  The crow padded across the desk, hopping on top of the stack of dusty books.

  “Twenty wingbeats every ten seconds,” Cross said. “Try me on another bird. A robin… twenty-three wingbeats. An owl… thirty-five wingbeats.”

  The crow bounced its head up and down, squawking.

  “A chickadee?” Cross asked. “Really? Two hundred and seventy wingbeats every ten seconds.” He watched the bird extend its wings as it jumped off the stack. He could see clearly that a few of the secondary coverts were bright gray, almost white. It reminded him of a paint stripe on an airplane wing.

  “I’d give anything to go back to the way things were,” he told the crow. It stood on the other end of the desk, watching him. “I used to be funny, you know. Where did that go? How does humor leave a person? I’d give anything to feel like I used to.”

  The crow bounced its head and Cross took it as a nod of affirmation. He closed his left eye, fighting the pressure. When he opened it, half the office was blurry.

  “I know this isn’t a curse,” he whispered. “It just feels like one. It can’t be a curse, right? It’s only a coincidence my eye got worse after the murder. Right?”

  He was about to toss another wafer when he felt something under his feet, a vibration more than a sound as if something was rubbing up against a metal pipe. The crow hopped up onto the stack of books and squawked once in the direction of the chapel. Cross got up and walked to the doorway, glancing in the direction of the dark hallway on the other side of the pulpit that led to the basement. He saw only a tunnel of darkness.

  “Hello?” he called out quietly, surprised at how soft his own voice sounded in his ears. He reached into his pocket and grabbed his flashlight. The beam appeared, then dimmed immediately.

  The crow squawked again, loud enough for its shrill voice to carry down the hallway and into the basement.

  Cross glanced over his shoulder. “Thanks, asshole.”

  The crow cocked its head again and jumped down from the stack of books.

  “Just wait here,” Cross muttered, reaching down and pulling up his pant leg to draw the knife from his boot. “I’ll call for backup if I need it.”

  He walked slowly around the wooden lecterns, stepping through the doorway on the opposite side. His fingers slid along the wall, searching in vain for a light switch that probably wouldn’t work anyway. He closed his left eye and glanced down the pitch-black hallway, keeping his knife in front of him. His fingers found the light switch, but the power had long ago been turned off. He continued through the hallway, stopping at the foot of the stairs and fumbling for the smooth wooden banister. It was covered with a thick layer of dust, and he hesitated to touch it but knew his good eye couldn’t perceive the depth of each step with some help. He kept his hand on the railing, letting the dust gather between his fingers as he slowly made his way downstairs.

  The basement was an open space, dark, separated in sections by large concrete pillars holding up the chapel. Cross could feel his chest tightening in the darkness, and he fumbled again with his flashlight, unscrewing the bottom so he could pull out the two circular batteries, switch them around, then screw the bottom back on. The light turned on, but it was dim, casting the area in front of Cross in a pale, sickly glo
w.

  The nearest pillar was decorated with old, faded drawings: kids’ pictures of biblical scenes etched out in crayon and marker and drawn in a child’s typical cylindrical fashion. Heads like apples and arms and legs like eggs. To his right, along the wall, were three different doors close together that each led to a small room. When his beam reached the third door, it slowly darkened again before disappearing altogether.

  Cross opened his left eye, letting the tunnel vision return so he could take in a little more of the peripheral scene. Just a little. There was a handful of small windows near the ceiling along each of the walls, but they offered little in the way of light. They illuminated one side of each of the large support pillars; on the other side of each pillar, long dark shadows ran across the floor like thick prison bars and divided the large room into six equal sections.

  He turned back to the staircase and immediately stopped. Something again caught his ears, something that sounded far off in the distance and yet rang like a drum in his ears. It was a soft, grinding noise, the kind he remembered as a kid when he would wrap his sweaty hands around a piece of paper and twist as hard as he could to make a sword to chase classmates with. The kind of sound made when the rope of his hammock grinded against the wooden frame in his grandmother’s old garage.

  The sound of a rope tied around a wooden support beam. The sound of something heavy hanging from the rope, swaying gently from side to side.

  Cross turned, feeling his entire chest grow cold. “Hello?” he called out. The sound continued, echoing between the concrete pillars of the large, empty room.

  He stepped up to the first pillar, holding his knife out in front of his body. The sound was coming from everywhere, grinding in his ears and bouncing off the walls in every direction. He walked to the next pillar, turning around in a complete circle. Between the shadows, he could see a small circle of chairs surrounding a wooden lectern in the middle of the room. Behind the lectern were tall brass pillar candleholders with intricate circular designs. Each one held a half-finished white candle with cooled wax sliding down its base.

  Cross made his way to the first chair somewhat awkwardly, stumbling over his own feet in an attempt to not bump into any object obscured by the darkness in his left eye. He kept one hand on the back of the chair, moving from chair to chair and letting the half-circle design guide him to the other side of the basement.

  Ree…

  Reeee…

  Ree…

  Reeeee…

  The sound refused to grow softer or louder no matter where he stood. Cross looked around again, scanning the ceiling for any missing tiles where something might be tied around one of the beams. There were no missing tiles, at least none that he could see.

  “Hello?” he called out. His voice barely escaped his lips. The grinding sound was forcing his heart to beat faster and press against his rib cage.

  Ree…

  Reeeee…

  He prayed for another sound, anything to make it all feel more real and not like some horrible nightmare. The darkness had begun to close in around him, applying pressure to his temples. His right eye began to water and so that he was forced to rely on his left, which offered only the image of a pitch-black tunnel winding deeper and deeper into the darkness.

