House Infernal by Edward Lee

by Edward Lee

  Only now did it occur to her that she'd lugged her suitcase all the way up by herself. Driscoll hadn't even thought to help her, yet she felt certain it was from no lack of manners. He's just distracted. His thoughts seem like they're all over the place.

  Up here most of the bedroom doors were open, along with their windows. The cross-breeze refreshed Venetia from the stuffiness of the atrium.

  But the priest was looking at her with some unease. "Are you a virgin?"

  Venetia's mouth fell open. "Father Driscoll, I can't believe you asked me that."

  He seemed unaware of the misstep. "I'm a priest, for God's sake."

  "Still, this isn't exactly a confessional."

  "Venetia, I'm only suggesting that you live some of your life first. You can be just as devoted a servant of God without being a nun. I've seen it too many times. Girls go to the convent full of idealism, then are miserable for the prime of their lives. It doesn't do God any good. Things are different now, and God knows that. Twenty-one is way too young to even be thinking about stuff like that."

  "So that's it," she replied. "I'm a -kid? I'm not capable of making a life decision?"

  "Don't be defensive." Again, he almost smiled. Almost. "When you're a nun, they're going to send you to places like Calcutta, Sao Paulo, Africa-"

  "And I'm ready. I don't think I'm being naive by wanting to serve God. Part of my job is getting my hands dirty."

  Driscoll nodded dismissively. He was looking down the long, empty stair-hall when he answered, "Yeah, real dirty. You'll be dealing with catastrophic human tragedy, Vene tia. You'll be dealing with HIV victims, the starving, the abused, children with cancer, babies with tapeworms."

  "I'm ready," " she repeated.

  "You'll be dealing with people on the crap end of life ... and the only reason I didn't say shit is ... well, I'm a priest." He looked at her deadpan.

  Venetia laughed. She was figuring him out now. "You're saying I have to live life before I can help others live theirs?"

  "Exactly. Life and all its very human bells and whistles. Humanity can be very grotesque at times. How can you help an AIDS-infested Calcuttan prostitute when you've never even experienced human sexual response yourself?"

  It was a good question, but she was baffled by what it might be leading to. "Maybe I have, Father."

  "Oh, so you aren't a virgin ... ?"

  "I didn't say that-not exactly. But I don't know that it matters. St. Augustine wasn't a virgin, either. Statistically, most priests aren't-they had plenty of experience with 'human sexual response' before they made their vow of celibacy."

  "I'm not arguing with you there."

  Her confusion now began to fascinate her. Is he telling me I need to know what sex is like in order to become a fully aware nun? "You have a way of evading your point, Father. If you want to give me clerical counsel ... then just say it."

  "All right. Get involved with a guy. Have a boyfriend. Date. Do like that, like everyone else your age. Know what it's like to be in love-"

  "I-" she tried to jump in.

  "-and I don't mean just a love of God. Have some relationships. Be human. Know what it's like to have a relationship you're happy with, and know what it's like to have a relationship that fails. It's all part of being human, which is what you need to be before you go to Africa and watch a hundred people die in a diphtheria outbreak."

  "I understand what you're saying, Father-at least I think I do," she told him.

  "And no I'm not suggesting you go out and lose your virginity just so you know what it's like."

  "Good," she said with a long sigh. "Because that's what I thought you were saying." She blinked. "So ... what are you saying?"

  .You can have a perfectly acceptable relationship in the eyes of God, Venetia. You can date, you can be in love, et cetera, with-how do I say this? Without having sex out of wedlock."

  Now she wanted to laugh out loud. "Really? How?"

  'With ... difficulty."

  Finally he cracked a smile. "All I'm saying, Venetia, is live some normal life before you become a bride of Christ, all right? At least think about it."

  "I will," she said, unable to resist. She knew it was iffy judgment but she sensed the unlikely conversation had broken enough of formality's ice. "But what about you, Father? Don't you have to live some normal life before you can be a good priest?"

  "Hey, Igo to baseball games all the time."

  "Come on, seriously. Have you had all those things? Before you joined up, were you ever in love? Have you ever just dated a woman? Have you been in normal, healthy relationships?"

