Golgotha Falls

by Frank De Felitta

  Again, suddenly, a vision of the Potomac flashed into Father Malcolm’s reverie, and a hotel with a white balustrade. On the balcony, he sat in an agony of silent expectation, the blood drumming in his ears. On the white bedspread, a woman’s dark green hat.

  Returning to the rectory, Father Malcolm knelt to pray. When his mind felt somewhat assuaged, he lay down on his rough mattress, pulled the blanket over his naked body, and fell into a troubled sleep.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Mario awoke suddenly at four and quietly made his way into the church. The instruments hummed softly. It was reassuring to Mario. Neither the seismograph nor the laser camera tape showed any disturbances, but he felt relaxed and confident among his electronics. It was what he had been made for. The church was otherwise empty, expectant. He nudged the black cables against the wall.

  He flicked off the viewing lamp of the seismograph. Then, as he was about to leave—

  “Jesus Christ—”

  Against the north wall, fluttering like a trapped butterfly, was an aureole of blue light.

  It drifted slowly, undulating, dipping down toward the floor.

  Mario raised an arm and played it over the moving light. There was no shadow. The light had fine interior striations of blue-white form, and suddenly it flickered and was gone.

  The temperature system confirmed a drop of nearly five degrees on the north wall.

  It had had the appearance of having come in from the exterior, Mario thought. Exterior not to this space but to this time. The way it flipped as it disappeared implied a geometry of an estranged order.

  Mario kept vigil in the dark, empty church. Each sound, each bird call, each crackling of branches over the rectory jarred his nerves. But after two hours, there were no more signs. He turned to the seismograph at the north wall, flicked it on, and went to the van.

  Anita slept, her arm thrown back, her black hair across one breast, the deep sleep of the sexually fulfilled. He woke her.

  “Luminescence,” he whispered. “About two hours ago.”

  Anita fumbled awake, pulled on trousers and a plaid flannel shirt over her nude body, and then her heavy work boots.

  “Exterior?” she asked.

  “Interior. North wall. Full form, metamorphosing.”

  “Low color temperature?”

  “No. Blue.”

  Anita rolled a power cable from the generator and led Mario, who carried a heavy black camera, down to the church.

  It was an infrared camera, called a thermovision. At its heart was a Dewar flask containing liquid nitrogen. The camera had seven f-stops and manual focusing, and it resolved temperature discrepancies of less than two-tenths of a degree Celsius.

  Mario set the camera at the north wall. By the time Anita connected the braided cables, the east was breaking with a dull ocher light. The mist from the river dripped steadily into the church and formed pools on the floor.

  On the thermovision screen, the church architecture appeared a mass of Van Dyke browns and dull umbers.

  Father Malcolm came into the church, surprised to see them up so early. In his hand was a bucket of patching plaster and a knife.

  “Another camera, Mario?”

  “We had a luminescence this morning at four-fifteen.”

  The Jesuit followed the direction of Mario’s gaze and the thermovision unit. The north wall was utterly devoid of marks. But in the church the tension was unmistakable.

  “I suppose you were asleep,” Mario said.

  “Actually, I was praying.”

  “Well, your prayers must have worked. Something came.”

  The Jesuit ignored the sarcasm. He began to fill in the badly eroded pillars.

  “The eyes of faith,” he said, “will see what your cameras will never record.”

  “Come here, Father Malcolm. This is what I see.”

  The Jesuit walked behind the thermovision. Against the dull browns was a soft pink flare.

  “What is that pink?” Father Malcolm asked.

  “The heat of Anita’s body.”

  Father Malcolm saw, in the screen, a nearly transparent figure, with the extension of arms in front, making notes.

  Mario adjusted the f-stop ring. The colors grew brighter. Father Malcolm saw the bright skull, the black holes of the nose and eyes. Clothes were not visible. Red flared softly from the heat of her navel, armpits, and breasts.

  “Extraordinary,” he conceded.

  “The days of Tarot cards are long gone, Father Malcolm.”

  “Indeed.”

