Golgotha Falls

by Frank De Felitta

  I shall go to the Church of Eternal Sorrows, alone but for Him who always abides with me, and there I shall in nightly vigil and prayer, by the strength of Him who is the source of all our hopes of the Resurrection, give the lie to him who proclaimed that Christ was defeated at Golgotha Falls.

  That was the hook. Trial of faith. A temptation for every ordained man. Including the Pope, Francis Xavier. How else explain Francis Xavier’s famous vigils in the caves of Sicily? But for every saint who comes through confirmed in his faith, hundreds of human wrecks, like Eamon Malcolm, are scattered in confusion and terror.

  Was that the ambiguous message of Cardinal Bellocchi? That spiritually they must further His Holiness’s predilection toward the mystic, but that politically they must guard and even resist him?

  The bishop happily had it figured out at last.

  “Bring me writing materials,” he instructed his valet. “I wish to prepare two edicts this evening.”

  Surprised, the valet nevertheless set out blotter, pen, and stationery on the antique desk in the bedchamber.

  Two instructions would go immediately, even at this late hour, to the administrative council of the archdiocese: The Church of Eternal Sorrows was to be cut off from the living Church of Rome so that no priest would serve there again.

  “We have lost three priests to that nest of snakes,” he muttered.

  The second instruction was more detailed, and written in a less exalted form: The Church of Eternal Sorrows, being consigned as no-longer-sanctified real estate, would be sold on the open market.

  Satisfied with his edicts, Bishop Lyons retired to his evening bath, lowering himself into a steaming tub. The suds filled the porcelain over his body. The tiles dripped with moisture, and so did the copper piping on the walls. Frost formed at the dark windows, making engaging shapes.

  “See if the Jesuit has made his confession,” the bishop called to his valet.

  The valet nodded and pattered out into the corridor.

  The Church of Eternal Sorrows would fetch little, Bishop Lyons reflected. It was a depressed market. Perhaps a summer theater group would find the space attractive.

  Suddenly, the bishop had an intuition that the church should be razed and the real estate be the sole item for sale. Intuition became conviction and he rose to amend the instructions of sale.

  Slipping on his red quilted robe, he felt the déjà vu returned. The Eamon Malcolm affair had assaulted his sensibilities, nearly destroyed his reputation in front of the Nuncio, and now caused a painful ringing in his ears.

  Violent chills shuddered through his body. He looked down on his edicts, so carefully composed. His eyes bulged and a sound of profound terror exploded from him. The writing on the edicts was his own, but the sentences now proclaimed a foul and disgusting doggerel poetry in praise of animal husbandry.

  Bishop Lyons looked up at the dark window. A shaggy goathead grinned and slowly, very slowly, a bloodlike substance burst from its head and flowed down its shaggy chops.

  “G-G-God—!” he screamed.

  The bishop choked, his back arched, and suddenly, at the rear and top of his head, he felt the vessels blind him with white pain and the blood, broken free, flowed into his brain with a paralyzing pressure.

  Bishop Lyons writhed on the floor, heels dug into the carpet.

  The needles of frost penetrated his breathing functions, sadistic and sharp. The lights flared around the frosted window. The bishop raised himself to an elbow.

  Take the sacrament, slave of God! he heard in the resonant echo of his own damaged cranial cavity.

  The valet ran in, horrified. He knew immediately it must be a stroke, but like none other he had ever witnessed. He put his ear to the bishop’s mouth. From the bishop’s tortured, urgent throat came the grunt of a lusty animal.

  “Bahhhhhh!” the bishop bleated. “Baa-ahhhh!”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The sickly yellow frost, illumined by the moon, shone into the dormitory of the cathedral seminary.

  Long shadows flowed from the silhouette sitting beside the window. It was cold when Father Malcolm regained consciousness. As he pulled himself to an elbow, the silhouette stirred.

  “Where am I?” he said hoarsely.

  “In the bishop’s dormitory,” said a gentle voice. “You fainted before you could give confession.”

  Father Malcolm sat at the edge of the lower cot of a bunkbed. Several other bunkbeds lined the walls. At the end of the room was a tiny kitchen range and over it a crucifix.

