Mad Gods - Predatory Ethics: Book I

by Athanasios

  “Padre, we do not have your schooling, but we know we are very afraid.” Jose decided to place their faith in Father Pewter’s hands. They would do whatever he asked. The alternative was unthinkable. They could not go back and face life with an increasingly terrifying child and increasingly distant and hostile neighbors. At some point, they might not be content to look away. Perhaps, they would take matters into their own hands, getting rid, not only of the cursed child, but also his parents.

  “You are afraid of a six-month-old child? Come now, Jose, do not be afraid.” Their resolve seemed unshakable. They still believed that their son was cursed, and Pewter realized that they could believe nothing else. They refused. Their faces showed that they would do whatever he asked of them, not because they believed that he was right, but because they had nowhere else to turn. This was their only hope. Through the church was the only way to deal with this situation.

  “My husband is right, Padre. If he, a man, is afraid of his own son, then I am terrified.”

  “Listen to me, Rosanna, and you, Jose. This boy is your son. You can both count on me; I will help you.” No amount of explanation would change that in which they believed. It would only serve to substantiate it. It wouldn’t matter if Father Pewter spoke about child psychology, or told them there hadn’t been a true possession, or demonic occurrence, for years. Their beliefs were firm.

  “Thank you, Padre! Thank you!” Rosanna was relieved. She could only go on with the knowledge Father Pewter was with them. The church would help them. The church would save them.

  “Oh, bless you, Padre.” He dropped to his knees and pressed his face to Pewter’s open palm.

  “I want you to come here and worship with my parish.” He knew they could not be left to their own devices. In order to determine why they held onto their beliefs, he had to keep them close. He would keep a careful eye on them, to ensure they did not do anything drastic to the child. Their fervor could turn to a zeal.

  “When can we bring Nino, Padre?” Jose wanted to know what he should do next. How was he going to reclaim the regular life before the baby? Before Maria died? Before the fear and anxiety, which he now breathed, had taken over his life.

  “First, we have to help you understand why you are afraid of your infant son.” He hoped to get to the bottom of this after the child was baptized. After the baptism, he would prove to them that their son was just a normal baby. First, however, he had to give them something that would be ceremonial — a spectacle, which through its significance would erase their fears.

  “Yes, please help us, Padre. Please tell us what to do.” Rosanna hung on Pewter’s every word and followed every gesture of his hands and face.

  “Come here on Wednesday night. Then I will begin to help you. Peace be with you.” Rising, Pewter walked away from the Savourezes, who stared after him. They expected more than simply words. True, he gave them guidance and told them what could be done to solve the situation, but they still had to return to a child who looked at them like a man; an infant whose eyes knew what they feared. Who, at times, stared daggers and hated them.

  After fearfully looking at each other, they returned to their prayers. They did not want to leave. They only had home, and Nino, waiting. They stayed until Pastor Jorge asked them to go. As they left, they did not notice that the praying man remained. He got up and walked to where Father Pewter had gone.

  They entered their home, clutching their crucifixes. The child was already asleep in his little bed. There was nothing more to see, so they went through nervous preparations for sleep. Outside, a tan figure stood under the gathering twilight, then moved into deeper shadow. It was not yet time to move; he still needed to insure no one else was watching. The Luciferian he had dispatched, months before, may have been acting alone, but most likely wasn’t. He had to be sure when he did advance to the next critical stage in his plan, none knew he was there. Years, decades, of preparation had gone into his actions. He had to be patient; the child had to be more mature. Also, absolutely no one could know who had changed destiny. The tan man, Kostadino had been part of a systematic patience, which had seen plans span centuries and millennia.

  *********

  As Pewter walked to his room at the back of the church, he was deep in thought. The Savourez family was, indeed, both troubled and troubling. They firmly believed what they said; there was no getting around that. It sent Father Pewter’s imagination racing. On one hand, he could not picture what kind of a child would incite such terror. On the other, he desperately wanted to see a child who could incite it. He craved it. The most incredible part of it all was that it wasn’t even one year old.