  He maintained the inscrutable smile, and simply shook his head no.

  Regrets, she realized now. That's what Father Driscoll had been getting at. Make the right decision so I won't have regrets later in life. He'd put it more clearly earlier when he'd explained that the prior house was being reopened for priests on respite. The older a priest gets-and the more of his life he gives to God-the more he becomes subject to basic human frailties... .

  But now she had to wonder. Does he have such regrets?

  Driscoll took her to a room in the corner. "Hereit is."

  Sunlight filled the newly painted room. There was a metal-railed bed, a desk, several lamps-including a black and very ugly floor lamp-and a dresser. Nothing else.

  "Sorry it's so ... unadorned," he added.

  "It's fine, Father." She set her bags down, then looked around. "Where's-"

  "The bathroom?" He shrugged. "Out your door, hang a right. The women's and men's bath- and shower rooms are at the end of the stair-hall. Kind of like the college dorm, huh?"

  "Sure." She didn't care, but it would've been nice to have a private bathroom. "So what's first on my list of duties, Father?"

  "Nothing much." He kept looking at his watch, as if late for something. "Just take a closer look around, go outside and check out the grounds. Get yourself settled. If you have any time to spare before dinner, you can help tape up the downstairs windows so we can start painting trim. The really grueling work beings in the morning." He eyed her severe black dress and white blouse. "And wear old clothes. We'll all be making a mess of ourselves."

  Damn. The Catholic schoolgirl-look had been a mistake. "Stupid me-the only clothes I brought are all pretty much identical to these. I do have some sneakers, though."

  "Good. Wear 'em." Looking befuddled, he glanced at his watch again. "I wanted to introduce you to Dan but God knows where he's off to."

  "I'm sure I'll run into him."

  "See you at dinner, then," he said, backing out of the room. "And thanks again for helping us out here."

  "My pleas-"

  Father Driscoll whisked out the door. He's an enigma, all right, she concluded. Cold on the outside-the rigid Catholic cleric-but then stiflingly human on the inside. Was the man inside being trammeled by his vocation? Unpacking, she pondered their odd conversation. I still can't believe he asked me if I was a virgin. Venetia confessed her sins appropriately on a regular basis ... to priests, just like him. So why did his query shock her? I know I'm a virgin, at least Biblically. Indeed, she'd never been with a man, and even after that one time-when she wasn't sure-a GYN exam verified that her virginity had remained intact. She knew the temptations in the world outside of her faith, and Driscoll's additional comments made her suspect that he was probably more naive about those things than she was. Suggesting that she pursue love relationships while potentially remaining platonic was tricky indeed.

  But maybe he's got a point.

  Maybe she really should live her life some more before stepping into the nunnery.

  Other than in dreams, she'd had one orgasm in her life, and it remained a sensation she'd never forget. That party ... Just a typical college mixer, and they were always on the tame side anyway. In a Catholic university? She'd been nineteen at the time, and decided to attend only to talk to people and blow off a little steam after acing a 400-level Latin exam. She couldn't blame alcohol because she didn't
drink-ever-and at the party it had been diet sodas exclusively. She hadn't seen the couple on campus before, even though they'd claimed to be seniors-a lie, she found out later. As the party wound down, Venetia realized she'd been enjoying the conversation with them-the girl a shapely, well-tanned blonde, and the guy a broad-shouldered jock with a delicate smile. They'd been discussing Immanuel Kant's EightBall Theory and whether or not his "Transcendental Doctrine of Method" had as much practicality for the twenty-first century as it had for the eighteenth. The conversation had been invigorating.

  Until about 2 A.M.

  That's when Venetia had begun to feel sick.

  Her knees felt rubbery, and her thoughts seemed to swirl in her head. "I don't know what's wrong with me," she murmured, bracing herself against the wall. The blonde took her arm: "Post-exam fatigue, hon. We all get it. You cram for a week straight, take the test, thenpow-it hits you all at once."

  The guy took her other arm. "We have to go now anyway, but we'll walk you back to your dorm."