  “Could I have something to drink?” Father Malcolm said, rubbing his neck.

  The silhouette at the window, a Franciscan, shuffled toward the kitchen range and boiled water.

  The globe of the moon hung motionless when the clouds passed. Father Malcolm leaned against the bunkbed post.

  “What time is it?” he asked.

  “It is two o’clock in the morning,” said the Franciscan, bringing him tea.

  The steaming cup was under his nose. Looking up, he saw the priest’s solicitous curiosity. Father Malcolm nodded his thanks, took the cup in both hands, and sipped. It burned sweetly down into him, bringing life.

  The Franciscan shuffled his chair closer, his cheek illumined by the shaft from the frosted window. His brown eyes continued to bend over him in extreme curiosity.

  “What is it like?” he whispered. “To lose one’s soul?”

  Father Malcolm felt the coldness of the night drain back into him. He drank more tea. Then he held the cup in both hands, staring at the oblique moonlight on the hardwood floor.

  “You live in a vacuum,” Father Malcolm replied bitterly. “And you have no will.”

  “No will?”

  Father Malcolm shook his head.

  “You are anybody’s slave. You fear it. You flee it. You beg for Christ. But there is no Christ. Not inside. Not anymore.”

  Father Malcolm recalled his vigil in the Church of Eternal Sorrows. There had been a premonition, then recognition. He had turned from Anita and the vileness of his own vanity and confusion. He saw the altar lamp, dead and cold. In that one split second, he had called, not on Christ, but on the bishop, in rage. But neither bishop nor Christ had prevented him from rushing out into the cool dawn air, an empty shell, a marionette, fleeing a new Master.

  Father Malcolm buried his head in his hands. The first time, at the exorcism, when he felt drowning in fever and hallucination, he had impulsively, naturally, and with all his power called on Christ. It was almost a bodily tension and release. But, in the aftermath of the vigil, he had cursed the bishop, a father figure who had rebuffed him.

  Father Malcolm moaned in his own depravity.

  The Franciscan tugged at his sleeve. “Did you see him?” he asked urgently.

  “Who?”

  “He who opposes the Lord Jesus Christ.”

  Father Malcolm tipped the cup to his lips though the tea was gone. He felt ravenously hungry. Hungry for warmth, for the semblance of normality.

  “I saw his face in every man I passed,” Father Malcolm said, shuddering. “And in every town I drove through.”

  The Franciscan, fascinated, leaned toward him.

  “What did he look like, Father?” he asked, trembling in eagerness.

  “Like you and like me.”

  The Franciscan stared at Father Malcolm. “Explain yourself, Father.”

  “In every face, I saw the evil of greed, ambition, and hypocrisy. I saw that the towns were filled by those who served evil. Behind the eyes of total strangers, I knew who it was looking back at me and grinning.”

  “But you fled him,” the Franciscan said. “You’re safe here.”

  “Am I?”

  The Franciscan frowned, then smiled softly, leaned forward, and tapped Father Malcolm’s knee casually, intimately.

  “Now, when you ran into the residence, and you saw the bishop, did you not see a sanctified face?”

  “On the contrary. I perceived duplicity and a hard heart
.”

  The Franciscan drew back, discomfited.

  “And what did you think of Cardinal Bellocchi?” he asked testily.

  “I was so very disoriented, brother. I hardly recall.”

  “But surely you have some impression.”

  “A good man. A hard man. But Christ dwells within him.”

  The Franciscan relaxed. Father Malcolm shivered violently and pulled a thick, dark blanket over his shoulders.

  “In any case,” he said, sadly, “the bishop has received his reward.”

  The Franciscan looked at him blankly.

  “What do you mean, Father Malcolm?”

  Father Malcolm stared at him, confused. “Isn’t it obvious?” he said. “The poor man is close to death.”

  “As far as I know, Bishop Lyons is in excellent health. In fact, he sent his valet to inquire about you only a few hours ago.”

  Father Malcolm rubbed his forehead. Disoriented, he then held on to the bunkbed post for support.

  “I don’t know why I said that,” he confessed. “Sometimes ideas come. I don’t know from where.”

