“So you went to seminary,” Brine interjected. He was becoming impatient with the progress of the story.
“I went in at sixteen, which made me at least four years younger than the other boys. My mother packed me some sandwiches, and I packed myself into a threadbare black suit that was three sizes too small for me and I was on the train to Illinois.
“You have to understand, I didn’t want any part of this stuff with the demon; I really wanted to be a priest. Of all the people I had known as a child, the priest seemed like the only one who had any control over things. The crops could fail, banks could close, people could get sick and die, but the priest and the church were always there, calm and steadfast. And all that mysticism was pretty nifty, too.”
“What about women?” Brine asked. He had resolved himself to hearing an epic, and it seemed as if Travis needed to tell it. Brine found he liked the strange young man, in spite of himself.
“You don’t miss what you’ve never known. I mean I had these urges, but they were sinful, right? I just had to say, ‘Get thee behind me Satan’, and get on with it.”
“That’s the most incredible thing you’ve told me so far,” Brine said. “When I was sixteen, sex seemed like the only reason to go on living.”
“That’s what they thought at seminary, too. Because I was younger than the others, the prefect of discipline, Father Jasper, took me on as his special project. To keep me from impure thoughts, he made me work constantly. In the evenings, when the others were given time for prayer and meditation, I was sent to the chapel to polish the silver. While the others ate, I worked in the kitchen, serving and washing dishes. For two years the only rest I had from dawn until midnight was during classes and mass. When I fell behind in my studies, Father Jasper rode me even harder.
“The Vatican had given the seminary a set of silver candlesticks for the altar. Supposedly they had been commissioned by one of the early popes and were over six hundred years old. The candlesticks were the most prized possession of the seminary and it was my job to polish them. Father Jasper stood over me, evening after evening, chiding me and berating me for being impure in thought. I polished the silver until my hands were black from the compound, and still Father Jasper found fault with me. If I had impure thoughts it was because he kept reminding me to have them.
“I had no friends in seminary. Father Jasper had put his mark on me, and the other students shunned me for fear of invoking the prefect of discipline’s wrath. I wrote home when I had a chance, but for some reason my letters were never answered. I began to suspect that Father Jasper was keeping my letters from getting to me.
“One evening, while I was polishing the silver on the altar, Father Jasper came to the chapel and started to lecture me on my evil nature.
“‘You are impure in thought and deed, yet you do not confess,’ he said. ‘You are evil, Travis, and it is my duty to drive that evil out!’
“I couldn’t take it any longer. ‘Where are my letters?’ I blurted out. ‘You are keeping me from my family.’
“Father Jasper was furious. ‘Yes, I keep your letters. You are spawned from a womb of evil. How else could you have come here so young. I waited for eight years to come to Saint Anthony’s — waited in the cold of the world while others were taken into the warm bosom of Christ.’
“At last I knew why I had been singled out for punishment. It had nothing to do with my spiritual impurity. It was jealousy. I said, ‘And you, Father Jasper, have you confessed your jealousy and your pride? Have you confessed your cruelty?’
“‘Cruel, am I?’ he said. He laughed at me, and for the first time I was really afraid of him. ‘There is no cruelty in the bosom of Christ, only tests of faith. Your faith is wanting, Travis. I will show you.’
“He told me to lie with arms outstretched on the steps before the altar and pray for strength. He left the chapel for a moment, and when he returned I could hear something whistling through the air. I looked up and saw that he was carrying a thin whip cut from a willow branch.
“‘Have you no humility, Travis? Bow your head before our Lord.’
“I could hear him moving behind me, but I could not see him. Why I didn’t leave right then I don’t know. Perhaps I believed that Father Jasper was actually testing my faith, that he was the cross I had to bear.
“He tore my robe up the back, exposing my bare back and legs. ‘You will not cry out, Travis. After each blow a Hail Mary. Now,’ he said. Then I felt the whip across my back and I thought I would scream, but instead I said a Hail Mary. He threw a rosary in front of me and told me to take it. I held it behind my head, feeling the pain come with every bead.
“‘You are a coward, Travis. You don’t deserve to serve our Lord. You are here to avoid the war, aren’t you, Travis?’
“I didn’t answer him and the whip fell again.
“After a while I heard him laughing with each stroke of the whip. I did not look back for fear he might strike me across the eyes. Before I had finished the rosary, I heard him gasp and drop to the floor behind me. I thought — no, I hoped — he had had a heart attack. But when I looked back he was kneeling behind me, gasping for air, exhausted, but smiling.
“‘Face down, sinner!’ he screamed. He drew back the whip as if he were going to strike me in the face and I covered my head.
“‘You will tell no one of this,’ he said. His voice was low and calm. For some reason that scared me more than his anger. ‘You are to stay the night here, polish the silver, and pray for forgiveness. I will return in the morning with a new robe for you. If you speak of this to anyone, I will see that you are expelled from Saint Anthony’s and, if I can manage it, excommunicated.’