  Father Malcolm found himself staring at the image of the figure, faintly humanoid, and the heat that emanated from where her legs joined. Embarrassed, he turned away.

  “With instruments like these,” Mario said, “we can reach into areas never before accessible to observation.”

  “It can come to no good, Mr. Gilbert,” the Jesuit said finally. “Man goes too fast. Too far. And he does not always know what he is doing.”

  “X-rays and microsurgery,” Mario countered. “You call those evil?”

  “Napalm and atomic weapons, Mr. Gilbert. Are those good?”

  Mario shrugged.

  “It’s the politicians who order weapons and use them. You can’t blame somebody like Einstein for seeking out the nature of matter and energy.”

  Father Malcolm now lifted the bucket in the vestibule. His hands were coated with dried spackle, and his shirt was flecked with it. Even his blond eyebrows and broad forehead were dotted with it.

  “I’ve often thought,” Father Malcolm said, “that before technology is applied to our ambitions—there must first be a development toward spiritual humility.”

  “Maybe. I can’t wait.”

  “No. I can see that.”

  The Jesuit began applying the doughy white spackle in holes and cracks at the altar base. It made the configurations in the thermo­vision develop into a riot of maroon, orange, and viridian, as the warm flesh and cold spackle knife crossed past the lens. Mario smiled wryly, flicked off the camera and left the church.

  Anita, who had been listening to the two men, now spoke.

  “Tell me something, Father Malcolm. Suppose these disturbances do have some kind of spiritual dimension. Why wouldn’t it be the defiled dead? I mean, they were grossly violated, maybe right here on the church floor, sawed up, and their limbs grafted in various grotesque postures. Who’s to say it’s not revenge they’re after?”

  Father Malcolm did not answer but continued to apply the putty mixture quickly and smoothly down the cracked base.

  “That’s what Golgotha Falls thinks is going on,” Anita persisted.

  The priest turned. “They are wrong,” he said simply. “There is no return to earth. Judgment of souls is instantaneous and irrevocable.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “For Lovell, damnation means the separation from God and the consciousness of that abandonment. For the dead of this church, if they were legitimately absolved of their sins, they need not fear the second death, which is the suffering of the soul in hell.”

  “What about your uncle?” Anita asked.

  Father Malcolm glanced at her. She seemed not to be sarcastic and had lost even the tough professional edge. She was simply curious.

  “I can only pray that he was allowed to see his degradation before he died. That he prayed for forgiveness.” He put down the putty knife and approached her. His eyes were bright. “You see, I believe that Christ, in His incarnation as man, suffered the doubt, the alienation, the abysmal horror of annihilation. It was the dark night of the soul that he endured on Golgotha’s cross. The same as Bernard Lovell. The same as my uncle. The same as every person must go through at some moment. Only, being Christ, He triumphed over that withering, obscene, encroaching mental anarchy, and thus redeemed us all by our belief in that sacrifice.”

  He swallowed. He saw her listening. His eyes traversed the ruins above and around them.

  “In this church,” he stated, “
two men in Christ met their dark night and failed. Tomorrow it will be my time to enter it.”

  Anita was visibly moved. Softly she said, “So Mario was right. This church is your arena.”

  The Jesuit moved to within inches of her lovely face. She could feel his breath on her cheeks.

  “Yes, Anita,” he whispered. “Tomorrow I will do combat with Christ’s most potent adversary.” His eyes burned; his face was taut with purpose. “I must not fail.”

  Mario strode down the aisle carrying a videotape recorder.

  “Well, isn’t this a cozy scene,” he muttered.

  Anita laughed suddenly, her face flushed.

  Confused, the Jesuit stepped away from her. She seemed to snap back to Mario’s obdurate skepticism. Had he overestimated her? Was she simply probing him for scientific purposes? Her expression was beyond defining. Father Malcolm realized that he had no experience by which to decipher a woman’s manner.

  He felt totally lost in Anita’s presence.

  In the heavy darkness that filed into the valley, the fireflies zipped through the brambles. They spread out in waves from the river in fanning motions, surrounding the church.