  “Well, you were angry at the bishop,” surmised the Franciscan.

  Father Malcolm closed his eyes.

  “I was. I confess it. He let me suffer alone.”

  “You must confess these angers, Father Malcolm,” said the Franciscan in a drier, more efficient tone of voice. “These and all your experiences of the last week.”

  “Why?”

  The Franciscan was bringing a battered night table across the floor. When he set it down in front of Father Malcolm, he opened the drawers and set writing materials on it: ink bottle, fountain pen, green felt blotter, and lovely beige stationery.

  “What is this?” Father Malcolm demanded, drawing back.

  “Cardinal Bellocchi has instructed that you make a good confession.”

  “I thought Cardinal Bellocchi had left.”

  “He will be in Baltimore until the morning. Your confession will be hand-delivered to him.”

  “But why?”

  “Because, as you observed, Christ dwells within him.”

  Father Malcolm licked his bruised lips. The stationery seemed to glow in the long shafts of the yellow-white moon-glow. The fountain pen glinted. He adjusted the woolen blanket over his shoulders.

  “This is irregular,” Father Malcolm protested.

  “On the contrary,” said the Franciscan, “it will be taken by His Eminence directly to the Sacred Apostolic Penitentiary at the Vatican.”

  Father Malcolm looked up, shocked.

  “To Rome? When?”

  “Late tomorrow. And that holy tribunal, within its competence, will adjudicate your penance.”

  Father Malcolm’s heart began racing. Despite the chill in the poorly heated dormitory, beads of perspiration broke out on his forehead.

  “My penance?” he whispered slowly.

  “Let us pray it will not be harsh,” said the Franciscan encouragingly. “But it will bring you absolution.”

  A long silence reigned in the dormitory. Vague and distant clatter of pots and pans from the kitchen came up the corridors, and with it a faint smell of cabbage and soap suds.

  Father Malcolm leaned forward, abruptly knocking over the ink bottle.

  Instantly, the Franciscan was at the table, blotting up the stationery. From the drawer, he produced a packet of clean paper. He filled the fountain pen, tested it, and handed it to Father Malcolm.

  “Write with a contrite heart, Father Malcolm.”

  Disoriented, Father Malcolm felt the weight of the pen in his fingers. Rome. It gave him courage.

  Father Malcolm began.

  In search to perfect myself and restore a defiled church unto our Lord Jesus Christ, I, Father Eamon James Malcolm, of the Society of Jesus, in the archdiocese of Boston, Massachusetts, traveled alone to the Church of Eternal Sorrows at Golgotha Falls.

  Father Malcolm felt his teeth chattering. The Franciscan dragged a portable electric heater to his legs. The confession, once begun, developed a peculiar momentum of its own.

  It could take hours. Father Malcolm looked up. The Franciscan had infinite patience. He would accompany him all night, if necessary.

  Then Father Malcolm had the unmistakable impression that he was not so much protecting him from the exterior world as keeping guard over him like a prisoner.

  The guilt of failure rose in his throat like black bile.

  The stationery gleamed, though the moon had passed beyond the frame of the window. Father Malcolm reviewed his own handwriting.

  In search to defile myself and wrest an abandoned church from the Lord Jesus Christ, I, Father Eamon James Malcolm, of the Society of Jesus, in the archdiocese of Boston, Massachusetts, traveled alone to the Church of Eternal Sorrows at Golgotha Falls.

  Father Malcolm dropped the fountain pen.

  “I feel ill,” he said hoarsely.

  He tried to rise, but the massive hand of the Franciscan pushed him down.

  “Continue, Father. And leave nothing out.”

  Father Malcolm held the sheet of paper, trembling, to the shadowed Franciscan.

  “I beg you,” he whispered. “Read it.”

  “We cannot. It is strictly confidential. No one will read it until it arrives at the Vatican.”

  “But in Christ’s name . . . I beg you—”

  “Continue, Father,” he said sternly. “Though it be painful. The tribunal will interpret it.”

  Father Malcolm’s trembling hand hovered over the stationery. He continued in a seizure of fear, staring at his own moving hand.