  Too young. Too young.

  His mind raced around the Savourez boy, and although he had yet to see him, he was excited. In another time, he would have had no hesitation with his impulses. Now he had to be vigilant. His pulse quickened as he recalled his first days with the church, ten years before. He was constantly being transferred from different parishes — it wasn’t his fault; it was the children. They were there, always there, tempting him with their exuberance, their joy and their tiny hands.

  Even during his days at the seminary, he was under constant scrutiny. There were allegations he had preyed upon children. This was not true, but the church wanted to avoid, even the appearance of impropriety. They didn’t particularly care if the allegations were true, they simply didn’t want the scandal. Determining that he was a danger, he was transferred to the church’s New Mexico facility for wayward priests. Once he was there, the allegations seemed to stop.

  His steps clicked on the rough stone of the hallway. As he turned a corner, and six feet away from the entrance of his room, he passed a window and saw a small child with her father, walking past the church. He was instantly transfixed by the little girl’s unconscious, buoyant skip, while holding her father’s hand.

  Before New Mexico, he would’ve stood there and smiled at the scene. Now, he was afraid to look too long at a child. He grimly forced himself to pull his gaze away and continued into his room, shutting the door behind him. He closed the drapes and snapped on the lights. He then withdrew a large, leather-bound book, and as he had wrestled with his conscience in New Mexico, he now found the same solace within its pages.

  In the church’s facility, he knew that his sexual taste for the young was perverse, even in a normal man. For a priest, before the eyes of his Lord, it was abhorrent. Devoting time to contemplation and self-searching, he pored over countless texts in the library, trying to find an explanation for his deviant appetite.

  In a medieval text, he found his new system of belief — of taking the punishment for your sins into your own hands. He began to believe that he was the only one who could adequately punish himself for his evils, thus securing his salvation. His wickedness began with his thoughts, and who better to stop this evil than he? Whenever he began to lapse back into his desire for children, he would whip the evil from his mind.

  At first, his urges were held in check by the physical attacks to which he subjugated his body. It did not take long, however, until the whippings, instead of keeping him from lusting for children, replaced his sexual appetite. When he began his scourging, it was to drive the evil from his body. His body, not getting what it craved, turned to what it was getting and embraced it. The scourgings were then incorporated as part of his daily prayers, ritualistic in their new significance.

  Removing his robe, he meticulously placed it on a hanger and then placed it in his closet. From the same closet, he removed a very ornately carved box, depicting different Biblical scenes.

  Clad only in shorts and sandals, he opened the text and removed the gold-fringed ribbon that marked his page; he began to recite the passage beneath his index finger. The recitation was in Latin, and at a prescribed place, two paragraphs from when he began, he opened the box beside him and reverently removed a cat-o-nine-tails. Depictions of the Stations of the Cross were worked into the leather of the whip, and crucifixes served as the
barbs at the ends of each tail.

  While continuing his recitation, Pewter’s mind lapsed back to his arrival in Sao Paolo. He did not notice the door open and close behind him.

  The officials at the church facility in New Mexico, seeing that he had shown no signs of his earlier problem, released him and gave him his present parish. Away from any prying eyes and contrary thoughts, he saw his new tastes as a visitation. He viewed his scourging as the word of God, telling him how he should conduct his teaching of the Good Word.

  He began slowly, teaching his view, first to the Pastor Jorge, then a select few. In short order, his corporeal interpretation of God’s teachings filled a quarter, then half, and finally, all of the old church’s two hundred seats. He then turned to building a new, larger church, overseeing all the ornamentation, down to the icons at the front of the aisles. He acquired more and more followers. At each mass, the parish ended by whipping themselves, along to Pewter’s preaching. It became an accepted part of worship.

