He closed his binder, rose from his desk, and walked over to the classroom window. The church’s white campanario was floodlit, its contrast to the surrounding black a symbol to Daniel that goodness, purity, the awesome power of God, could triumph over the dark forces. He had never questioned his vocation, knowing deep in his soul he was meant to teach and to serve. He loved clamour in his classroom, cheers in the gymnasium, a full congregation of voices raised in song. This evening, he would forsake his acoustic guitar for the electric one. A little noise, for the love of God. Tonight, Daniel found the infernal quiet that enshrouded the place after lights-out to be disturbing.
It had begun with the dog, a Heinz variety of no fixed address that regularly wandered onto the grounds in search of food scraps and companionship. The dog had become a kind of mascot for the boys, who took turns feeding and grooming it. When its body had been discovered hanging in Father Francis’s confessional, a puerile vigilante squad was formed. Father Anthony quickly quashed the idea of vengeance. So long ago, yet sometimes Daniel still felt the stiffness of the pathetic creature’s carcass, rigid in his arms as he’d cut it down. He led a burial ceremony in the garden behind the school.
A week or so after the dog had been killed, a fire broke out in the office adjacent to Father Francis’s study. Someone had set all the priests’ vestments ablaze. Father Francis, as was his habit, had consumed his evening sherry and was snoozing in a leather chair. He had awakened, groggy and disoriented, to find the office and adjoining study thick with smoke. The priest groped his way to the door leading to the corridor, only to find the heavy oak portal jammed shut. The casement window on the opposite side of the study wouldn’t budge either, and the elderly priest’s feeble shouts received no response. Everyone else was in the gymnasium, watching an exhibition basketball game. Francis’s last desperate act before succumbing to smoke inhalation was to hurl an armchair through the casement window and propel himself after it.
The combination of the priest’s age, his angina, and his panic brought on the heart attack that kept Father Francis hospitalized for well over a month. Father Daniel, though only a recent addition to the Good Shepherd staff, had gone to visit Francis, hoping to offer some comfort. Francis, however, could not be comforted. The police had said his sherry had been spiked with Seconal, the study door pennied shut, the casement window nailed down to prevent the priest’s escape. Attempted murder. A sick practical joke gone horribly wrong.
In a matter of days, Father Francis appeared to decay before Daniel’s eyes. The old priest’s gnarled hands lay clasped together on top of a lightly woven hospital blanket. His wrinkled cheeks were concave, as though the element that had once given them shape had been vacuumed away. His complexion was sallow, his eyes sunken in their sockets, eyeballs covered with film, their usual darting motion halted by the realization that he would never leave the hospital.
“Watch him, Daniel,” he’d gasped on a rush of exhaled air. “You must watch the boy.”
Daniel had tried to pacify him, urged him to get rest and allow the police to gather the necessary proof.
“Proof!” Francis hissed. “They’ll never prove he did it. You know. The boy is beyond clever. He’s evil. He must be stopped.”
Three dagger spikes blipped across the heart monitor’s screen. Daniel remembered patting the priest’s hand, wishing he would exhaust himself and fall asleep.
The film across the old priest’s eyes seemed to disappear, his gaze widening in agitation. His scrawny hands groped for Daniel’s black shirt. “In the name of all that is holy, the boy hung that dog in my confessional. I was meant to find it, to have this heart attack then. He knew about my angina.”
Gently, Father Daniel tried to remove the priest’s fingers from his shirt, uncurling them individually until Francis’s hands rested underneath his own. “With all due respect, Father Francis,” he’d said, “everyone knows about your angina. You’re never without your pills, and all the boys have seen you pop a nitroglycerin under your tongue. It could have been any one of them.”
“Why do you close your eyes to what he is?”
“I know how you feel about the boy —”
“He’s evil,” Francis repeated, his voice growing faint from fatigue, “and don’t tell me you haven’t seen it. You know him better than anyone.”
“I know he’s had some problems, that his mother —”
“Spare me the armchair psychology, Daniel.” The old priest’s bony fingers moved under his, making weak fists. “I know you’re young. Seminarian idealism. Evil exists, Daniel, and it lives in that boy.”
