Punish the Sinners

by John Saul

  Initiation Rite

  Peter Balsam sank deeper into the trance. His senses sharpened, he felt the searing flame from each candle; he heard the voice of the devil calling out to him in his head. He felt the heat of hell glowing around him and as his discomfort grew he became frightened.… Then he was being drawn downward and he felt angelic hands caress him. He was suddenly cooler, calmer. He began silently repeating the Acts of Faith and Contrition, as his ecstasy grew.

  He was joined at last to the Society of St. Peter Martyr.

  Only later did he make the awful discovery: On Peter’s back, from his shoulders to his waist, were angry red welts. The marks were swollen and stood out in painful relief from the pale whiteness of his back.

  “My God,” Margo breathed, as she slipped the robe from his shoulders. “What happened?” And then the full horror of it struck him. He began to shake and with the trembling came the terror. “I don’t know,” he sobbed. “And that’s the worst of it I don’t know where they came from.”

  By John Saul:

  SUFFER THE CHILDREN

  PUNISH THE SINNERS

  CRY FOR THE STRANGERS

  COMES THE BLIND FURY

  WHEN THE WIND BLOWS

  THE GOD PROJECT

  NATHANIEL

  RAINCHILD

  HELLFIRE

  THE UNWANTED

  THE UNLOVED

  CREATURE

  SECOND CHILD

  SLEEPWALK

  DARKNESS

  SHADOWS

  Published by

  Dell Publishing

  a division of

  Random House, Inc.

  1540 Broadway

  New York, New York 10036

  For Linda and Jane

  The Grey Ladies with the Red Roses

  Copyright © 1978 by John Saul

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

  The trademark Dell® is registered in the U.S. Patent

  and Trademark Office.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-76826-1

  v3.1

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  BOOK ONE - The Saints of Neilsville Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  BOOK TWO - The Society of St. Peter Martyr Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  BOOK THREE - AUTO-DA-FÉ Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  BOOK FOUR - St. Acerinus Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Prologue

  He reached up and grasped the doorknob carefully, half-hoping it would be locked. When it wasn’t, his eyes widened in anticipation, and he began pushing the door open very slowly. When you are four years old, and you are going to do something that you are not sure you should do, you try to do it either very slowly or very quickly. The little boy was doing it very slowly.

  He pushed the door to his parents’ bedroom open just far enough for his small body to slip in, then closed it again behind him. He looked around, though he already knew the room was empty. On the other hand, when you are four, very few rooms are truly empty.

  He tiptoed across the room to his mother’s closet, and again half-hoped the door would be locked. When he found that it wasn’t, he made up his mind to go ahead and do it He pulled the door open and stepped into the closet There they were: his mother’s shoes.

  He had seen a picture in a book once—a little boy, all dressed up in his mother’s clothes—his tiny feet lost in the immense high-heeled shoes, his body swathed in the folds of a red dress, and his face just barely visible peering out from under the brim of a large sunbonnet His mother had thought the little boy in the picture was adorable.

  So now he stepped into a pair of his mother’s shoes, and tried to balance his weight on those tiny little heels. It was difficult, but he managed it Then, while he was trying to figure out how he was going to get to the hat-box perched almost out of sight on the shelf far above his head, he heard the sound.

  It was the click of a doorknob, and even before he heard the next sound, he knew that someone had come into the room. He turned quickly; the closet door was almost closed. Maybe, if he held very still, and stayed very quiet, whoever was in the bedroom wouldn’t notice the doset door at all …

  He crouched down on the floor of the closet More sounds. Footsteps, and two voices. It was his parents, and they were both in the bedroom. He heard the bedroom door close.

  “I just don’t like doing it now,” be heard his mother say. “It seems so—so dirty, I guess.”

  “You mean you don’t like doing it in the light.” His father, angry.

  “The trouble with you, Ruth, is that you’re prissy. You need a touch of the whore in you.”

  The little boy wondered what “the whore” was.

  There was a scuffling noise, and then his mother’s voice: “What about the children?”

  “What about them?” his father rumbled. “Elaine’s at school, and the kid’s outside somewhere doing God knows what.”

  The little boy sank farther back into the depths of the closet Suddenly it was very important that he not be discovered. He wasn’t sure why, but he knew it was important

  He listened to more scuffling sounds, and heard some words that he couldn’t quite make out. He began to wonder what was happening on the other side of the closet door, but he was afraid to peek out and see.

  When his mother began to moan, the little boy conquered his fear. He crept to the crack where the door stood slightly ajar, and pressed his eye dose. He could see the foot of the bed, but that was all. His mother moaned louder; he decided to risk pushing the closet door open a little more. And then he saw them.

