Dark Debts

by Karen Hall

  “Yes,” Michael said, figuring simplicity was his best defense.

  “And you think you can confess, not mention the girlfriend, have me think I’ve absolved you, and then go exorcise a demon?”

  “I don’t want to make any major life decisions until this is over.”

  “You already made a major life decision that precludes this one. Are you deranged?”

  “No. I’m counting on God to be more merciful than you.”

  “That’s not mercy you’re asking for; it’s cheap grace. See Bonheoffer. There’s a copy of The Cost of Discipleship in the library.”

  “Do you possess an ounce of compassion?”

  “Michael, mercy is meaningless without justice. What you are doing is lying and inviting God to share in your lie. You’re asking God to un-God Himself—to give up righteousness so as to approve of your moral cowardice!”

  Michael knew, in some recess of his soul, that Gabe was right. But there was nothing he could do about it now, and they certainly couldn’t stop in the middle of an exorcism.

  “We have to get back—”

  “No,” Gabe said. “I’m not playing your game. Pick up the phone now and break up with her now, and mean it now, and then I’ll absolve you and then we’ll go back in there.”

  “I’m not going to break up with her on the phone.”

  It seemed like a no-brainer to Michael, but Gabe’s face turned a darker shade of red.

  “You’re not an idiot. How can you believe in the Devil and think you won’t end up in Hell for breaking a vow you made to God ?”

  “Gabe, you’re a dinosaur,” Michael bemoaned. “No one believes what you believe anymore.”

  “The truth doesn’t become untrue because it’s no longer popular!” Gabe snapped. “And the fact that it doesn’t make any sense to you, or to me or to anyone else, is completely irrelevant to God.”

  Randa appeared in the doorway, for which Michael wanted to hug her.

  “I’m sorry for interrupting,” she said, “but he’s asleep now.”

  “Good,” Michael said. “We could all use a break.”

  They sat at the dining room table and picked at the pizza they’d ordered. No one was hungry but they knew they needed to keep up their strength. Gabe had barely spoken at all for the last hour. Thankfully Randa was taking up the slack, mostly with theological questions. Michael was sure his answers were driving Gabe insane.

  “If God is so good,” Randa asked, “why would He allow demons to exist? Or any evil, for that matter?”

  “Ask him,” Gabe said, nodding to Michael. “I’m not a sound bite guy.”

  “But you’re the scholar,” Michael said.

  “Okay, Adam and Eve,” Randa said. She looked at Gabe. “Explain to me how everyone on earth came from two people and we’re all being punished because of an apple and a talking snake.”

  “For starters, in Hebrew the story is not about Adam and Eve but ‘the man’ and ‘the woman.’ Eve isn’t named as such until the story is over and Adam is just ‘the man’ until chapter four. Secondly, the account is ‘prephilosophical.’ It wasn’t written in the categories of Greek metaphysics, which didn’t exist when it was written.”

  Randa put up a hand to stop him. “I’m not a scholar. Can you give it to me in crayon?”

  Gabe tried again. “The story sets out the key points: that the human race has a single origin, divinely intended. That the man was endowed with rationality and free will, which he could have used righteously or unrighteously; that he used it unrighteously; that the consequences remain with us. It all sounds like bad Bronze Age mythology because the philosophical essay format had not been invented. And to dismiss it as ‘mythic’ is to make the same kind of mistake that a nine-year-old makes in criticizing the design of a chess set because real knights don’t look like that. The Biblical account uses narrative categories to express distinctions of moral and metaphysical significance, rather than bio-anthropological generation.”

  “My head hurts,” Randa said.

  Michael had to admit to himself anyway that it was an impressive analogy.

  “So if it’s not meant to be taken literally, but it’s also not meant to be taken as a myth, what does that leave?” Randa asked.

  “The truth,” Gabe said, without missing a beat. And then he busied himself with clearing the table. When he had gone into the kitchen, Michael smiled at Randa.

  “He’s what people call an ‘old school’ Jesuit. Luckily there aren’t many left.”

