by K M Stross
“I’m not Father Aaron,” Cross said. “And if they don’t like holy men who associate with vagrants, they shouldn’t be Christians.”
Phil leaned back on his stool to stretch out his legs. “Yeah, well. All I’m saying is be careful. If the sheriff starts picking up wind of this kinda talk, he’ll sure as hell make trouble. He’s got a lot invested in Father Aaron. Lots of people do.”
“I’ll be careful,” Cross said. “Thanks for the company.” He turned to leave, feeling the eyes of everyone on his back.
CHAPTER 13
Cross stood in front of the church’s guest book with the flashlight in his hand, new batteries purchased from the general store that had no problem keeping late hours even if it meant serving Mexicans. The store had been clean, looked new, offered deals in Spanish and the cashier—a white teenage girl with long dark hair—was staring at an open copy of People Magazine on the counter while Cross shopped.
His finger traced along the name of Al Hofmann. The letters were scrawled, almost illegible, the cursive of the lowercase L riding up extraordinarily high, just like how Gabriel Morrissey always signed his name at the bottom of letters he wrote to priests in the seminary. Al Hofmann, the man who discovered LSD. Morrissey’s favorite chemist.
It couldn’t be a coincidence. Morrissey had loved chemistry. He’d had the periodic table memorized and talked about equilibrium thermodynamics and biological macromolecules the way people talked about TV shows. Cross had always suspected Morrissey had taught himself. Morrissey knew it all, but he never said where he learned it.
Cross made his way through the empty pews and the stage-left doorway, stopping at the foot of the stairs leading to the basement so he could use his good eye to find the old railing before he walked down. Every step felt awkward as if he was forgetting something crucial to the mystery of the church.
The creaking of the steps. Cantrell had mentioned them too. Cross stepped nearer the wall to minimize the creaking.
At the bottom, he exhaled very slowly, half-expecting to find someone lurking in the shadows ready to pounce. Everything looked just as it had during his last visit, only there was no sound echoing between the large support pillars. No sound penetrated the windows—outside, the air was calm.
He used his light and his good eye to guide him to the three offices along the wall. He walked to the last one, using his flashlight to examine the children’s drawings, carefully peeling back the two that were eye level. Behind them, a thin silver plaque that read “Damien Belmont” hung by only a sconce of dried glue, the plastic border warped into thin curls by the seasonal weather changes. He tried the doorknob first, but it refused to turn. He pushed hard with his shoulder, testing the frame. It creaked under the pressure. He pulled back and slammed into it as hard as he could, breaking the door open.
Blackness covered the beam of his flashlight and a flash of high-pitched screams echoed through the basement. Cross fell backward, landing against the tiled pillar lined with children’s drawings. The murder of crows disappeared down the hall toward the out-of-order staircase. The flapping echoed in the darkness, and then the birds were back, flying over the huddled mass of chairs and making their way up the staircase Cross had descended.
“Fuck!” he screamed. “Fuck. Just… easy. They’re just birds.” He picked up his flashlight and pointed it inside the room, kicking the door once to see if there were any more surprises. When no more crows appeared, he carefully stepped into the room. He aimed the flashlight in front of the desk, almost dropping it again when he saw the fat figure standing in front of the desk. The figure didn’t flinch when the beam of light struck his back, casting his shadow on the rear wall. He was wearing a gray t-shirt, tight against the fat of his torso.
Cross immediately recognized him. “Jesus?”
Silence. A tunnel of blackness centered on the figure’s back.
“Mister Ramon,” Cross said. He rested a hand on Ramon’s shoulder, and the figure swung around in the chair. Cross saw the bloody eye sockets devoid of substance and immediately fell backward through the doorway, dropping his flashlight, but the image continued to burn into his mind: a corpse, the eyes missing, the skin peeling and flaking like dried soap. Cross cursed again and jumped back, the hair on his back prickling in anticipation of what may come next, spinning in every direction. He fumbled for the light, grabbing it and turning back to the doorway.
