Exorcist

by Steven Piziks

  Nausea bubbled in his stomach. He raised a hand and, in a gesture he had performed hundreds of times, he plunged a ragged fingernail into the soft surface of the boil. The sore split, and thin fluid burst from it. Then the halves of damaged skin moved like a blanket on a bed, and out crawled a large, black fly.

  Jefferies stared in horror, unable to move. The fly’s wings were wet. It fluttered them, spraying more fluid, then casually flew away.

  Abruptly Jefferies felt more squirming against his face. Inside every boil, a tiny six-legged figure moved. The bar door slammed shut by itself. Trenton Jefferies began to scream.

  Flies crawled over Merrin’s body, slid into his nose, burrowed into his ears. He clapped his hands over his face, grinding several insects against his skin and trapping a host of others. They buzzed desperately against his fingers. The lantern dropped to the floor. Flies crawled into his clothing and skittered over his bare skin. Their tiny claws were cold. Merrin turned and stumbled toward the exit, hoping he was going in the right direction.

  “Help!” he shouted, and flies flew into his mouth. He tried to spit them out, but more came in. Merrin tripped and landed prone among the carpet of flies. They covered him in an instant, crawling into his collar, up his sleeves, down his trousers. His hands and face were black with them. He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t—

  His hand touched hot metal. The lantern! Merrin snatched it up. Flies pinged off it, hissing on the sizzling sides. Merrin got to his feet and ran for the square door, pushing through the flies as if they were a living curtain. Somehow he made it. Panting and spitting flies, Merrin rolled the round rock back into place, shutting the door. There was a crunching sound as it rolled over thousands of insects.

  The floor of the entranceway at the bottom of the stairs looked perfectly normal. No flies. Merrin shook his clothes, shedding hundreds of tiny black bodies. Finally he gave up and stripped, removing every stitch. He shook out each article of clothing with great care. Live flies rose in clumps and fled up the stairs into the church. Dead ones showered the floor. Merrin could still feel their tiny claws skittering over his chest and stomach, but he saw none on himself. He ran his hands over his skin to make sure, and felt filthy. He desperately wanted a shower or a bath. A pair of flies crawled over his penis. He waved them away, oddly embarrassed, and started pulling on his clothes again. Once everything was in place, he climbed the stairs back into the church.

  The crows sat motionless on their Michael statue as Merrin hauled himself up the rope ladder and out of the building. The jeep was still parked in the moonlight, looking for all the world as if it sat in an ordinary parking lot. He climbed in and turned the key, half expecting that it wouldn’t start. It did, and the motor’s growl was a perfect slice of normality.

  As Merrin drove away, he threw one last glance over his shoulder at the half-buried church. A single crow sat on the lip of the dome, outlined in the moonlight. It bobbed once, then flapped its wings and dropped back into darkness.

  Merrin guided the jeep down the rutted road, his mouth set in a hard line. He arrived at the village without further incident, parked, and was heading for the hotel when he saw Emekwi sitting in the moonlight at the edge of the boardwalk, his face a mask of grief. The other man saw Merrin approach and met him halfway.

  “Father Merrin,” he said in a cracked and broken voice that tore Merrin’s heart, “Joseph is all I have left. Please…you must help him.”

  “I’m sorry,” Merrin replied. “There’s nothing I can do.”

  Emekwi stood in Merrin’s path, standing a little too close and making Merrin uncomfortable. He grabbed Merrin’s hand like a supplicant. “You can pray,” Emekwi said.

  Fatigue pulled at Merrin, fatigue and sorrow. Emekwi was a good man, and he would have given anything to comfort the other man. But how could Merrin give someone else comfort when he could find none for himself?

  “My prayers won’t help, Emekwi,” he said quietly. “I wish they would. Try Father Francis.”

  Emekwi released Merrin’s hand with a sad nod. “It’s the devil, Father. I fear he’s come for all of us.”

  Merrin stared after Emekwi long after he had hurried away. Then he heard Sarah scream.

  Nine

  Village of Derati, British East Africa

  The lame know how to fall.