  “Hello!” he called out again, this time as loud as his voice could manage. His breaths were coming out in short gasps; any sound his throat made ended almost as quickly as it started. Shadows seemed to be appearing and disappearing from the corners of the room, dozens of them and then hundreds and then thousands.

  He hurried back to the other side of the basement, letting the chairs guide him once again, kicking them out of the way just to hear something else. The grinding sound continued, not growing softer or louder no matter where he was in the darkness. He walked slowly over to the wall near the offices and leaned hard on the cool porcelain tiles between the doors, trying to force his ears to pinpoint the sound. Slowly, he reached his free hand over to the next closed door, touching the icy metal knob.

  The sound stopped. Cross looked around again, at the open space, trying in vain to pinpoint any movement. He tried to turn the doorknob but found it securely locked. He turned to look around once more, trying to convince himself that the shadows dancing in the corner of his vision were nothing, waiting to see if the sound would return. When it didn’t, he slowly made his way back up the staircase.

  He hurried through the dark hallway at the top of the stairs and into the pulpit, glancing again at the visible mark in the carpeting where the altar had once been. He looked out onto the pews and immediately felt his heart speed up again. Something to his left caught his eye—a well-defined figure, someone of medium height sitting in one of the back rows. But when he turned his head to get a better look with his right eye, the figure was gone, the pews again empty.

  “Hello?” Cross called out again. The crow answered with a squawk.

  He returned to the office, glancing once at Brandon still standing on the desk. The crow waited patiently, head cocked. Cross grabbed a fresh handful of ceremonial wafers from the bag. He tossed one at the crow, tapping his foot on the floor and trying to imagine where the office overlapped the basement.

  “This is right next to the play area downstairs,” Cross said, tapping his foot harder on the spot where he had first felt the low vibration underneath the floor. “It would have come from the next room over. But the door’s locked.”

  The crow, pecking away at the wafer, glanced up at him.

  Cross, realizing he still had the knife clutched in his sweaty palm, reached down and tucked it back in his boot, then grabbed a cigarette from his pocket. He lit it and walked over to the doorway to take another look at the empty church. There had been something there. There were no medical side effects of his drugs that caused hallucinations, and he was sure of that.

  Of course, there were plenty of other side effects with the cocktail he was taking, a cocktail that, all said and done, no longer seemed to be delaying the inevitable. It barely relieved the constant pressure. It cost money, money that was drying up and would have been completely gone had he not long ago begun taking advantage of people much kinder than himself.

  Passing himself off as a priest. Passing himself off as a writer. A missionary. A church official. Perfecting the art of helpful manipulation so he could find the murderer named Morrissey.

  He told lies at community clinics and sometimes paid out of pocket for the medicine, and in return he was guaranteed to receive some or all of the common side effects: stomach aches, liver damage, kidney failure, brain tumors, excessive sweating, dizziness, enlarged pupils, anxiety, exhaustion, muscular paralysis and a propensity to gamble.

  “And I’m talking to a fucking crow,” he said. The crow looked up and ruffled its feathers. “Is that a side effect?”

  The grinding sound suddenly returned.

  Ree …

  Reeeeee …

  This time, Cross could hear it clearly on the first floor, echoing between the massive chapel’s decaying wooden walls. He tossed his cigarette and stepped into the chapel, spinning in every direction. He glanced up, checking each of the hanging lights for movement. All were still. Nothing was moving, but the sound continued. Cross ran to the back of the church, by the greeting room, looking around again, finding nothing. He ran down the aisle, searching the walls between the stained-glass windows and then the ceiling again.

  When he reached the pulpit, the sound stopped.

  “Hello!” Cross called out. The bird returned his call with a squawk.

  He turned and walked outside, rubbing at his left eye, irritating it in the process, so it burned and itched at the corners. His head felt light, and he found his feet continually moving away from the road leading back into Purgatory, toward the open plain that led east toward the ranches. He tried to change direction, to head in the way of the short buildings at the northern edge of town. His mouth tasted dry, the bare skin of his face and neck absorbing every atmospher
ic shift with a magnified intensity. He tried to stay focused on alternating his feet, but the process became more difficult with each step. The feeling began to leave him, the very presence of the church itself began to leave him, just as he reached the first row of two-story commercial buildings at the north end of town.

  His hand found the first glass window of the northernmost building. Sunshine Realty. Closed weekends. He let his weight lean on the building. That church. There was something about that church.

  He passed the center of town where a handful of Mexicans were holding hands in a circle around the Father Aaron Abaddon monument, singing a Latin song in low voices. He returned to the bar where he had first found Cantrell. The man was sitting in the exact same booth, staring lazily at the empty space in front of his beer. The rest of the dark room was mostly emptied out, except for two young Mexican men sitting in one of the far tables, sharing a red basket of French fries to go with their ice waters. They looked to Cross like the same men he had seen crossing the border near the golf course.

  Cross walked over to the bar, ordered two fresh beers from the bartender, and brought them over to the booth. He sat down and put one of the beers in front of Cantrell. Cantrell glanced up, smiling.

  “Off the record,” Cross said. “Tell me everything.”

  Cantrell finished the glass of beer he was working on, downing the entire half-pint with two swallows. He set it aside and grabbed the fresh one, staring at it as if he hated it and knew exactly why. “That’s dangerous.”

  “I have to know,” Cross said. He pressed his finger on the table. “I need to know.”

  Cantrell took another sip of his beer, a much more conservative one than Cross was used to seeing. “When Father Aaron had me against the wall, it felt like I was being held there by a steamroller. I lied when I said I didn’t fight back—I did, only I doubt Aaron even realized it. I pushed against the wall with both my hands and I couldn’t budge the fucker.”