Purgatory

by K M Stross

  “Not enough to get you very far,” Cantrell said, pulling back onto the highway road.

  “I need to get to Yolanda’s house,” Cross said. “Know any shortcuts there?”

  Cantrell accelerated fast, and the old car hiccupped a few times before switching into third gear. “I know a few.”

  Cross’s thoughts returned briefly to Maria, the way her wet eyes could capture the light and seem to absorb the images surrounding her. He couldn’t remember his eyes ever being capable of something so beautiful. “Will they… will the sisters be all right?”

  Cantrell stayed silent and kept the radio off. The clock on the dashboard was blank, so Cross tried to count in his head the number of minutes that passed as they returned to the outskirts of Purgatory and headed west toward Yolanda’s old home. He counted the seconds and couldn’t get past sixty, feeling as if he was repeating the same minute over and over again.

  Cantrell pulled in front of the old deserted home, kicking up a cloud of dust that slowly settled around the cab.

  “Keep your money,” Cantrell said, putting the car in park. He leaned back in his seat, not turning around. “But we’re even now. Got it?”

  “OK,” Cross said. “I can walk back into town from here. Thank you.”

  Cantrell inhaled his cigarette, staring through the smoke-stained windshield. “De nada.”

  Cross stepped out of the cab and waited for it to pull away before walking around to the back of the house, scanning the foundation for any gardening equipment. There were two shovels resting next to a green watering hose that had been carelessly tossed in front of one of the dirty basement windows. Both shovels had clumps of dirt sticking to the spades, but one looked considerably newer, with a fresher-looking wooden stock and less rust along the edge of the spade. Cross took the newer one and headed in the direction of the hills.

  Even with his right eye swollen, he could see the gathering of rocks. They had indeed been painted a bright white, faded slightly and yet, as he stalked closer, he could see that there were different coats of paint marking different rocks. The ground surrounding the marker was untouched, unspoiled as if the dry grass and short cacti were afraid to move too close. The moment Cross’s thoughts dwelled on it, he felt something too. His feet stopped on the barren ground, the tips of his toes tingling with a thousand needles. He felt it in his legs, creeping up his thighs and trailing off into his stomach.

  A soft squawk from behind caused him to jump. He turned on his heels, immediately spotting the black crow standing on the hard dirt. As if unsure if Cross could see through his swollen eye, it ruffled its feathers, took a step forward, and squawked again.

  “Brandon the Bird,” Cross muttered. “No communion wafers out here, friend. How did you find me?”

  The crow squawked again. This time, it was answered by a series of accompanying cries coming from above. Cross looked up and saw fifteen more crows standing on the telephone wire leading from Yolanda’s house back into town on rusty old wooden poles. He looked down. Brandon had taken another step closer, cocking its head at Cross and opening its beak. Seemingly changing its mind, it refrained from answering the murder above.

  Cross took a step back while the crows above pursued a second round of debate amongst themselves. Brandon the Bird offered one more argument in the form of a shrill, frustrated squawk before the murder above took off from the wire and flapped noisily to the ground. They circled Brandon the Bird.

  “Wait,” Cross said, holding out one arm. He took a step forward, but his intrusion into the murder’s ritual created little deterrence.

  The murder bounced forward, taking turns pecking viciously at Brandon, who flapped his wings but refused to escape the sentence cast down by his peers. His blackened feathers grew darker with wet blood, droplets scattering from each attack and soaking into the dry brown dirt.

  “No!” Cross called out, running forward. He was too far away and could only watch in horror as the black creatures pecked apart their cohort, sending droplets of bright red blood into the air and kicking up dust that blew back toward town.

  The fluttering slowly ebbed. When the crumpled, mutilated body of Brandon Lee had finally been transformed into little more than a lump of wet feathers, the murder pulled away and—with a handful of exasperated, mournful squawks—returned to their perch on the telephone wire.