  They took her to a van instead. Venetia had passed out, and when she'd choppily regained consciousness, she found herself sprawled naked on an air mattress, while the equally naked blonde was performing cunnilingus on her. Though Venetia's brain remained in a half-stupor, her body felt gorged by excited blood, breasts heaving, nipples tingling. When she'd seized enough cognizance to look down, she saw her own hands clasped to the back of the blonde's head, as the most delicious sensations began to crest. "Please, please . . . ," she murmured, all the nerves in her groin squirming for some incomprehensible release. At the same time, the jocky guy found her nipples to suckle. He was shirtless but still had his pants on, and when he grabbed Venetia's listless hand, he put it right to his crotch. The swollen bulge throbbed but felt unyielding as the end of a broom. "That's great, baby," he whispered in a voice as sweet as his counterfeit smile. "Let me take it out for you...." But at the same time the blonde's deft skills brought Venetia to a back-bowing crescendo. Her orgasm didn't merely occur, it detonated, and then every nerve in her body began to spasm in an unloading of pleasure that she could only describe as unearthly.

  "It's our turn now, right, baby?" The blonde grinned up between her legs. "You've been double-teamed before, haven't you?"

  Somehow the climax had purged whatever chemical it was that they'd put in her soda. When she looked aghast to the guy, he was taking off his jeans.

  Venetia never uttered a sound. She was up in a whir, dredging her clothes off the van floor, tumbling out, and running away.

  "Oh, come on, hon," one of them said. "It's all in fun...."

  She dressed herself as she ran, however clumsily, through the empty parking garage, which happened to be just a block away from the entrance to her campus. The last she ever heard from them was the chirp of tires when the van sped down the ramp.

  To her disbelief, outrage never occurred to her. It was confusion. Technically a date rape, she knew, just one that hadn't progressed to completion. And she also knew this: That sort of stuff happens every day, but it's a lot worse than what I got. Instead of feeling traumatized, she thanked God that she'd wakened when she had, and she even prayed that her assailants would find grace someday.

  It was confusion that wracked her most of all. The climax had boggled her entire psyche. Even as she walked humiliated and barefoot out of the empty garage, her nerves thrummed in the post-orgasm. She'd left her bra and panties in the van, which left the tight jeans to cosset her bare pubis, and the ironic St. Gregory T-shirt titillated her nipples back to being gorged. The confusion arrived when all of those pleasurable sensations collided with her guilt.

  She'd waited until after her orgasm was over to bolt from the van.

  Did I do that on purpose? she'd asked herself a million times since then. She'd never told the police because rape would've been all but impossible to demonstrate. Anyone could've slipped something into her drink, and with no penetration, no semen? Not in this age of slickster lawyers, she realized. Instead of the police station, she'd gone to the confession booth, where an overbearing priest had scolded her for going to "parties full of nonbelievers" but said that her tardiness in leaving the van had been innate, not premeditated. "In the eyes of God, my child, you are still pristine," he'd said.

  That's what Venetia wanted to be, but now, as she stood in her sterile bedroom at a dust-filled prior house, she admitted it. I did, damn it. I waited on purpose ... because I wanted to come.

  Yet she had been drugged-there was no doubt. Roofies, chloral hydrate, or whatever-it scarcely mattered. Such drugs affected judgment and artificially hindered inhibitions. Since she hadn't taken it willingly, she couldn't blame herself-and neither can God ... In fact, it had been the only time in her life that she'd passed out.

  Until today.

  The spell at the convenience store. The voice, the rising pain in her head. I collapsed. I was out cold. My father had to carry me out of the store. She could still barely believe it. She felt fine now, but what might the cause have been, and the same bizarre voice that had ruptured her sleep last night?

  A flashback? Was it possible for that sort of drug to-produce temporary hallucinations that could recur? Venetia had never read anything indicative of that, but then she'd never researched it very much. Don't worry about it....

  She let the memory leave the room with her gaze. She was looking out the open window at scrubby grounds and tufts of unmowed onion grass that crawled up the hill to the woodline. She muttered, "What a mess. Can't decide what's uglier-the prior house or the land it's on." Just as ugly was the old redbrick supply shed or something way out in the back.