“Then it’s my — our — job to save him.”
“It’s our job to control him. It’s too late for salvation. He spits in the eye of God.” The notion that the boy blasphemed appeared to upset Father Francis more than the attempt on his life. For a moment, he looked about to say more, but both men’s thoughts were interrupted by a hacking, ragged cough. The old priest covered his mouth, but a moment too late. A spray of spittle dotted the blanket and the front of Daniel’s shirt. Father Francis jackknifed upright, his cough robbing the rhythm from his breathing. His face reddened, then went purple. Daniel reached for the nurse’s buzzer, but Father Francis waved his hand in protest.
When his cough subsided, he spoke again, his voice a mere rasp. “Stop him, Daniel. Please.”
Daniel bit his lip and nodded, but Francis had already closed his eyes. His flushed face returned to its previous pallor.
Daniel remained at the ailing priest’s bedside for another forty minutes, wanting to reassure himself that the old priest was resting peacefully. The corridor was quiet, the evening hush broken only by Father Francis Xavier’s frail lungs whistling as they laboured for air.
Finally, the obnoxious caw of a crow on the ledge outside the hospital window roused Daniel from his chair. The sound filled him with dread. Dreams of birds, in traditional folk wisdom, signified death.
Like that night years ago, a gentle drizzle was now falling, and it pattered against Daniel’s classroom window, coaxing him into the present and blurring his vision of the campanario. He moved away from the window, grabbed his windbreaker from the back of his chair, shut off the lights, and rushed outside. The rain was cool, and he turned his face upward.
In the distance, Daniel heard the roll of thunder, like a giant’s growling stomach. He turned up his jacket collar and headed for the church. Minutes later, he stood before the huge double doors, the pair of ringed handles like two vacant eyes staring at him. If he concentrated, he could almost hear the strains of the opening hymn as it had been sung that night.
Seven o’clock mass had begun, and he remembered slipping quietly into the church, sidling into a pew directly behind the boy. Father Anthony was bellowing the liturgy, as though volume was some kind of measuring stick for devotion. Daniel had been unable to concentrate on the scripture, his gaze so focused on the boy.
He couldn’t believe how much the boy had changed in the few months he’d known him. His shoulders had broadened, his unblemished face now in profile, so hard and chiselled like a man’s. When he turned to face Daniel for the sign of peace, there was a trace of a grin at the corner of his mouth. Their handshake was robust and friendly.
Evil. You must stop him.
After communion, Father Anthony appeared visibly shaken. Even from where he sat, Daniel noticed the priest’s hesitant steps, the teetering as he moved from altar to tabernacle to chair. Drunk? Daniel dismissed the thought. Priests drank, of course. Lots of them. It was a lonely life, but Daniel had never seen Anthony have more than the occasional glass of wine. There was a bad flu going around. The church was three-quarters empty; many of the boys were sick, so Anthony had likely picked up a bug. He didn’t even sing the recessional hymn as he came down the aisle, and by the time Daniel chatted with a few of the regular parishioners and exited the church, Father Anthony was nowhere in sight.
Some of the boys had started a game of British bulldog on
the grounds below the campanario. It was pouring rain now, but Daniel left them to it, issuing a light-hearted warning about tracking mud into the residence. Several gave him a friendly wave, and he was just about to move on when one of the boys hollered, “Look! Up there! The tower!”
Daniel turned to face the campanario. Standing in the rounded archway of the bell tower was Father Anthony, his vestments rippling in the wind. With the campanario illuminated, the priest appeared messianic, his arms outstretched in some mock crucifixion. Daniel called up to Father Anthony, but if the priest heard, he gave no indication. He stared straight ahead, at some mysterious focal point in the pitch black, a vortex of nothingness, then he hurled himself toward it.
It could only have been seconds, but for Daniel, time froze. Even now when he remembered the scene, he pictured Anthony’s body not plummeting, but drifting downward, like a stray tissue waiting to be caught.