  Cross’s esophagus burned as bile crept up his throat. He coughed once, his tongue tasting the tepid acidity of water and bodily fluids and soaked bread. The concoction of vomit spilled onto the dry dirt, which greedily sucked it up. He kneeled on the ground in front of the rocks, feeling more come. He noticed that there were patches of soft dirt near the markings—he had been wrong; his good eye had deceived him from a distance, and now, up close, he could see that this ground had indeed been disturbed not long ago.

  He dug the spade into the dry dirt, cracking the soft area left by his own stomach acid, and began digging in front of the grave, carefully setting the loose dirt over the body of Brandon Lee until a respectable mound had been created. He dug as fast as his arms would allow, pausing briefly only to wipe his damp forehead and shift his body so the hot morning sun wouldn’t overheat him too quickly. The soft dirt broke easily under the spade. At only three feet deep, his sweat dripping onto the wooden handle of the shovel, he felt something solid in the earth. He dug around the object—a box, slightly smaller than a coffin but shaped in much the same way—and used his hands to brush away the last inch of cool earth.

  He wrinkled his nose. There was no smell emanating from the box. It was made of wood, a very thin pine like the kind that might be used to build a cheap bookshelf, and the panels groaned under Cross’s fingers when he tried to lift off the top. Yolanda had built this herself; he could picture her working away in the basement of her house while the creature that had been her sister wandered aimlessly through the rooms above. Morrissey had poisoned her somehow, had stopped her breathing with a chemical that had eaten away at her brain and worse once she’d been miraculously “revived,” turning her into a brain-damaged ghoul.

  Yolanda, afraid, not sure what to do, had tried to kill her sister in the way a good person might try to kill someone, failing miserably.

  He crawled on his knees, sliding his fingers slowly under the lid until he found the small metal latch holding it in place. He pulled the metal spike from its hinge and tore away the top.

  The box was empty. No blood. No hair. No evidence that a body had been placed within.

  “Shit,” Cross said quietly. “Shit.” He closed his left eye, sure that his mind was playing tricks on him.

  Clouds lined the sky, obscuring the landscape and casting shadows over the empty coffin. He turned away from the grave and dropped the spade. There was no time to rest. He needed evidence, something that would force Morrissey to play his hand.

  He started walking, then jogging lightly east toward the edge of Purgatory. It wasn’t long before he could see the outline of the buildings making up the commercial and residential district along Abaddon Drive, lazily lying across the horizon like a sun-paralyzed reptile. When his legs burned, he walked. When the pain subsided, he broke back into a jog. The only thing that stopped him from forcing his body into a sprint was the promise of revenge, the need to conserve enough strength to drive the entire blade of his knife into Morrissey’s chest.

  There was another way.

  The town was quiet, quieter than usual without any loud SUV’s burning through the main road on the way to Phoenix. Gone also were the boisterous people hustling down the street, stopping at each store to browse through every collection of assorted junk. It was as if the town itself had heard about the incident in the national park and wrapped itself in a tight, heavy blanket to isolate itself from the rest of the world. As if the town itself had cast its support for Father Aaron.

  Cross kept a watchful eye over his shoulder whenever he could, although the swelling had grown considerably more uncomfortable. He glanced in his mote
l window first, peeking into the crack between the curtains to make sure no one was waiting for him. His vision had become blurry at best, and every object in his peripheral vision took the shape of a menacing shadow. He stood outside the door, glancing left and right, then left again when the strands of his eyelashes created something very real in the corner of his right eye. His heart refused to slow no matter how many times he scanned the empty parking lot.

  Cross stepped into his room and shut the door. The bed was cleanly made, and whoever had vacuumed had also been considerate enough to turn on the air-conditioning unit in the window. He’d placed a “do not disturb” card in the key slot, hadn’t he? He remembered doing it.

  He stood in front of the cold air, letting it prickle his flesh into tiny goose bumps. Salty tears stung his swollen eye. The reality of it all had begun to set in, the knowledge that his vision was nearly lost, that his God-forsaken quest could nearly be at an end.

  “And then what?” he could almost hear Maria say.

  “Then nothing,” he told the empty room. Then maybe, just maybe, Morrissey’s God would lift this curse that had plagued him for so long.