  They were on the bed, and they didn’t have any clothes on. His father lay on top of his mother. She was crying or moaning and struggling with his father. But she had her arms around his neck, and between the moans she was saying, “Yes … Yes … Oh, God, yes!”

  As he watched the strange scene on the bed, the little boy became frightened. He thought maybe he ought to help his mother, but he was scared of his father. His father had hit him before; he didn’t want to be hit again. And he wasn’t really sure that his mother wanted any help. Still, her cries were getting louder, and now she really did seem to be struggling. But her arms were still around his father, and she was kissing him.

  The little boy’s eye was caught by another movement in the room, and he realized that the bedroom door was opening again. He held his breath, then let it out again when he saw Elaine standing in the doorway. She would know what to do, he thought She was sixteen years old, and almost all grown up. If his mother needed any help, Elaine would be able to provide it He watched as Elaine moved toward the bed, waiting for her to say something, do something. But she didn’t She just stood there by the bed—watching.

  Just as the little boy was about to call out to his sister,
he saw her suddenly raise her hands above her head.

  He saw the meat cleaver from the kitchen clutched in her hands.

  And he saw the cleaver flash down, and heard the sound as the hard metal slashed through his father’s skull.

  He heard his mother cry out, and he watched in confusion as she tried to straggle free of his father’s weight. He wondered why Elaine didn’t help his mother, now that she had stopped his father from doing whatever he was doing.

  He realized that Blaine wasn’t going to help his mother. He watched, horrified, as his sister raised the cleaver again, and brought it down into his mother’s face. He thought he heard his mother scream, but it was too quick for him to be sure. Frozen, he watched as his sister raised the cleaver—again and again—bringing it flashing through the air. Long after they had both stopped moving, the knife continued to flash until all he could see was silver and red.

  Terrified, the little boy huddled in the closet, wondering if his aster was going to find him and start hitting him, too. But she was standing still now, looking at what she had done. And then she started moving again. She dropped the bloody cleaver on the bed, and knelt down on the floor, as if looking for something he couldn’t see.

  She stood up again, and pulled a chair to the center of the room, directly below the light fixture in the ceiling. She climbed up onto the chair and began tying something to the light fixture. It was an electrical cord, the kind his parents used when they needed something longer than the cords that came on the electric things. He wondered why she was tying it to the light fixture. Everybody knew that electric cords have to be plugged in for them to work.

  He saw his sister tie the other end of the cord around her neck, and he realized what she was going to do. He’d seen this before. She was going to hang herself. He’d seen pictures of it. But if she hung herself, who would take care of him? He had to stop her. The little boy finally found his voice.

  He screamed and as the wail escaped his throat, the girl on the chair spun around and lost her footing. As the chair fell away from her, the closet door swung open, and their eyes met And then her neck snapped. It was over.

  The little boy watched helplessly as his sister swung slowly back and forth. Finally he moved toward her, and reached out to touch her. She felt strange. She didn’t feel like his sister anymore. He wondered what to do.

  Much later—he didn’t know how much later—he heard a scream. He didn’t respond to it He was huddled in the corner of the closet, his knees drawn up under his chin, his arms wrapped around his legs. He thought he heard some other noises too, and even later, he was aware that the closet door was being pulled open. It wasn’t until a pair of arms reached down and picked him up that he started crying. When he started, he cried for a long time.

  They kept him in a hospital for the first day after the discovery of the gruesome scene in the bedroom. The nuns took care of him, and asked him a lot of questions, but he couldn’t answer any of them. He wanted his mother and his father. They didn’t come to see him.

  On the second day they took him to the convent. He didn’t know what a convent was, only that it was a big building, and there were lots of nuns there who fussed over him a lot. And there were other children there, children who lived there. The little boy wondered if he, too, was going to live there.

  As he went to sleep the second night, he wondered if his parents would come to see him. And Elaine. He wondered what had happened to Elaine. As he drifted off to sleep, he thought he saw her. She was looking at him, and there was something wrong with her. Her neck looked funny—stretched out and tilted at an odd angle.

  When the little boy screamed, a nun hurried into the room and put her arms around him. The nun held him until he went back to sleep.

  On the third day they took him to church and the little boy realized that his parents weren’t going to come and get him. He realized that they were in the boxes at the front of tibe church, and that after the boxes were taken away, he wouldn’t see them again.

  He asked if it would be all right if he looked at his parents before they were taken away, but he was told that he couldn’t He wondered why.

  During the funeral service the little boy kept looking curiously around the church, and shortly before tibe service ended, he tugged at the black folds of the habit the woman next to him was wearing. He knew she was a nun, and that she would take care of him. He tugged again at her habit and she leaned down to put her ear close to his lips.

  “Where’s Elaine?” he asked. “Isn’t she going to be here?”

  The nun stared at the little boy for a moment, then shook her head.