  Under authority of the bishop, following the canon and codes of Church rites, I successfully exorcised the Church of Eternal Sorrows and returned it unto Christ.

  Father Malcolm sank, eyes closed, against the bedpost. The strain of coherent thought was pulling him apart. Resistance rose everywhere within.

  Hesitantly, from the oblique angle, Father Malcolm squinted down at the desk.

  Under authority of the goathead, mimicking the canon and codes of Church rites, I successfully exorcised the Church of Eternal Sorrows from Christ.

  A broken, bitter exclamation burst from Eamon Malcolm’s bleeding lips.

  “Read it!” he shouted, flourishing the paper.

  But the Franciscan merely returned the paper and Father Malcolm’s hand to the table top, peering into the Jesuit’s whitened face.

  “Your lips,” the Franciscan murmured. “You’ve bitten them.”

  Suddenly, Father Malcolm felt the hot blood there. He instantly daubed his lips with a white handkerchief.

  “Continue your entire confession,” ordered the Franciscan slowly. Then added, “Father.”

  And I was rewarded by the signal of His holy presence twofold: by the miraculous lighting of the altar lamp, from no man’s hand, and by the miraculous image of His Holy Sorrow on the cross beside the altar.

  Father Malcolm felt only a cool chill within his limbs as he wrote. His intellect perceived acutely the formation of letters, words, and punctuation. His senses felt caught in a black net. For what he thought and executed in fact did not appear consistent with what he viewed on the paper.

  The disorientation was formidable: Which was real, what he wrote or what he thought he read?

  Worse: The ordained brother of Christ was unable to help him in any way.

  A broken, hoarse laughter, of despairing helplessness and fear, erupted from his mouth as he read:

  And I was rewarded by the signal of his presence twofold: by the obscene mimicry of the altar lamp, lit by no man’s hand, and by the sadistic pornography of Christ’s writhing death on the cross beside the altar.

  The confession continued. It took seven pages. Exhausted, he signaled that it was over. The Franciscan instantly sealed the seven pages into a heavy envelope.

  “Good. The bishop will be pleased,” said the Franciscan.

  “Will he?” Father Malcolm stammered, confused. “Perhaps, if h
e recovers.”

  The Franciscan frowned. “That is the second time you have said that.”

  “Is it?”

  The Franciscan pressed a small bell. Footsteps were shortly heard rustling up the corridor. The Franciscan unbolted and unlocked the door.

  “Will you go and inquire after the bishop’s health?” he whispered to the light-filled crack in the door.

  “At this hour?” came the surprised reply.

  “As fast as you can, brother.”

  Father Malcolm watched the door close. Dread and anxiety assailed him. Ahead of him, on the table, the Franciscan was pressing a facsimile of the bishop’s seal into red wax on the heavy envelope.

  The envelope seemed charged with a subtle life of its own.

  Father Malcolm slumped wearily. “I feel as though that confession were written by the very author of sin himself.”

  “Indeed. It often seems that way.”

  Father Malcolm felt the hot liquid at his lips. As he daubed away the blood in the dark, he felt the Franciscan watching him closely.

  “May I wash myself in the lavatory?” he asked weakly.

  “Certainly.”

  The Franciscan opened the door. Father Malcolm stepped into the tiled corridor. Far away, other corridors led to the exit of the seminary. The Franciscan pulled him in the other direction. Nodding asleep on a chair against the wall was a priest in simple black cassock. Father Malcolm did not remember the corridors of his own seminary being guarded in such a fashion.

  The priest jerked awake with a sheepish smile. He nodded at the Franciscan.

  Father Malcolm walked into the lavatory. The bright gleaming tiles brilliantly reflected the fluorescent tubes overhead. As he washed his face in refreshing cold water at the porcelain basin, the priest and the Franciscan guarded him at the door.

  “It will soon be dawn,” said the priest.

  “Really?” Father Malcolm said. “I’ve lost track of time.”

  “Soon it will be the hour of matins.”

  Father Malcolm rubbed his face with a rough white terrycloth towel, not quite comprehending.

  “We should like you to lead the service, Father Malcolm,” said the priest, studying the Jesuit carefully.

  “Oh?”

  “Are you not pleased to do so?”