  No. It wasn’t a curse. It wasn’t punishment.

  He walked into the bathroom and studied the pills next to the sink. His heart skipped a beat—three of the pills were facing the wrong direction. Had it been a careless mistake? No, he told himself. He knew every constellation. He’d been meticulous about setting them up. The pills were tampered with; they had to be. He couldn’t second-guess himself now. He composed himself, carefully wiping away at the tears in his eyes with one gentle finger. The flesh around his right eye stung and he could see it in his vision, a little hump in the lower corner. He walked back into the bedroom and stood with his eyes closed, imagining this must be what hell was like if there truly was a hell.

  The phone rang, jolting him out of the darkness.

  “Hello?” he said. He waited for a moment, listening to the silence on the other end. “Hello,” he said again. He closed his eyes and listened intently—he could hear breathing.

  He hung up the phone, placing his tape recorder on the table before walking to the front door.

  The phone rang again, twice, stopping him. Then it went silent again.

  CHAPTER 23

  Cross stood on the patio of Jesus Ramon’s ranch, waiting to catch his breath before knocking on the door. The stale evening air around the ranch hung like rotting meat, unwilling to dissipate across the empty desert. Each breath Cross sucked into his lungs tasted the same as the last. The windows along the front porch were dark, the only light coming from the small porch lamp hanging over the door to light up the address: 369.

  Cross knocked lightly on the door. When there was no answer, he knocked again, harder, feeling his dry knuckles crack against the rough wood.

  “Jesus?” Cross said, aiming his voice at the window. “It’s Father Cross. I need to speak with you.”

  Cross waited for a response. When none came, he tried the door, turning it slowly and opening the door a fraction of an inch, half-expecting to find the double barrel of a shotgun pointed at his nose.

  “Jesus?” Cross said. “Are you there?”

  “Yes, father.” Ramon’s voice echoed from deep within the darkness of the house, as if sound itself was having difficulty navigating the pitch black.

  Cross opened the door and stepped inside. The living room was dark, the only light coming from the moon was shining in through the open windows in the kitchen. Ramon was sitting in the easy chair, in front of the television with his back to the door. A cigarette sat on the coffee table, balancing delicately on the rim of a small tea saucer.

  “Can I come in, Jesus?” Cross asked, keeping his foot on the door.

  Ramon’s hand reached down for the cigarette. He took a long drag, igniting the cherry and drowning the room in a brief blood-red glow. “Of course, Padre.”

  Cross stepped inside and closed the door. He stood in the darkness, fighting the urge to move closer to the beam of soft blue light. “I need to know what Soledad told you about Father Belmont’s disappearance.”

  “She said only one word that I understood. Monstruo.”

  Cross stayed near the door, unsure of how close he should come to the man. The air in the room carried a mixed stench of stale ash and fermented alcohol that burned the tissue inside Cross’s nose.

  “I understand what the veneration of Father Aaron must mean to you and your ranch. I understand how hard it is to keep the cheap labor in town with all the vigilantes. But I’m willing to compensate you for the truth.”

  “The truth?” Ramon laughed through one long, throaty cough, exhaling a cloud of thick smoke that drifted slowly across the room. When it reached Cross, he wrinkled his nose at the stench. It was a strong cigarette, the unfiltered kind that scratched the lungs. “I do not know what the truth is anymore. And I do not care about this ranch. I am a failure. I could never manage my steers. I could never manage my finances.”

  Cross took a step closer. “Are you all right?”

  Ramon shook his head in the darkness, slowly, the trail of smoke between his lips undulating in circular wisps of gray ash. “No, Padre.”

  Cross took another step forward. As he did, Ramon finally turned around. Blood trailed down both of his fat cheeks in thick, spaghetti-like clumps. What remained of his eyes were little more than squished grapes. Cross fell back a step, blinking hard and losing himself in the darkness. He reached out desperately, grabbing the door and pushing it shut.

  “Jesus Christ, Jesus fucking Christ. Jesus…”

  “I am beyond help,” Ramon said. “And I would like to finish this pack of cigarettes before I die.”