  At the first stroke of the whip on his back, his mind was brought back to his recitation. Raising the whip again he delivered another lash in each specified place of the recitation. Five others followed, each leaving another welt, lost in the mass of scarred lines on his back. Breathing heavily, and with a shaking hand, Pewter turned the page.

  Gently putting the whip down, he folded his hands in prayer. He was still shaking, partly from the whipping, but also from the drifting thoughts that renewed his abhorrent appetite.

  The word had spread through the unschooled populace and Pewter was quickly treated as a prophet. Feeling like he was divinely chosen to show how the world should deal with its modern temptations and deprivations, he began to see himself as above these considerations. He no longer questioned his thoughts, depraved or otherwise, because he was God’s messenger and all he did was God’s will. He returned to his earlier sexual tastes, preying upon both boys and girls, but he also incorporated his newfound beliefs. He felt that they were responsible for his lusts and they should be punished.

  Picking up the whip again, this time in both hands, Pewter went into a frenzy of lashes. Exhaling with each stroke, Pewter thought about the Savourez boy. He couldn’t stop thinking about him. The way Jose and Rosanna were acting, there had to be something to what they were saying.

  He found he liked the situation of temptation in which he found himself. If his thoughts were evil and depraved, how much more so were the children, like the Savourez boy, who tempted him? They were always there, always about him, even in his thoughts. With a mixture of pleasure and pain, he cried out and, biting his bottom lip, he climaxed in his shorts, with thoughts of children all about him.

  Too young. Too young.

  “You have gone too long without adequate supervision, my son.” Outrage and embarrassment merged with terror. He did not dare turn around to face the voice behind him. It had followed him at every turn of his career and always gave him mixed signals, accepting or rejecting everything he ever did.

  “What may I do for your worship?” The man, who had been praying earlier, walked around to face him. Pewter closed his eyes, to block out the look of reproach on that hated and beloved face. He felt the man’s eyes on the stain and the bulge in his shorts. They continued upward, with a look of disgust on his downcast face. This Cardinal Colletti always made Pewter feel like a misbehaving child.

  “The couple you spoke to earlier…” The praying man looked at this pathetic soul as he would a rutting pig. “When they come with their boy, I want to speak to them.”

  “The Savourez child?” Despite his embarrassment, Pewter opened his eyes to see the man who stood before him, trim and proper, with hands clasped behind him. “Why?” Pewter surprised himself with the familiar tone of his question.

  “You do not need to know. Just bring them to me. Tell no one of this.” He glanced away and walked out of Pewter’s office.

  TIME: OCTOBER 14TH, 1962. SAO PAOLO, ARGENTINA

  The father and stepmother walked ahead, leaving the boy to keep up on his own. He walked very slowly, on little legs that were not used to going further than the inside of the house. He could barely hear Jose.

  “Oh God, Rosanna. He knows what we’re doing.”

  “We aren’t doing anything wrong, Jose. Besides, don’t you think it’s high time for him to be afraid of us?” Rosanna was not going to feel guilty for doing the right thing.

  Every little bit, they would stop, keeping him in sight. The Darkness wanted to glare at all the people, milling about and pointing. Who could blame him? Being made a spectacle in public is not the easiest thing through which to go. It is difficult, even if you want to be there, excruciating when you don’t, terrifying when you’re hated.

  The short, quick, second-looks soon grew. A few ran ahead to tell the neighbors and their families. So many had that, upon their arrival at the church, Jose and Rosanna were surprised to see a flock of people around the front doors. Pastor Jorge was in the midst of the crowd, as he nodded a greeting to them both.

  The congregation gasped collectively, and more than half of them crossed themselves, when the boy came into view. How dare they bring the little spawn to church? To the house of God. It was sacrilege.

  When he saw the yawning doors and sweeping arches of the church, Nino stopped dead in his tracks. He lowered his head to look away when, from the darkness inside, dressed in black robes, stepped Father Pewter, who stopped, staring directly at him. The church looked like a nightmare — a mouth about to eat. Nino refused to continue, even as Jose motioned for him to come up the steps. He lowered his head further and, still, didn’t want to look at the mouth that was about to devour, but he did look up, eyes brimming with tears, at the dark shape in the middle of the doors.