  The atmosphere was filled with a fine-filtered grit that descended upon the church, seeped into the van, and settled over the rectory. Golgotha Falls was darkened under it. The Siloam smoothed into a viscous black swell.

  It was nearly midnight when Father Malcolm came from the church. His trousers and shirt were streaked with dirt. His arms were matted in thick putty and plaster. He thought he saw a light in the van and went quickly up the path.

  Suddenly, he stopped.

  “Mario,” he heard Anita’s whisper inside, “not yet—oh—not yet—”

  There was a heavy sound, bodies moving, and the stertorous breathing of a large man.

  “Oh—yes—Mario—yes, yes. Now! Now!”

  The van jerked spasmodically—and the brambles, rising like thorns, suddenly looked like hands clutching upward at the blackening valley air.

  The Jesuit turned quickly. In the hurried motion, his ankle was trapped in the sudden embrace of Mario’s coiled cables in the grass. With a sudden uprushing of earth and air, the Jesuit felt his body slam down hard into the brambles and cables.

  He heard his heart pumping. Absurdly tangled in the thistles, he saw the van door open. It was Mario, naked, glaring, holding a tire iron.

  “Who’s there?” he demanded.

  “Mario—it’s me—”

  The Jesuit struggled to his feet. He brushed his knees free of the dirt.

  Mario laughed without anger.

  “What do you want, Father Malcolm? You didn’t come to bless the act of love, did you?”

  Father Malcolm blushed so deeply Mario saw it in the dark.

  “I wondered if you could help me with the altar.”

  “Altar?”

  “I have a new one in the rectory. But it’s heavy. And we haven’t much time.”

  Mario glanced back at Anita, who was in the far end of the van, holding the sleeping bag quilt in front of her.

  He put on his trousers, and barefoot and bare-chested, followed Father Malcolm along the south wall. The edge of the graveyard was a frenzy of small, flying insects that knocked against them in small clouds.

  “What’s the big hurry, Father Malcolm?”

  “Tomorrow is Sunday.”

  “So?”

  “A church must be consecrated on a Sunday.”

  The Gothic windows were darker than the cloud-illuminated fields. Mario barely perceived his instruments among the boxes the Jesuit had brought in.

  At the rectory, Father Malcolm stood at the door. He saw the red marks along Mario’s chest and back. It looked as though he had been raked by claws.

  “What’s the matter?” Mario asked.

  “Nothing. Excuse me. Be careful of the rectory floor. There are nails.”

  A fat white candle, burned down to its base, illuminated the interior. The Jesuit’s tunics hung in the small hall. On the kitchen table were accessory pieces of the vestment. Mario recognized the heavy black cloth burse, which would be worn over the shoulder to contain the Host before it was consecrated. A crucifix had been slanted against the wall. The rectory was fetid not only from the rotting apples under the floorboards, but also from human sweat.

  In the vast distance, a low growl of thunder died in the unseen hills.

  Through the windows, Mario saw the undersides of heavy clouds flicker brightly, a broad heat lightning below the horizon.

  Father Malcolm took a protective blanket from a heavy walnut altar support. The front of the support was inscribed with the name of Christ, IHS, and inlaid with walnut counter-tiles.

  “That’s the altar?”

  “It’s the altar base. We will assemble the altar in the church.”

  Father Malcolm gestured for Mario to lift one end. It weighed nearly a hundred pounds and was shaped awkwardly, the top smaller than the bottom. They wrestled it over the rectory floor, then down the south path, sweating heavily, though the wind was rising, cool and dry.

  The church was extraordinarily black inside; the air, like ether, suffocating.

  Again they maneuvered the altar base, working it down to the single-step dais. Slowly, they lowered it, teeth gritted and faces trembling. Mario leaned on it, catching his breath.

  Already the Jesuit had bolted two tall crucifixes onto the walls, expressionist Christs extended on the armatures of gilded crosses.

  Various vials and stoppered vessels were arranged on the floor for the exorcism, and twelve shallow candle holders.