  Cross’s shaky legs forced his body forward. “Jesus Christ, who did this?”

  Ramon’s body slumped back in the seat, his head tilting back. “You know who did this.”

  Morrissey. The word traveled from Cross’s brain to his mouth, getting lost along the way and lodging itself in his throat where it sat, obstructed. “Where is he, Jesus? He’s still in Purgatory, isn’t he?”

  “It was a fair punishment,” Ramon said, “for attempting to find Father Belmont’s body. I should have left it well enough alone. I understand that this is my penance for my sins. I have sat here for a long time, pondering this. I understand it now.”

  Cross knelt down and put his hand on Ramon’s shoulder. The white cotton shirt was wet with sweat, sticking to the old man’s skin. “Listen to me, Ramon. You need to tell me where he is. Where is Morrissey?”

  Ramon smiled and shook his head. The hanging blobs of flesh bounced on his cheeks. “Sorry, Padre, but I cannot help you now.”

  Cross grabbed the collar of Ramon’s shirt, forcing his head back up. He stared into the remains of Ramon’s eyes, fighting back the urge to vomit. “Where is he? Where is he hiding?”

  “This is my fault, Padre. My penance.”

  Cross fell back, leaning hard against the coffee table. “Your penance,” he whispered. “Your penance…”

  Ramon inhaled his cigarette, dragging it down to the filter and tossing it onto the carpet. He lit another cigarette.

  Cross leaned forward, using every ounce of his energy to push back the coffee table with his weakened legs. “Did you find Father Belmont’s body, Jesus?”

  Ramon shook his head, laughing. “I found an old tire. Nothing more, Padre.”

  “But you were close,” Cross said. “You were close, or he wouldn’t have stopped you. Listen to me, Jesus. Listen. This man, this saint of yours, he was a fraud. His real name was Gabriel Morrissey, and he was a murderer. I have to find him.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ramon said. “If I knew where he was, I would gladly tell you.”

  “If Father Belmont’s body has any scars on it, any damage...”

  Ramon’s chest rose and fell very slowly, as if each inhale was forced, each exhale merely an effect of a cause and nothing more. “Maybe I was close, Padre,” he whispered, h
is voice fading along with another gentle cloud of smoke.

  Cross stood up, forgetting altogether the man sitting in front of him, his good eye focused on the kitchen door leading to the rear of the ranch. The phone sitting next to the cutlery set on the countertop had a red blinking light, indicating there were messages. There was a flashlight next to the black microwave—a metal one, long and heavy in Cross’s hands. He turned it on, shining the light across the small kitchen.

  “Is there a shovel outside?” he asked, turning back to the motionless body in the living room.

  Ramon took another forced breath through the filter of his cigarette. “Yes, Padre.”

  Cross walked into the kitchen, unlocking the back door and walking outside. His eyes slowly scanned the side of the house, searching the bare red bricks for any object that might resemble a shovel. He kept his hands on the house, shining the beam of light in front of him, all around, trying to evaporate the darkness in every direction. The tips of his fingers brushed against something wooden. He heard the shovel fall to the dry dirt, bent over and picked it up. He turned and ran across the ranch, jumping over the fence dividing Ramon’s property with the rest of the arid Arizona landscape. He stepped across the rows of disturbed dirt, using his foot to find the softest and freshest holes. He stopped a hundred yards into the desert, on top of the softest dirt. In front of him was a fresh hole, only half the size of the other disturbed plots of land.

  Cross set down the flashlight and stepped over the hole, breathing hard. He shoved the spade into the hole, feeling its metal tip connecting with something other than dirt. His heart raced. He bent over, using his hand to gently brush away enough of the dirt to wrap his hands around the object. He pulled, easily lifting the object out of the dirt, sure now that the rubbery softness between his fingers was decayed flesh. He fell back under the weight, feeling the large object fall on top of him, a heavy clump of dirt falling over his face and making its way into his mouth.

  He stood up and tossed the old Firestone tire aside, then took two steps left. He picked up the shovel and began digging.