  —Kenyan proverb

  DR. SARAH NOVACK emerged from the lukewarm shower. Hot water was provided by a metal tank on the roof. It was painted black to catch as much heat from the sun as possible, and during the day the water was too hot for comfort. By this time of night—or was it morning?—the water was considerably cooler. Still, the running water relaxed her and would help her sleep. She picked up a much laundered towel, scrubbed her hair dry, and started on her body.

  A scraping noise came from somewhere outside the bathroom. Sarah paused, towel in hand. Another scrape, followed by a thump. She tensed. Maybe it was just Joseph again. She doubted it.

  Scrape. Thump. Thump.

  Sarah wrapped the towel around herself and opened the bathroom door. A dark, empty hallway greeted her. “Hello?” she called. “Who’s out there? Joseph?”

  Thump.

  Heart racing, she eased down the hallway in her bare feet. She stopped at her office and checked inside. Empty. She moved farther down the corridor. Kitchen and bedroom both empty.

  Thump. Scrape. Thump.

  Something flashed past the bedroom window. Sarah leaped back with a squeak, but whatever it was had gone.

  Wrapping the towel more tightly around her breasts, she moved down to the clinic entrance and cautiously poked her head inside. The overhead lamps still burned, and Joseph lay asleep in his bed. On the table beside her, the radio exploded into static. Sarah shrieked and spun. Her foot skidded on something slippery and she almost fell down. She recovered her balance and twisted the dial to shut the radio off. How had it come on? And what had she slipped in?

  Sarah looked down and saw the blood. She was standing in a puddle of it, and a crimson trail snaked down the hallway toward her. The bottom of her towel was soaked in scarlet. A tiny sound died in her throat. Her shaking hand slid down between her thighs. They came up slick and red. Sarah screamed and screamed.

  Suddenly Lankester Merrin was there, and the next several moments became a blur. She was vaguely aware of Merrin moving her around, holding her up, dressing her. Her throat was sore. She felt tired. She was in a hospital bed, and Lankester was sitting next to her, wearing a serious expression.

  “How do you feel?” he asked, and the sound of his voice was an amazing comfort.

  “I…I don’t know,” she answered hoarsely. “What happened to me?”

  “I came in and found you bleeding from the…well, I found you bleeding,” he said. “I got you cleaned up and into a bed, then I mopped up…I mopped the floor.”

  “It’s impossible,” she said flatly.

  “Maybe because of the stress, your body—”

  “No, you don’t understand.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “What the Nazis did to me…what they…there’s nothing left to bleed.” Memories washed up inside her, hard and painful. “It was called Chelmno.”

  Merrin blinked. “What was?”

  “The camp,” Sarah said, holding her tattoo up to the lamplight. Merrin made out B14206. “I was at Chelmno. The Nazis converted a castle and church into a work camp. They put me to work processing confiscated items.”

  “I don’t understand,” Merrin said.

  “After you arrived in one of the camps, you were taken into a room where everything was taken from you. Suitcases, clothes, eyeglasses, jewelry, shoes, hair, even teeth. And your name. As you left, they gave you a number and a thin gray uniform. Once the prisoners were taken out of the room, we processors were brought in. We sorted the materials. Men’s clothes into one pile, women’s into another, children’s into a third. Some of them were still warm from the people who wore them. I never got over finding teeth on the floo
r. The Nazis wanted them for the bits of gold they contained, and the guards would pull them out with pliers before sending the prisoners on to the barracks or the death chambers.

  “I found family mementos in the suitcases—photographs, musical instruments, journals, and other souvenirs of the past. These people had been told they were being ‘relocated,’ so they had taken their most valuable personal items with them. If it was paper or wood, the Nazis used it for fuel in the crematoriums. Money, gold fillings, and jewelry, of course, went to fund the army, though I know the guards stole a fair amount of it. I never learned what the Nazis did with the clothes, but we piled the shoes on the floor of the castle’s church. They covered every inch of flooring so high they came up to my shins.

  “I didn’t spend all my time sorting possessions, of course. I saw my brother raped and my cousins shot. I saw my parents taken to the gassing vans. And yet I continued on, sorting warm piles of clothes.”