  Near the altar, waiting for the linens, was the ornate tabernacle, water and wine cruets, and golden candles in a slender box near a gilded candelabrum. There was also a cardboard box with the altar lamp inside, the ruby-red front glass and the brass chains gleaming.

  Where Father Malcolm had nailed fresh planks crudely but effectively, making a shallow platform, they lowered the altar support. Father Malcolm worked the support so that it was centered. Then he lovingly stroked the sides.

  “You see?” he said. “The altar will be in contact through the floor to the earth. So it will mediate between God and man.”

  The altar was so much heavier that they took tiny steps, hefting it in through the door. When they set it down on the support grooves, the massive stone and wood table slid easily into place.

  The priest examined the four support points to the altar.

  “The contact must never be broken,” he said quickly.

  “Why not?”

  “If contact is broken, even for a second, between altar and the support, the altar will have lost its consecration.”

  Father Malcolm now unfolded several white linens from a large black leather pouch. He stripped off the protective blanket and carefully placed the front linen, the antependium, over the altar. The ante­pendium carried the embroidered Alpha and Omega, which flashed in the darkness.

  Before it covered the altar, Mario glimpsed the naked, flecked stone. It was slightly sloped, slightly recessed. It was the distant descendant, Mario knew, of altar stones that were fluted to carry off blood of animal sacrifices.

  Father Malcolm lovingly placed the rear linen piece, the pall, in place. Then from the floor he lifted the ornate tabernacle and set it on the altar.

  “Are any of these things consecrated?” Mario asked.

  “What? No. Not yet. There are some items in the rectory. But the altar, like the church and graveyard, is still profane.”

  The seismograph, when Mario glanced at it, showed tremors along the north wall.

  “Mario—”

  Surprised at the tone of voice, Mario turned to look at the Jesuit, whose face was extraordinarily pale.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “The altar lamp—I can’t lift it out of the case—”

  Confused, Mario walked over to the wooden case. The tangle of brass chain lay looped over a small, rotund lamp with a ruby-red glass
in front of the wick.

  “It’s only lightweight brass,” Mario said. “What’s the problem?”

  “Please— If you could—”

  Mario reached for the altar lamp, experienced a residual heaviness, extraordinary, as though something incredibly powerful pulled back on it. Mario felt it through his hands. The resistance slowly gave way, and Mario lifted it to his chest, the way a weight lifter cradles 150 pounds of iron. Slowly, the brass lamp lightened all the more, and then it tinkled normally in Mario’s hands.

  The seismograph showed no more tremors.

  “Thank you—” Father Malcolm said nervously, mopping his forehead, where perspiration glistened. He looked strangely at Mario, as though afraid.

  “You asked me if there was anything consecrated in this church? I was wrong. There is one thing.”

  “What?”

  “I am consecrated.”

  The thermovision showed the temperature falling rapidly as the Siloam chilled in the night air. Yet the atmosphere within the church was fetid, hot and annihilating, like a coal fire.

  Father Malcolm looked uncertainly around the interior. The consoles running smoothly on their own power made the only sound. The crickets suddenly had ceased, as though something had entered the valley.

  The priest covered the altar linen with the protective blanket. With Mario’s help, he bolted the altar lamp so that it hung on a curved chain of brass links over the altar.

  The altar lamp began to tremble over the unconsecrated altar. Gradually, it grew still.

  “I am going into the rectory now,” Father Malcolm said. “To meditate and to pray.”

  He looked as though he wanted to say much more. Only there was no more time. Something had begun. His eyes were bright with a strange fear and a tic appeared at the corner of his mouth.

  “Will you come get me after dawn?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you, Mario.”

  Nervously, the Jesuit looked around the church. The vials, boxes, and utensils were laid out with maximum efficiency. He went over the exorcism in his mind, satisfied everything was in its place.

  They walked out the door into the chill. Father Malcolm locked the church door and handed Mario the key.

  “Keep this,” Father Malcolm instructed him. “When I tell you tomorrow, use it to open the door.”