  “She can’t be here,” the nun said finally. “You mustn’t think about her anymore, or talk about her.”

  “Why not?” the little boy asked.

  “Never mind,” the nun admonished him. “Your sister was an evil child, and she has sinned. You mustn’t think about her.”

  The funeral mass ended, and his parents were taken from the church. He watched them go, and wondered what had happened to them.

  And what had happened to his sister.

  And why he was by himself.

  But, of course, he wasn’t by himself. He was in the convent, but no one would tell him why. He heard someone—one of the sisters—say: “Hell get over it. He’ll forget. It will be better that way.”

  The little boy did not forget. Not while he was small, and not while he grew up. Always, he was aware that something had happened. Something had happened to his parents, and to his sister. And his sister had caused it to happen.

  His sister was evil.

  She had sinned.

  He knew that God forgave sinners.

  But who punishes them?

  By the time he was ten, he had stopped asking. Nobody had ever told him the answer.

  BOOK ONE

  The Saints of Neilsville

  1

  Peter Balsam trudged to the top of Cathedral Hill and stared up at the forbidding stone façade of the Church of St. Francis Xavier. The desert heat seemed to intensify, and Balsam could feel sweat pouring from his armpits, and forming rivulets as it coursed down his back. He sank down on the steps in front of the church, and stared at the vista below him.

  The town was called Neilsville, and it lay shimmering in the heat of the Eastern Washington desert like some dying thing writhing in agony with each tortured breath, unable to end its misery.

  There was an aura about Neilsville, an aura that Peter Balsam had felt the minute he had arrived but had not yet been able to define.

  A word had flashed into his mind the moment he had gotten off the train two hours earlier. He had put it immediately out of his mind. It had kept coming back.

  Evil.

  It covered the town like the stink of death, and Peter Balsam’s first impulse had been to run—to put himself and all his possessions on the next train east, and get away from Neilsville as fast as he could.

  But the next train would not be until tomorrow, and so, reluctantly, he had gone to the apartment that had been rented for him. He had not unpacked his suitcases, not put his name on the mailbox, not tried to order a phone, not done any of the other things that one normally does to settle into a new home.

  Instead, he had tried to tell himself that the pervading sense of foreboding, of something desperately wrong in the town, was only in his imagination, and had set out to explore the place.

  After two hours he had climbed Cathedral Hill, and now he was about to present himself to the man who had brought him to Neilsville.

  He slipped into the gloom of the church, dipped his fingers into the holy water, made the sign of the cross as he genuflected, and slid into a pew. Peter Balsam began to pray.

  He prayed the prayers the nuns had carefully taught him in the convent, the prayers that had always before brought him peace.

  Today there was no peace. It was as if fingers were reaching out to him, grasping at him, trying to pull him into some strange morass that he could
feel but not see.

  Balsam concentrated on his prayers, repeating the familiar phrases over and over again, until the rhythms of the rosary overcame the fear within him.

  “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners …”

  In the study of the rectory next to the church, Monsignor Peto Vernon paced slowly back and forth. He had watched Balsam’s slow progress up Cathedral Hill, and had expected to hear the faint tinkling that would announce his visitor. Now he realized that Balsam must have stopped to catch his breath after the long climb.

  The priest went back to the window, and stared out once more, taking in the familiar dry vista of Neilsville, then focusing on the five girls who were playing on the tennis courts below him—four of them together, one alone. As he continued to stare down at them, each of them, in turn, glanced up at him as if they had felt his disapproving glare. One of them waved impudently, and the priest quickly stepped back from the window, embarrassed at having been discovered watching them, and angry at his own embarrassment.

  He resented the girls, resented the way they acted so respectful in his presence, then sneered at him from a distance. When he had been a child, such impudence had not been tolerated. The nuns had demanded respect all the time, and the boys in the convent had given it, unquestioningly. But times had changed, and these girls didn’t live at St. Francis Xavier’s, didn’t have the constant supervision he himself had had at their age. This year, he told himself, things would be different. This year, with the help of Peter Balsam, he would take a stronger stand. This year, he would teach them respect, and humility. It was for this purpose that he had summoned Peter Balsam to Neilsville.

  It had not been an easy thing to do. From its inception, the parish school had employed only nuns on the teaching staff, and they had resisted when Monsignor had told them he was bringing in a layman to teach psychology. Psychology, they had told him, had no place at St. Francis Xavier’s. It should be left to the public school. And as for a man—and not even a priest at that—teaching at St Francis Xavier’s, it was simply unheard of. Monsignor Vernon had explained to them: he had been unable to find anyone else who could teach both psychology and Latin. Then, when they still resisted, he had invoked his authority as their religious superior. They, like most others, had wilted under the brooding stare of the Monsignor. The priest had invited Peter Balsam to come to Neilsville.