  Merrin studied his lap in silence. Sarah paused.

  “It’s this place, Lankester,” she said at last. “The Turkana are right. It’s cursed.”

  “Sarah—”

  “No, there’s something happening here. Something evil.”

  “Sarah, it’s much easier to believe in evil as an entity,” Merrin said. “But it’s not. It’s a purely human condition. Inside of us all.”

  “And what evil is inside you?”

  “What?”

  She reached out of the bed and touched the back of his hand. “I processed clothing and the past of condemned people. What happened to you?”

  Silence. Sarah wondered if she should press or let it lie. More long moments of uncomfortable silence passed. Then Merrin abruptly said, “Did Bession ever talk to you about what he found under the church?”

  Sarah blinked. “Under? No. What’s under the church?”

  “Another temple.” Merrin gave a brief explanation, but omitted mention of the missing idol and the flies.

  “No,” Sarah said. “He never mentioned anything like that. It sounds horrible.”

  A yawn split Merrin’s face in two for a moment. “Maybe I should—”

  “You should go to bed,” Sarah said. “I’ll be fine, Lankester. You need to rest.”

  Merrin was too tired to argue, too tired to think about Sarah’s blood, too tired to think about the flies or piles of shoes or Francis or anything else. He rose, kissed Sarah on the forehead, and left. He took the back steps through the hotel up to his room, did a perfunctory wash, and fell into bed.

  What evil is inside you?

  His sleep should have been deep and dreamless. Instead, Merrin tossed and turned on his thin, hard bed. The alarm clock ticked on the nightstand.

  You. Priest. What is your name?

  The dead Nazi lay motionless on the cobblestones in the town square. The back of his uniform shone wet with blood, and a long tear gaped in the cloth between his shoulder blades. The villagers of Hellendoorn, huddled against a stone wall in a frightened flock, eyed the body nervously. A group of Nazi soldiers stood grim guard a few paces away. They were ragged and unkempt. Some of them sported bandages, and one stood on crutches. All of them had rifles. The men, women, and children of Hellendoorn looked around in fear and trepidation, looking for some escape, finding none.

  A gray drizzle fell from an equally gray sky, and everyone was soaked through. Smoke from a distant battle rose up against the low clouds. A sharp, acrid smell rode the air. Father Lankester Merrin stood near the huddle of people, his hands clasped so tightly within his black robes that his knuckles hurt.

  Lieutenant Rolf Kessel stepped in front of the soldiers and began to pace. He was tall and thin, and his worn face held more wrinkles than it should have for a man his age. The twin silver lightning bolts of the SS zigzagged across his collar. Merrin bit his lower lip until he tasted blood.

  “That,” Kessel said without preamble, gesturing at the corpse, “was one of my men. We found him in a ditch with a kitchen knife in his back. Murdered. By one of you.” He put his hands behind his back as he paced and looked up at the sky as if he expected a break in the weather. “You know the German army is retreating. It makes you feel hope. It shouldn’t. We will remain here until this matter is resolved.”

  The villagers and Merrin remained silent.

  “So,” Kessel continued, “who among you is responsible?”

  No answer. The villagers looked everywhere but at Kessel and his soldiers, hoping to avoid eye contact and the attention it might bring.

  Kessel turned to Merrin. “You. Priest. What is your name?”

  “I am Father Merrin,” he said, unable to keep a quaver from his voice.

  “These…creatures are your parish? They confess to you, then. So—point out the one who is responsible.”

  Merrin clenched his hands even harder. That wasn’t what he had been expecting to hear. He had no idea who had killed the wretched soldier, though he did know that the man had raped at least four girls in the time he had been stationed here. Merrin didn’t feel the slightest bit of sorrow over the soldier’s death, though he had said a dutiful prayer when he got the news. He had followed that with a prayer of thanks. Now he was starting to regret the latter.

  “No one here did this, Lieutenant,” Merrin responded firmly, hoping his obvious conviction would be enough. “They aren’t capable of—”

  “Apparently one of them is,” Kessel interrupted.