  “Is the fact that you two hate each other going to make this fail?”

  “No,” Michael answered, though he knew it wasn’t going to help.

  Gabe returned from the kitchen just as they were interrupted by the sound of moaning coming from Jack’s room.

  “We should get back to it,” Michael said.

  “If you go back in there,” Gabe said, “you deserve whatever happens to you.” With that, he left the room.

  “What is he talking about?” Randa asked Michael.

  “Nothing relevant,” Michael said.

  “He’s leaving? I thought there had to be two of you.”

  “He’s just taking a break,” Michael assured her. “We’ll be okay.”

  Back in the room, they found Jack awake, but clearly not present. The demon glared at them, full of hate. The room was so cold they could see their breath, and filled with the now familiar rancid odor. Randa went to her corner. Michael picked up his stole, kissed it and put it around his neck, then picked up his book and found his place.

  “I’ll start where we left off,” he told Randa, as if that made a difference to her.

  “Alone again, Padre?” the demon asked with a sneering smile. Michael ignored him and resumed the prayers.

  “You who made man in Your own image . . .”

  “What are you going to do? Cast me out by boring me to death?”

  “Look on this Your servant, Jackson Landry, who is assaulted by the cunning of the unclean spirit . . .”

  “The primeval adversary,” the demon said, mockingly. “The ancient Enemy of earth . . . Enemy of the faith . . . Enemy of the human race . . . Best Supporting Enemy in a Recurring Role . . . and let’s not forget Most Likely to Succeed. Is this it? Is this the best you’ve got to throw at me? Name-calling by a fraud in a clown suit?”

  Michael looked up. Weighed it. Anything the demon could be tricked into revealing about himself could be used to trap him later. It was worth the digression.

  “Okay,” Michael said. “Why don’t you tell me who you are.”

  “You know who I am.”

  “I don’t know your name.”

  “And you think I might be stupid enough to tell you?”

  “Are you the only one?” Michael asked, trying a different approach.

  “Oh, Padre. We are legion. You know that.”

  “Are you the only one possessing Jack?”

  “It’s all the same, you fool.”

  “What’s the same?” Michael asked. He glanced at Randa. She was watching, riveted.

  “Tell you what,” said the demon. “You want to know who I am? Who we are? Why don’t I give you our résumé?”

  Something happened. It was as if Michael’s mind suddenly became a projection screen and someone flipped a switch to roll the film. He was bombarded by a series of images. Pictures of horror and death. The nightly news without network mercy. He saw starving children with distended stomachs; skeletal bodies of AIDS victims; people hemorrhaging from the Ebola virus, their internal organs exploding like grenades. Natural disasters. Earthquakes, landslides, floods, fires, blizzards, droughts, hurricanes, tsunamis, tornadoes. Concentration camps: men lined up for the showers; children being wrenched from the arms of sobbing mothers and thrown against concrete walls. War-ravaged cities. Wailing children running naked through the shells of bombed-out buildings. Derailed freight cars spewing toxic fumes, poison gas in crowded subways, fourteen-year-olds with Uzis gunning each other dow
n in the streets, suicide bombers driving cars full of dynamite into mosques, hypodermic needles washing up on pristine beaches, rescue dogs sniffing through the rubble of a daycare center that had been blown to bits by fertilizer and diesel fuel mixed with blind rage and raw hatred—the stench of death and destruction and waste and hopelessness. The putrid underbelly of God’s allegedly glorious creation. Everything behind the façade.

  And then the reel changed, and Michael began to see a montage of mankind’s pitiful attempts at defense and protection. Labels on soup cans, airbags in cars, BABY ON BOARD signs, alarm systems, security gates, Mace canisters, the surgeon general’s warnings, air-popped popcorn, turkey hot dogs, consumer reports, smoke detectors, antiradiation computer screens, earthquake kits, tornado warnings, flash-flood watches, iron lungs, organ transplants, bottled water, nonfat ice cream, rosaries hanging from rearview mirrors, plastic Jesuses on the dash . . .