  She brushed her hair out before the mirror and decided to leave the clip off. Seeing now how Mrs. Newlwyn and her daughter were dressed, Venetia's own appearance made her feel on the dorky side; with her blond hair unfettered she at least felt less parochial. When she left her room, a large, ornately framed oil painting stopped her halfway along the stair-hall.

  The canvas was the largest of any upstairs, a yard by two feet. Dark colors and a sepulchral background seemed to thrust the painting's subject forward in a manner that seemed almost multidimensional: an elderly white-haired man, jowly, hard-eyed and scowling outward. He wore a cloaklike cope of some plush scarlet fabric, with a white liner. The black shirt beneath was buttoned to the top and joined by a Roman collar.

  You have a good day, too, buddy, Venetia thought. Though the man in the portrait didn't exactly look hateful, his was clearly the most dour representation in the house. Who is this crabby old guy? At first she thought it might be the architect Amano Tessorio, but then doubted it when she recalled Driscoll's reason that the statue of the man was never even delivered. Yeah, I guess it wouldn't be too cool to hang a painting of a heretic in a Catholic service building.

  A clattering startled her from downstairs, and a man's testy words: "Aw, damn it..."

  Venetia looked over the stair-hall rail and saw a trim, thirtyish man in white painter's pants and a T-shirt dragging a cumbersome drop cloth across the atrium. He seemed to be walking on it more than moving it.

  "Hi," she said.

  He looked up as if distracted, short black hair and a face that was jovial and serious at the same time, like the class clown who always managed to get good grades in spite of his chicanery. He seemed to pause after focusing on her, and Venetia got the impression that he may have found her attractive.

  "Dan, I presume? The seminarian?"

  He stood erect, leaving the drop cloth. "Actually, I prefer seminarist, but you can just call me lackey, like Father Driscoll. Dan Holden, at your service, Miss-"

  "Venetia Barlow."

  "Oh, yeah," Dan said, enthused. "The girl from Catholic U?"

  "That's me."

  "Driscoll told me we'd have a real-live theologian on our crew."

  "Well, you're a theologian, too," she reminded him.

  "Not really. If you want to know the truth, the real reason I'm studying to become a priest is beca
use, well"-he offered his paint-streaked arms-it's easier than being a painter. Anyway, it's nice to meet you, Venetia."

  "You need some help with that?"

  "No thanks. We're going through these things like they're a dime a dozen. But you can help me set the table for dinner later if you want."

  "I'd be happy to." For a moment, it was Venetia who paused at a distraction. What a good looking guy.... "Oh, but let me ask you something. Do you know who this portrait's of?" She thumbed behind her. "The scowling old man in the red cope?"

  "That would be Prior Russell Whitewood. Looks about as friendly as a mad dog, huh?"

  Venetia laughed. "At first I thought it might be Tessorio. . . ."

  Dan grinned. "No, I'm afraid Whitewood's not that notorious. Whitewood ran the prior house for twenty years."

  "Is he the previous prior, who retired recently?"

  The question caused Dan to arch a brow. "He's the previous prior, all right. But what makes you think he retired?"

  "Father Driscoll told me."

  Another cocky grin. "Figures. He doesn't want you to get the heebie-jeebies."

  „What?„

  "Whitewood didn't retire. He..." Dan wiped at a paint splotch on his arm. "How do I say this without sounding overdramatic? Uh, Prior Whitewood disappeared without a trace, within a shroud of mystery."

  Venetia squinted. "You're not serious?"

  "Perfectly serious. Well ... maybe the 'shroud of mystery' is an exaggeration, but, yeah, he walked off the job, disappeared. It was last spring."

  Venetia subconsciously fiddled with a strand of hair. Disappeared? "Then why would Father Driscoll-"

  "He told you Whitewood retired because it was easier," Dan said. "He didn't want to give you a reason to have second thoughts."

  "About what?"

  "About helping us get the prior house back in shape. He couldn't get any local theology students to join up for extra credits. Why? Because they were all in the area, so they knew what happened." Dan looked at her more intently. "Driscoll didn't tell you about the murders either, did he?"

  "Murders?" she questioned with enough volume to cause an echo. "People were murdered here?"