Much of what came afterward was less clear, obscured by the flurry of commotion, the boys’ piercing screams, and the passing of too many years. Daniel had tried to quell the panic. He urged the boys to turn away from the sight of Father Anthony, who lay spread-eagled on the brick sidewalk, a relentless pool of blood forming beneath his head.
But one detail stood out Venus-bright in Daniel’s mind, in spite of countless hours questioning his own vivid imagination and the effects of Father Francis’s chilling words. The boy appeared inured to the grisliness of the scene as well as his peers’ shock. In spite of Daniel’s repeated requests to step back, the boy remained at the front of the crowd, his head tilting from side to side, as he examined Father Anthony like some lab specimen. He glanced up at the campanario too, then again at the priest’s remains, seemingly transfixed by the aerodynamics of what had just taken place.
A massive dose of LSD was discovered in the dregs of the Communion wine, the police said. Since it was cold and flu season, many parishioners, out of consideration for one another’s health, declined drinking from the chalice. Father Anthony had to drain the contents. Fifteen minutes later, he was convinced he could fly.
In the days and weeks following the tragedy the police narrowed their list of suspects, but the boy didn’t make the cut, and in the end, even those who had endured countless rounds of questions were exonerated. Eventually, the death of Father Anthony became one of the spooky stories the students told on camping trips.
The iron rings on the church doors seemed to wink at Daniel, jarring him back to reality. Quickly he glanced around, wondering if any witness had been privy to his nocturnal wanderings, the lunacy of a priest standing in the pouring rain, staring at the ghosts that continued to haunt him.
As Daniel hurried across the front lawn, he gazed up at the lighted windows of the residence. Mercifully, no one was looking out, and he reached his room unobserved. A warm shower did little to remove the chill that permeated his marrow, and for a solid hour, he sat in his easy chair, willing his muddled thoughts to align themselves in some logical order.
He still had Jim Kearns’s number tucked into a corner of his desk blotter at school. In a few days, once he had gathered his information and rehearsed how to present it without sounding like a blood-and-guts-fascinated loony, he’d call the lieutenant. He would need to gather his courage, too.
There was a chance the call would amount to nothing, and Daniel would join the ranks of other armchair profilers with overactive imaginations.
So why bother?
Because the past was beginning to gnaw at him like some flesh-eating virus and it was time to exorcise his demons.
Time to stop making jolly, strumming his way into people’s hearts, and glossing over their pain. He used his enthusiasm as a tool to convince others that life on this Earth was akin to heaven, if only one had a positive outlook.
Bullshit.
Evil did exist, and he’d known it all along.
38
Though her visit to Father Daniel yielded little information to relieve her suspicions about Jordan, Beth found herself overcome by guilt at having chosen subterfuge over confrontation. During the days since her trip to Ventura, she reminisced about evenings spent with Jordan, discussions where the past never intruded, where only the present and the future mattered. She struggled with her fears, but it wasn’t long before her heart triumphed over her head, and she knew she had to see him. She left messages on Jordan’s answering machine, imploring him to return her calls. He didn’t.
Finally, on a desperate Thursday evening, Beth jumped into her car and drove to Noe Valley. There was a cool mist falling, and the autumn air was chilly enough to warrant her turning on the heater. As she turned onto Jordan’s street, Beth saw his Mazda pulling into the driveway. The sight of Jordan emerging from his car, athletic bag in one hand, car keys and squash racquet in the other, reminded Beth of how she’d missed him. He looked great, hair still damp from the shower.
Jordan was already climbing the steps to the front porch when Beth parked her car behind his, and when he turned, she noted the puzzled expression on his face. She shut off her ignition and bounded up the driveway after him like a crazed fan chasing a rock star. It was all she could do to keep from wrapping him in a wrestling hold. Two things stopped her — her own nervousness and the look on his face. He wasn’t thrilled to see her.
“You wouldn’t send away a woman who’s driven clear across town, would you?”
Clear across town? She sounded like Minnie Pearl.