  Pathetic, Michael realized. All our little safeguards and superstitions. Trying to fool ourselves into thinking we have any kind of control. We’re the South in the Civil War—too proud to admit we are greatly outnumbered, poorly armed, and rapidly depleting our meager resources. Left with nothing but shame and humiliation, and the war-torn ruins of our souls.

  “Where’s Jesus, Padre? Conjure Him up and let Him explain why I’m wrong.”

  “You’re wrong because you don’t know anything but lies,” Michael said. It was a third-grade reflex. Nothing more.

  “Who told you that? The Caped Crusader? Tell me, if God created everything, wouldn’t that make Him the Father of All Lies?”

  Before Michael could figure out how to answer, the demon was off on a new track.

  “You want me to set you straight about Junior? It’s a very simple story. He looked different. The whole world is in an uproar two thousand years later because he was taller than the average first-century Palestinian Jew. Because his hair was lighter than everyone else’s and his eyes were blue. A fluke of nature, like a white buffalo calf. It had to mean something. He looked different, so he had to be divine. If he’d been just another scruffy little Jew, no one would know his name by now.”

  “Did they kill Him for having blue eyes?”

  “They killed him for being a self-righteous prick.”

  Don’t listen. It’s a lie.

  “Is it, Padre? Then where is He? I’m here. You’re here. Where’s Superman?”

  Michael opened his mouth to speak and realized he had nothing to say. Randa was staring at him, worried.

  “In fact,” the demon went on, “where has He been all these years? Where was He when your precious grandfather was raping a thirteen-year-old girl and she was screaming for His help? Where was He when your mother’s brains were splattered all over Peachtree Street? Or when Tallen Landry used the Christmas Eve congregation for target practice?” He took a break to laugh, then went on. “I got one even better. Where was He the night you dumped Donna Padera?” He laughed. “You and your famous ego. You thought she was so upset because she couldn’t stand the thought of living without you. You might have suspected something if you’d ever bothered to know her any better.”

  “What are you talking about?” Michael asked. How the hell had Donna Padera gotten into the act?

  “Poor Donna. Your first victim. Believed everything you told her. Fine upstanding Catholic boy from a good home, with a rich and famous saint for a grandfather. If Michael Kinney said it wasn’t a sin, then by God, it wasn’t a sin. Let’s see . . . first it wasn’t a sin to jerk you off, because that wasn’t really sex. Then it wasn’t a sin for her to give you a blow job, because it wasn’t a sin unless she could get pregnant from it. And then my favorite part. ‘We might as well go all the way because if God’s going to be mad at us, He’s already mad.’ ” He stopped to laugh. Then stopped laughing. “She didn’t want to do any of it, but she wasn’t about to lose her prize-catch rich Catholic boy. And you knew it. You used it. You used her. Now, tell me. How is that so different from what your grandfather did?”

  Michael felt himself reeling. He’d been ready for attacks on his sex life, but it had never occurred to him the bastard would start with high school. He’d made a big mistake by talking to the demon in the first place. He’d broken the cardinal rule of exorcism, and now he was paying for it. He was no longer in control.

  He opened the book again and looked for his place.

  “Oh, no,” the demon said. “We’re not finished. You haven’t told me where your friend was the night you dumped Donna. And I haven’t told you why she was so upset that night. You’re so vain, you thought it was about losing you.”

  Michael told himself not to listen to whatever lie the demon was in the process of making up.

  “On the one hand, I was sorry to lose another generation of Kinneys to torment. On the other hand, you owed me a sacrifice.”

  What is he talking about?

  “Your son,” the demon said with a wide grin. “You dumped Donna the day she found out she was pregnant.”

  Michael stopped breathing.

  That can’t possibly be true.

  “Oh, but I’m afraid it is. She didn’t tell you because she didn’t want to stand in the way of your hallowed calling. She spent a lot of time calling on His Majesty about it, but I guess He was too busy to weigh in.” He chuckled. “So she did the easy thing and made it go away. She thought that would be the end of it. They always do.”