Nothing. The building was silent. Cross closed his left eye, keeping the beam of light focused on the open doorway, waiting for Ramon to step out from behind the door. His heart pounded furiously inside his chest, rhythmically vibrating through his extended arm. His head felt light.
“Ramon!” he called out. His voice echoed behind him, but his good eye refused to turn away from the doorway. He crawled closer, close enough to kick the door fully open. He flashed his light in the direction of the desk, but the figure was gone.
“Ramon,” he whispered, pushing on the door. The beam of light revealed little more than a simple old-fashioned steel desk and accompanying file cabinet. Two cardboard boxes sat on top of the desk, devoid of markings. Cross walked over, shining his light across them in a sweeping pattern to make sure there was no one hiding behind the old desk. The desk chair was missing, leaving only a dust-hardened trail of where the wheels had once slid over the floor to the file cabinet in one smooth motion.
There was no one in the office.
Cross turned the flashlight toward the boxes, opening the nearest one and grabbing the first dusty document of the stack. He ran his finger along the paper, pausing when he heard the silence disturbed by a very soft pat-patting coming from the main room. He shined his flashlight at the doorway, holding his breath and trying to stifle the rapid bass drum thumping in his eardrums.
The crow walked into the room, looking up at Cross and squawking once at the light. Cross turned it away from the crow, and it continued its soft walk to the desk, squawking again in a higher, prolonged pitch.
“No food,” Cross said. He stepped back when the crow jumped up onto the table, flapping its wings. “It’s all upstairs.”
The crow cocked its head.
Cross walked back around the table, using his flashlight to scan the room again. A few posters offering religious praise. A red carpet with little white tassels at the end. An old 70’s-era desk lamp with a fat, circular bulb.
Cross left the room, then froze.
In the gathering area, crows stood silently on the backs of the folding chairs, watching him. There were dozens, each still as statues.
He walked over to the middle door and used his flashlight to take a closer look at the drawings. In each of them, Father Aaron was drawn with a white robe and black undershirt. In each of them, his face looked slightly different. Long hair, short hair, dark skin, light skin, every body shape. It was the type of ceremonial error all children made, and yet the images seemed to vary so greatly that they seemed suspect. He could remember as a child, even as late as middle school, everyone in his class drew the same image slightly differently depending on their skills—but in each one, there was something to connect them, some semblance that the input from each pair of eyes was something real and concrete.
Not so with these drawings. It was as if the very image of Father Aaron was completely changing from child to child. There were no similarities from drawing to drawing, except that he wore a traditional vestment, either black or white.
The sound of crashing chairs echoed through the room. Cross spun around and flashed his light into the gathering area, where the crows had taken flight, squawking and flying between the pillars, pieces of the darkness come to life, forcing Cross to step back. His breaths came in rapid bursts. He swept the flashlight left and right, trying to dispel the darkness before it could suffocate him.
The crows settled back onto the chairs. Two chairs, near the podium, where Father Aaron had delivered his Homily, had fallen over.
“Hello?” Cross said in a quiet voice. Then, louder:
“Ramon?”
A dark figure darted out from behind the stack of chairs, running for the staircase and pushing aside the folding chairs in his way. The crows squawked and took flight again, flapping their long wings and moving in every direction. Cross tried to follow the dark figure with his flashlight, but all of the images coming in through his left eye were little more than shadows upon shadows, indistinct and blurred like photographs set on the wrong shutter speed. Through his right eye, the darkness seemed to have come to life again, breaking apart into small pieces that traveled across the room.
“Wait!” Cross called out. He ran up the stairs, stumbling once against the banister and struggling to grasp the handrail with his left hand blindly. At the pulpit, he watched the dark figure pass the last row of pews and disappear into the greeting hall. He followed as quickly as he could, bumping his left leg into the side of one of the pews and falling onto the dusty carpet. He pushed himself up, cursing, and followed through the large front doors, into the night, shining the light in a complete circle as quickly as his good eye would allow.
“Hello!” he called out. He waited in the darkness, scanning the area in every direction, then turning around again and making a much slower rotation. There was nothing. In the distance, the town slept. Above, the stars shined bright. Virgo looked down on Cross, and it was hard not to admire the blessed virgin, shining so brightly. He felt safe under her gaze.