“Beth.” He didn’t smile. His voice was toneless. “This is an unexpected — quite a surprise.”
She guessed the phrases “unexpected pleasure” and “nice surprise” were too much to hope for. Still, he wasn’t beating a hasty retreat.
Her words tumbled out. “If you’ll let me explain, Jordan, and you still don’t like the reasons why I’ve been a complete fool, you can call me every vile name in the book, throw me out on my behind, and I’ll promise never to bother you again. Deal?”
“This is awkward, Beth —”
“Oh,” she cut him off, saving them both the embarrassment, “you’re expecting someone, aren’t you? There’s another woman.”
Great. Now she was into soap-opera dialogue.
“No,” he replied quickly. He turned his key in the lock. “It’s not that. I’d invite you in only —”
“Only what?”
“Only, I’m not in the mood for the third degree tonight.” His gaze bore through her.
“I guess I deserved that,” she said, moving past him through the door.
Inside, Jordan’s manner was stiffly formal. He didn’t offer her coffee, didn’t help her with her trench coat nor motion her toward a chair. Clearly he did not expect her to be staying long. This was all business, her idea, and he had the home-court advantage. He waited until Beth settled at one end of the sofa before he sat in a tapestry wing chair opposite, a huge square coffee table between them.
“Been working out?” she asked, gesturing at his grey sweats. Idiot.
“Squash game with Brad,” he answered politely. “He cleaned my clock.”
In one swift breath Beth said, “Jordan, I’ve got some explaining to do. If you’ll let me.”
“This should be good,” Jordan said. “It’s not every day someone tells me why I’m being interrogated like I’m some kind of criminal.”
Beth inhaled deeply and wished for a glass of wine, whisky, turpentine. On the bright side, she told herself, their relationship couldn’t get much worse.
“I loved growing up in Eureka Springs,” she began, feeling ridiculous. “I had an idyllic childhood, the whole routine. But you know what happens to teenagers, full of questions. You begin to imagine what life has in store for you beyond the boundaries of your home town.”
Jordan sat, immobile, straight-backed, hands resting on his thighs. Even in his sweats and well-worn sneakers, he looked uncomfortable.
“I feel as though I’m on ‘This is Your Life,’ she said.
“Beth, you’ve come here for
a reason. Let’s have it.”
She took another deep breath and tried to ignore the sting of his indifference. “Because my parents owned an inn, they knew everyone in town. I dated local boys, sons of my parents’ friends, and it was assumed I’d go to college in Little Rock and eventually settle down nearby.”
“Doesn’t sound that bad,” Jordan said.
“No, it doesn’t. But the inn was a real tie. We could never travel, never had a real family vacation, and the only time we closed down was when we were renovating. As beautiful as the town is, I wanted to see more. I was always good in art. I helped my mother select furniture, wallpaper, drapes for the inn, so naturally interior design beckoned, and so did the bright lights of New York. It seemed so exotic, so unlike what I’d known. I became determined to live my dream.”
“Which you did.”
She nodded. “But not before I shared my grand idea with Robert Clay.”
“One of the locals?”
“No. Robert was a guest at our inn. He was gorgeous. Long sandy hair, the bluest eyes, flashing bright smile. He was twenty-four, drove a Mustang — all pretty cool to a seventeen-year-old.”
“Let me guess. He got you pregnant.”
Beth shook her head. “He didn’t stick around long enough. But I harboured the usual adolescent fantasies. I imagined Robert whisking me off with him — he was travelling across the country before beginning a new job with a brokerage firm in, of all places, New York City. He’d propose to me, relieve me of my virginity, and I’d go to school while he worked. Great plan.”
“He wasn’t interested?”
“He never knew, thank God. I was so captivated by his glamour, the stories he told about New York — restaurants in Greenwich Village, off-Broadway theatres, carriage rides in Central Park. It was enough to listen to him talk. Plus there was the perk of being seen about town with him, riding in his Mustang. Me, Bethany Wells from Eureka Springs cruising around with a handsome older man. In two days, I was head over heels.”
Every Wickedness Page 17