“I hadn’t ever heard excommunication used as a threat. It was something we studied in class. The popes had used it as an instrument of political control, but the reality of being excluded from salvation by someone else had never really occurred to me. I didn’t believe that Father Jasper could really excommunicate me, but I wasn’t going to test it.
“While Father Jasper watched, I began to polish the candlesticks, rubbing furiously to take my mind off the pain in my back and legs, and to try to forget that he was watching. Finally, he left the chapel. When I heard the door close, I threw the candlestick I was holding at the door.
“Father Jasper had tested my faith, and I had failed. I cursed the Trinity, the Virgin, and all the saints I could remember. Eventually my anger subsided and I feared Father Jasper would return and see what I had done.
“I retrieved the candlestick and inspected it to see if I had done any damage. Father Jasper would check them in the morning as he always did, and I would be lost.
“There was a deep scratch across the axis of the candlestick. I rubbed at it, harder and harder, but it only seemed to get worse. Soon I realized that it wasn’t a scratch at all but a seam that had been concealed by the silversmith. The priceless artifact from the Vatican was a sham. It was supposed to be solid silver, but here was evidence that it was hollow. I grabbed both ends of the candlestick and twisted. As I suspected, it unscrewed. There was a sort of triumph in it. I wanted to be holding the two pieces when Father Jasper returned. I wanted to wave them in his face. ‘Here’, I would say, ‘these are as hollow and false as you are. I would expose him, ruin him, and if I was expelled and damned, I didn’t care. But I never got the chance to confront him.
“When I pulled the two pieces apart, a tightly rolled piece of parchment fell out.”
“The invocation,” Brine interrupted.
“Yes, but I didn’t know what it was. I unrolled it and started to read. There was a passage at the top in Latin, which I didn’t have much trouble translating. It said something about calling down help from God to deal with enemies of the Church. It was signed by His Holiness, Pope Leo the Third.
“The second part was written in Greek. As I said, I had fallen behind in my studies, so the Greek was difficult. I started reading it aloud, working on each word as I went. By the time
I was through the first passage, it had started to get cold in the chapel. I wasn’t sure what I was reading. Some of the words were mysteries to me. I just read over them, trying to glean what I could from the context. Then something seemed to take over my mind.
“I started reading the Greek as if it were my native language, pronouncing the words perfectly, without having the slightest idea of what they meant.
“A wind whipped up inside the chapel, blowing out all the candles. Except for a little moonlight coming through the windows, it was completely dark, but the words on the parchment began to glow and I kept reading. I was locked into the parchment as if I had grabbed an electric wire and couldn’t let go.
“When I read the last line, I found I was screaming the words. Lightning flashed down from the roof and struck the candlestick, which was lying on the floor in front of me. The wind stopped and smoke filled the chapel.
“Nothing prepares you for something like that. You can spend your life preparing to be the instrument of God. You can read accounts of possession and exorcism and try to imagine yourself in the situation, but when it actually happens, you just shut down. I did, anyway. I sat there trying to figure out what I had done, but my mind wouldn’t work.
“The smoke floated up into the rafters of the chapel and I could make out a huge figure standing at the altar. It was Catch, in his eating form.”
“What’s his eating form?” Brine asked.
“I assume from the deal with the flour that you know Catch is visible to others only when he is in his eating form. Most of the time I see him as a three-foot imp covered with scales. When he feeds or goes out of control, he’s a giant. I’ve seen him cut a man in half with one swipe of his claws. I don’t know why it works that way. I just know that when I saw him for the first time, I had never been so frightened.
“He looked around the chapel, then at me, then at the chapel. I was praying under my breath, begging God for protection.
“‘Stop it!’ he said. ‘I’ll take care of everything.’ Then he went down the aisle and through the chapel doors, knocking them off their hinges. He turned and looked back at me. He said: ‘You have to open these things, right? I forgot — it’s been a while.’
“As soon as he was gone I picked up the candlesticks and ran. I got as far as the front gates before I realized that I was still wearing the torn robe.
“I wanted to get away, hide, forget what I had seen, but I had to go back and get my clothes. I ran back to my quarters. Since I was in my third year at seminary, I been given a small private room, so, thankfully, I didn’t have to go through the dormitory ward rooms where the newer students slept. The only clothes I had were the suit I had worn when I came and a pair of overalls I wore when I worked in the seminary fields. I tried to put on the suit, but the pants were just too tight, so I put the overalls on and wore the suit jacket over them to cover my shoulders. I wrapped the candlesticks in a blanket and headed for the gate.
“When I was just outside the gate, I heard a horrible scream from the rectory. There was no mistaking; it was Father Jasper.
“I ran the six miles into town without stopping. The sun was coming up as I reached the train station and a train was pulling away from the platform. I didn’t know where it was going, but I ran after it and managed to swing myself on board before I collapsed.
“I’d like to tell you I had some kind of plan, but I didn’t. My only thought was to get as far away from St. Anthony’s as I could. I don’t know why I took the candlesticks. I wasn’t interested in their value. I guess I didn’t want to leave any evidence of what I’d done. Or maybe it was the influence of the supernatural.