Suddenly, he could hear muffled voices, sounds of men and women speaking in hushed tones. He kept his flashlight on the closed doors, unsure of whether he should trust what was filtering into his ear, sure now that his medications were playing some sort of trick on his conscious mind. He walked slowly back up the concrete stairs. He rested one hand on the brass handle, waiting and half-expecting the voices to cease. When they didn’t, he opened the door.
The greeting room was dark, but the dust had cleared from the walls and carpet. The pictures and posters hanging on the bulletin board were immaculate, clean and sharp around the edges. An elderly man with dark gray hair stood in front of the doors leading to the chapel, smiling broadly, so the folds of his skin wrinkled up under each eye. He was wearing a gray suit coat and pants, his arms folded behind his back. “Hello,” he said in a raspy voice. “Won’t you sign our guest book?”
Cross took one uneasy step forward, opening his mouth then immediately shutting it when his right eye spotted the woman sitting in the rear pew of the chapel, her dark brown hair hanging over the polished wood. He took another step forward, shutting off his flashlight and glancing through the open doors of the greeting room. People were sitting in the pews, white families and couples and others sitting alone, spread out and talking quietly with one another. In the pulpit, an old man in a white robe stood in front of a massive wooden altar with wave-shaped decorative trim around its edges, his back to the congregation but the bald spot on his head was clearly visible under the moonlight shining in through the windows.
Cross took another step forward and closed his right eye. Everyone disappeared. He opened it again and closed his left eye: the windows were no longer broken, the layers of dust gone. The red carpet aisles looked recently vacuumed. He opened his left eye immediately the image of the old, decrepit church became visible. But it was only a whisper, a transparency concealed underneath the younger version of the church.
“Please,” the elderly man said. “We like to have visitors sign our guestbook.”
Cross turned back to the man, then slowly walked over to the guestbook. He picked up the pen sitting on the guest book and turned his flashlight back on, following the light to the next available line. He stopped at the last name: Al Hofmann. He signed his name directly under it.
The elderly man rested a hand on Cross’s and gently closed the book. “Thank you. Father Belmont is about to start the service, so feel free to take any seat you’d like.”
Cross walked back to the open doorway and glanced again at the empty pews. He looked back at the elderly man, who refused to loosen the smile around his lips. He slowly walked into the chapel, and took a seat near the front, in an empty pew, watching the old priest at the altar fill the silver chalice with wine from a glass jug.
Another figure stopped at the pew on the other side of the aisle, taking a seat and folding a small white pamphlet in his lap. Cross didn’t need the flashlight to notice the long scar running along the side of the man’s face, his black hair shaggy behind his ears, his body covered in pitch-black ceremonial vestments. His lips curled up into a hint of a snarl. Always curled into a hint of a snarl.
“Greetings, fellow worshippers,” Father Belmont said with a warm smile and booming voice, startling Cross. He felt his heart pounding against his chest, convinced that this couldn’t possibly be a hallucination—but it had to be. “And a happy Sunday to you!”
Cross glanced again at Gabriel Morrissey, who was watching the priest through narrowed eyes. He either didn’t recognize Cross or... what? A figment of his imagination? A ghost? Cross touched the back of the next pew, running his finger along the top and using his flashlight to examine his finger. There was no dust when he closed his left eye. When he opened it again, it was faintly visible, like the afterimage of an explosive firework in a pitch black night sky.
“I have a very special surprise today,” Father Belmont said. “I would like all of you to help me in welcoming Saint Joseph’s very first assistant priest, Father Aaron!”
Cross watched Gabriel Morrissey stand up. He walked down the side aisle to greet Father Belmont with a quick embrace, giving a wave to the small crowd of worshippers who returned the gesture with polite applause. Morrissey walked to the front pew and sat down, his back to Cross. Cross fought the urge to move forward.