  A woman in the group—Merrin recognized Marianne Wieger—began to cry. The people close by tried to hush her.

  “Don’t be frightened,” Merrin said. “It’s all right. Everything will be all right.”

  Kessel edged up to Merrin, who tried not to shy away. The SS officer exuded a strange heat, and his breath smelled like fish.

  “You must help me with this,” he said quietly.

  “What do you mean?” Merrin asked.

  “I need someone. Do you understand? Surely there is one among them who beats his wife or his children. A thief, perhaps. Or a street beggar. Every town has someone it can do without, even a town as small as Hellendoorn. Point him out. I will take him and the matter will be resolved.”

  For a dreadful moment, Merrin considered doing just that. Hellendoorn did have its fair share of ne’er-do-wells. Who would miss one or two? whispered a little voice inside him. Then he shook his head. No one here deserved death. In any case, such things were God’s province to decide, not Merrin’s.

  “There is no killer in that line,” he said. “I know them.”

  Kessel studied Merrin’s face. Merrin looked unflinchingly back. After a long, cold moment, Kessel seemed to find what he had been looking for.

  “As you wish,” he said, turning back to the villagers with a smile. “I have good news! You are all innocent. Your priest has told me so.”

  The villagers exchanged nervous looks. This was too easy, too good to be true. Merrin held his breath.

  “The murderer is no doubt lurking in the countryside, growing brazen,” Kessel said. “Perhaps brazen enough to strike at another German soldier.” He paused to survey the inhabitants of Hellendoorn and their priest. “I am going to shoot ten of you, in the hope that we can demonstrate to this wretch the terrible responsibility he has incurred.”

  Merrin cried out as the guns began to fire. The cracks and bangs thundered against his ears…

  …and merged with the sound of banging on wood.

  Merrin came fully awake. The sun was well above the horizon, and someone was pounding on the door. He rolled out of bed, ignoring the way his sweaty night-clothes stuck to his body, and yanked it open.

  It was Francis, fully dressed in collar and khakis. “Something’s happened,” he said.

  Merrin pulled on some clothes, rubbed his sandy eyes, and hurried down the main stairs behind Francis. God, it was one crisis after another. He couldn’t even get a full night’s sleep.

  “Jefferies never showed up at the dig this morning,” Francis said in the main lobby. “
He wasn’t in his room, either. Emekwi checked, and he wasn’t in his room. When they went into the bar…” They came to the door of the bar, and Francis pushed it open. “…they found this.”

  The place had been ransacked. Smashed tables and broken chairs littered the floor. The shelves had all been pulled down. Chuma and Emekwi stood near the door, looking grim. A cloud of flies hovered over the bar, prompting Merrin to shrink back. He noticed Francis was in no hurry to approach either, and for some reason the image of the flies crawling across his privates sprang into Merrin’s mind. He pushed the image aside and forced himself to approach the bar.

  Flies bounced off Merrin’s head and arms, making him shudder. A series of deep gouges marred the bar’s surface—eight in all. Each had a piece of broken fingernail in it. A chill came over him.

  “The chief’s baby was stillborn last night,” Francis said. “He blames us.”

  Merrin looked at him. “You think the Turkana took Jefferies out of revenge?”

  “I think this place is on the verge of an uprising. I’ve called Major Granville. A full detachment will be here by the afternoon. They’re flying in from Nairobi.”

  Merrin shook his head, remembering Francis’s extra-heavy suitcase. Probably had a two-way radio in it, he thought, no doubt supplied by the Vatican.

  “You disagree,” Francis said, noticing Merrin’s expression.

  “It’s been my experience,” Merrin said, “that bringing soldiers into a situation is never a good idea.”

  As he turned to leave, a glint of metal caught his eye. He bent over and picked up the source. The St. Joseph medal Jefferies had given Sarah gleamed on his palm. The infant Jesus looked up at his adopted father, little knowing what awaited him in thirty years. The cross was a terrible instrument of torture, and these days Merrin found little solace in looking at it. He certainly didn’t find it restful when it was used to mark graves. He shoved the medal into his pocket and strode outside into bright sunlight. Chuma followed him.