“Anyway, I caught my breath and went into the passenger car to find a seat. The train was nearly full, soldiers and a few civilians here and there. I staggered down the aisle and fell into the first empty seat I could find. It was next to a young woman who was reading a book.
“‘This seat is taken,’ she said.
“‘Please, just let me rest here for a minute,’ I begged. ‘I’ll get up when your companion returns.’
“She looked up from her book and I found myself staring into the biggest, bluest eyes I’d ever seen. I will never forget them. She was young, about my age, and wore her dark hair pinned up under a hat, which was the style in those days. She looked genuinely frightened of me. I guess I was wearing my own fright on my face.
“‘Are you all right? Shall I call the conductor?’ she asked.
“I thanked her but told her that I just needed to rest a moment. She was looking at the strange way I was dressed, trying to be polite, but obviously perplexed. I looked up and noticed that everyone in the car was staring at me. Could they know about what I’d done? I wondered. Then I realized why they were staring. There was a war on and I was obviously the right age for the Army, yet I was dressed in civilian clothes. ‘I’m a seminary student,’ I blurted out to them, causing a breeze of incredulous whispers. The girl blushed.
“‘I’m sorry,’ I said to her. ‘I’ll move on.’ I started to rise, but she put her hand on my shoulder to push me back into my seat and I winced when she touched my injured shoulder.
“‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m traveling alone. I’ve just been saving this seat to ward off the soldiers. You know how they can be sometimes, Father.’
“‘I’m not a priest yet,’ I said.
“‘I don’t know what to call you, then,’ she said.
“‘Call me Travis,’ I said.
“‘I’m Amanda,’ she said. She smiled, and for a moment I completely forgot why I was running. She was an attractive girl, but when she smiled, she was absolutely stunning. It was my turn to blush.
“‘I’m going to New York to stay with my fiancé’s family. He’s in Europe,’ she said.
“‘So this train is going east?’ I asked.
“She was surprised. ‘You don’t even know where the train is going?’ she asked.
“‘I’ve had a bad night,’ I said. Then I started to laugh — I don’t know why. It seemed so unreal. The idea of trying to explain it to her seemed silly.
“She looked away and started digging in her purse. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I didn’t mean to offend you.’
‘You didn’t offend me. I need to have my ticket ready for the conductor.’
“I’d completely forgotten about not having a ticket. I looked up and saw the conductor coming down the aisle. I jumped up and a wave of fatigue hit me. I almost fell into her lap.
“‘Is something wrong?’ she asked.
“‘Amanda,’ I said, ‘you have been very kind, but I should find another seat and let you travel in peace.’
“‘You don’t have a ticket, do you?’ she said.
“I shook my head. ‘I’ve been in seminary. I’d forgotten. We don’t have any need for money there and…’
“‘I have some traveling money,’ she said.
“‘I couldn’t ask you to do that,’ I said. Then I remembered the candlesticks. ‘Look, you can have these. They’re worth a lot of money. Hold them and I’ll send you the money for the ticket when I get home,’ I said.
“I unrolled the blanket and dropped the candlesticks in her lap.
“‘That’s not necessary,’ she said. “I’ll loan you the money.’
“‘No, I insist you take them,’ I said, trying to be gallant. I must have looked ridiculous standing there in my overalls and tattered suit jacket.
“‘If you insist,’ she said. ‘I understand. My fiancé is a proud man, too.’
“She gave me the money I needed and I bought a ticket all the way to Clarion, which was only about ten miles from my parent’s farm.
“The train broke down somewhere in Indiana and we were forced to wait in the station while they changed engines. It was midsummer and terribly hot. Without thinking, I took off my jacket and Amanda gasped when she saw my back. She insisted that I see a doctor, but I refused, knowing that I would only have to borrow more money from her to pay for it.
We sat on a bench in the station while she cleaned my back with damp napkins from the dining car.
“In those days the sight of a woman bathing a half-naked man in a train station would have been scandalous, but most of the passengers were soldiers and were much more concerned with being AWOL or with their ultimate destination, Europe, so we were ignored for the most part.
“Amanda disappeared for a while and returned just before our train was ready to leave. ‘I’ve reserved a berth in the sleeping car for us,’ she said.
“I was shocked. I started to protest, but she stopped me. She said, ‘You are going to sleep and I am going to watch over you. You are a priest and I’m engaged, so there is nothing wrong with it. Besides, you are in no shape to spend the night sitting up in a train.’
“I think it was then that I realized that I was in love with her. Not that it mattered. It was just that after living so long with Father Jasper’s abuse I wasn’t prepared for the kindness she was showing me. It never occurred to me that I might be putting her in danger.
“As we pulled away from the station, I looked out on the platform, and for the first time I saw Catch in his smaller form. Why it happened then and not before I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t have any strength left, but when I saw him there on the platform, flashing a big razor-toothed grin, I fainted.
“When I came to, I felt like my back was on fire. I was lying in the sleeping berth and Amanda was bathing my back with alcohol.
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