“Now, I’m getting old in my years…” Father Belmont paused for polite laughter. Only instead of laughter, there were screams. Screams and the cawing of crows, echoing up from the basement. Cross looked over his shoulder, expecting to find faces attached to the sounds. The chapel was empty, dark. Even when he closed his left eye, the people did not reappear. He turned back to Father Belmont, who was standing behind the altar. It looked so detailed, with hand-carved designs in the wood and a short white cloth not quite fully stretched over the surface.
Father Belmont raised one hand and immediately the laughter stopped. “I know, I know. It’s hard to accept. But I’m getting very tired very easily nowadays, and Father Aaron will be graciously assisting me in my duties until I decide to retire, at which point I hope Father Aaron will be persuaded by the good nature of this congregation to stay and continue as the new priest. For today, he’ll assist me in hearing confessions after Mass and will also lead us in a homily about sainthood.”
Morrissey stood and walked to the front of the pulpit. He cleared his throat, tugging with two fingers at the white collar of his shirt that seemed to be strangling the air from his windpipe. “What does it mean to be canonized?” he began. “What does it mean to be beatified? So many of us spend a good portion of our lives praying to those individuals whom the Church has deemed to be truly in the presence of God. But what is a saint? Is a saint of such purity that the average human being could not possibly hope to stand up to?”
Cross felt his heart grow cold. He remembered this homily. He’d heard Morrissey give this speech at the seminary, years ago. Before the murder. Before everything went to hell.
Morrissey slowly began to walk down the center aisle. Cross clutched the flashlight tightly in his hand, keeping it close to his body. The man walked with one smooth motion, his black robe trailing behind him in an almost surreal fashion as if a continuous breeze of air was preventing any of the fabric from touching the ground. As if the fabric itself could sense the hallucination and knew how dirty the red carpeting truly was.
“Or is a saint fallible?” Morrissey continued. He blinked slowly, violently, the scar along his cheek bobbing up and down. “As fallible as you and I, as prone to giving in to temptation as the next Joe Blow? Does i
t matter, when you’re in the good graces of God? Is a man who knowingly kills another man doomed to hell if God has chosen him? These are questions I have often attempted to tackle during my life, attempting to discern exactly what made a saint venerable. Being something of a science buff myself, I naturally attempted to create some law, some solid theory of how to enter the sainthood. But science failed me.”
Morrissey reached Cross’s pew but didn’t look down. Cross brought the flashlight up, then stopped. As Morrissey passed, the air didn’t move. Cross looked over his shoulder, watching the man continue walking, the bottom of his alb taking on a life of its own, quivering like a snake on fire.
Morrissey stopped in front of the greeting area and turned around. “Was there something I was missing? Something, perhaps, not of this earth? Something that couldn’t be explained with our limited earthly logic? What if a saint is a pre-determined being, I ask you? What if a saint is picked out before birth? There, then, we could theoretically have a logical connection between all of them.”
He began walking again, stepping next to Cross. He turned and looked down at Cross, smiling. “Of course, there isn’t much of a way to test a theory. One would have to find a living would-be saint in order to even consider attempting to prove or disprove such a radical concept like partial pre-determination.”
He turned and began to walk back toward the altar. Cross felt his hand drop the flashlight and reach out, unable to stop, watching in horror as his hand felt the smooth fabric, his heart speeding up and pounding in his chest. Then just as quickly his hand passed through the fabric. He closed his right eye, and immediately the image disappeared, the carpeting again became dusty, the church empty and long abandoned.
He opened his right eye, and the hallucination returned.
“Oh, but what luck for us to have a potential saint right here in our congregation!” Morrissey said, holding his arms out in front of the altar. “What luck for you all to be witness to future miracles right here in your little shit hole of a middle-of-nowhere town! One day, the Church will recognize me as a saint, and the gates of Heaven will open.” He turned back to the pews, staring at Cross. “And I promise you this, my children: I will take freely of those souls who attempt to obstruct my canonization, and I will send them back to Hell where they belong. Forgiveness of sins, my children, was never part of God’s plan. It was an afterthought after He realized just how pathetic his children were, how easily they would give in to temptation and spoil His good name in exchange for a few moments of pleasure. Those who obfuscate God’s will must pay a penance.”