  Father Pewter raised his arms from his sides and stretched them forward like outstretched claws. He tried to smile comfortingly, but only succeeded in frightening him further. Pewter dragged him roughly forward and Nino was caught, enveloped within dark robes. He tried to push away; the priest quietly gasped from the effort. Pewter pulled him even closer, attempting to hide the erection that had begun to form during the struggle.

  “Calm down, child. Please don’t be afraid.” At Pewter’s words, he stopped but from behind, Jose barely heard people’s excited voices.

  “You see!”

  “He’s terrified to go into the house of God!”

  “The boy is touched by Satan!”

  “His reactions to me, and the church, are strong, but not unusual, Jose. He’s afraid of a stranger in a strange place.” Pewter tried to reassure everyone. In the back of the nave, he saw Cardinal Colletti, his eyes wide with surprise.

  “He’s afraid of the holiness here, Padre,” stated a voice, which could only be Paula’s, and just when Pewter thought that he had calmed them down. He cursed her for further inciting the crowd and blessed her for giving him something else on which to divert his barely-controlled thoughts.

  “How old is he?” Pewter asked.

  “He’s nine months, Padre.” Rosanna could barely be heard while she tried to hide behind Jose. The crowd pushed both of them forward to stand before Pewter, who still held the boy too close. He went rigid again. He stopped and looked at them, incredulous. Pewter then stared down.

  “You’re not even one year, child?”

  Too young. Too young.

  “But you’re big enough to be three or four. How?” A cold chill crept up Pewter’s spine. This could not be. This boy was too good to be true. He was too delicious. He wanted to take this boy right here. Right now. Who would stop him? This conflagration of desires needed to be quenched. He needed to punish the boy for eliciting these feelings, these wants and needs.

  “It’s the devil in him, Padre. He has taken over everything. When the boy killed his mother, he took on two people’s spirits.” Paula stepped out from behind her husband, who tried to keep her back.

  “Alright now, stop it.” Pewter fought hard to remember what he had to do
next. Cardinal Colletti wanted to see them, but he also said that no one was to know. His mind raced to find a way to exact his punishment. He grudgingly understood he had to go to Colletti and that he would never have what he wanted — he could never administer the treatment the boy deserved.

  Too young. Too young, he thought, but he’s so beautiful. He’s so big and sturdy.

  “No one fear, this boy will be taken care of. The holy church will deal with him. All is now in the hands of God.” Abruptly, he withdrew his hand and backed away from the crowd. He motioned for Jorge to come to him and whispered for the old pastor to take the family to the waiting Colletti.

  He did not notice a tan figure pass behind him and wait by the nave. Cardinal Colletti did not see him either; he was too intent on the Savourez family. He felt the sharp blade under his left armpit at the same time as he heard the whispered voice next to his ear.

  “If you do as I say, no one will get hurt.” The words were barely more than a breath.

  “Who? What do you want?” Colletti did not know who it was and what he wanted. “ Are you here to rob the church?”

  “Don’t turn around, Cardinal.” The voice was almost too soft for Colletti to hear.

  “How did you…” His question was cut short.

  “Just listen carefully. Let the family and the pastor come through, as if there’s nothing wrong. Bring them behind the church. If you arouse suspicion, you will meet your maker, in which case, I hope your conscience is as clear as it should be.” In an instant, the voice and the sharp point were no longer at his side. Colletti looked left and right, trying to find the man, but saw no one.

  Nino stopped and looked straight through Colletti. The boy’s eyes captured his and he recognized an understanding that shook his soul. Only in ancient Christian icons of Jesus had Colletti seen this gaze — they were the same eyes in the Shroud of Turin. He motioned for Jorge to stop before the opening of the nave. Jorge nodded to the family to follow their son.