  Michael couldn’t speak. He couldn’t move.

  “And where were you, for that matter?” He snarled. “Trotting off to show the world how holy you were. You’re about as holy as I am. You’re a murderer, from a long line of murderers! And you call me unclean? You’re gonna cast me out? I’ve got a news bulletin for you about what’s waiting for you on the other end of your leaky raft!”

  Michael forced his legs to move and walked out of the room. Behind him, the demon was laughing hysterically.

  He put the book down on a hall table. His hands were shaking. It couldn’t be true. Donna would have told him. Surely she would have told him. He might not have ever been in love with her, but they’d always told each other everything. There was no way she wouldn’t have told him.

  Randa appeared behind him. “Michael?”

  “I’m okay,” he said. He took a deep breath. “I need a break. I need to go and do something. Why don’t you try to rest, and I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

  “Okay,” she said, clearly puzzled.

  “Just don’t talk to him. Go take a nap and leave him alone.”

  She nodded. He felt bad about leaving her, but he had to. He couldn’t go on with this until he knew the truth.

  TEN

  Donna lived in College Park. He knew the house because Vincent had remodeled it, shortly after Donna had married the radiologist. He rang the doorbell and in a few seconds he heard footsteps. He dreaded this like nothing he’d ever dreaded, but it had to be done.

  Donna opened the door. It took a moment for Michael’s identity to register, probably because she’d never seen him in clerics. When she realized who it was, the smile left her face. She didn’t speak.

  “May I come in?” he asked.

  “Why?

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “I’m in the phone book,” she said coldly.

  “I didn’t want to do this over the phone.” Something flashed in her eyes and Michael felt it in his stomach.

  Did that mean she knew why he was here? Did that mean it was true? She led him into the living room but didn’t offer him a seat. The room was meticulously detailed with all of Vincent’s finest touches, which made being there that much more difficult. The mahogany fireplace was lined with sienna tiles, hand-painted with troubadours on either side. The mantel was adorned with a collection of vases and an expensively framed picture of Donna’s family. There were also framed photos of small children with Santa. Not what he needed to see right now.

  “What is this about?” Donna asked. She
was clearly uncomfortable. He knew of no easy way to get into it and wasn’t in the mood to search for one.

  “I need to know: Were you pregnant when we broke up?”

  She looked away from him and brushed her bangs to the side, nervously. It took her a moment to speak.

  “Who told you?” she asked, her voice trembling.

  He didn’t answer. Gave himself a minute to take it in. It didn’t want to go in. He felt he might throw up.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, finally.

  “What would have been the point?”

  “The point?” He forced himself to keep his voice down. “The point is that I had a right to know.”

  “Michael, why are you doing this? It was over thirty years ago.”

  Oh, dear God. It’s all true.

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Even if it wasn’t a big thing to you—”

  “How the hell do you know what it was to me?” Donna half screamed. “You never knew who I was and you never gave a damn, as long as—” She stopped herself; she took a couple of breaths. Started again, slightly calmer. “What difference would it have made if I’d told you, Michael? You had big plans. What would you have done? Married me?”

  He didn’t answer. She knew the answer.

  “All you would have done is what you’re doing now. Barge in here on your morally superior high horse, judging me, like it wasn’t your fault in the first place!”

  She let him sit with it for a moment. She was right. It was entirely his fault, in more ways than one.

  “I didn’t see any point in both our lives being ruined,” she said.

  “Has your life been ruined?” he asked. He tried to make his voice inflectionless. He really wanted to know.

  “You did something worse than ruin my life. You ruined me with God. The great irony.” She was starting to cry.

  “Donna, I think God knows who to blame,” Michael said.

  “I don’t care who He blames!” she snapped. “All I know is, He punished me and He didn’t punish you, and I can never forgive Him for that! And I guess He can’t forgive me, either, because I sure as hell don’t feel forgiven. Especially not with you standing in my living room out of nowhere in the middle of the night.” It was his cue to leave, but he couldn’t make himself move.