Exorcist Road (6 page)

Yet we refrained from calling an ambulance. Because when we returned, Casey’s wounds appeared to be mending. When I commented on this, Father Sutherland only shook his head in wonderment. But there was little doubt of this miraculous improvement. For though his wrists were still bloody, in no place was the bone denuded.

With Casey lashed more securely to his bed and Liz resting peacefully, Danny took Carolyn back to her room and endeavored to calm her and to palliate—if such a thing was possible—the effects of the monstrous freak show she’d just witnessed on her young psyche.

We were in the hallway when Ron said, “You know, maybe Bittner could help.”

Danny stared at him in amazement. “He pulled a gun on Casey.”

“At least he tried to do something,” Ron said. “All you do is talk. And forgive me for saying so, Danny, but what you say rarely exhibits much intellect.”

Danny ignored the dig. “You want your son in jail? That’s what you’re saying. Because that’s where he’s gonna be if we let Bittner out now. And that’s best case.”

Ron waved a dismissive hand.

“You saw him,” Danny persisted. “He damn near shot Casey. I can’t believe you’d let him within a hundred feet of your family.”

Ron shook his head distractedly, and as he did, a horrible thought occurred to me. I was about to give voice to it when Danny said, “Maybe you should take some time to cool off, Ronnie.”

With a muttered oath, Ron disappeared. Looking disgusted, Danny soon followed.

Perhaps it was just as well that no one witnessed what Father Sutherland and I soon saw.

Chapter Seven

It started with Casey’s knees.

I once witnessed an injury in a pickup basketball game that is indelibly inscribed on my memory. The young man—the brother of an acquaintance, I’ve long since forgotten both their names—had driven toward the basket on a fast break and was attempting to jump stop with the evident intention of faking out the defender giving chase from behind. The young man did evade the defender, who leapt into the air to block a shot that never came. But the ball handler’s left knee, rather than planting solidly on the hardwood and allowing him to gather himself for an uncontested shot, hyperextended in the most unnatural manner, the sight of it almost as grotesque as the protracted popping sound the knee made in giving way.

That incident, as terrible as it had seemed at the time, was a mere sprain compared to the ghastly contortion occurring on the bed.

The alteration in Casey’s legs coincided with the beginning of a familiar rite. Father Sutherland read, “Deliver us, Lord, from sin.”

I answered, “Deliver us, O Lord.”

Father Sutherland: “From your anger.”

“Deliver us, O Lord.”

“From unexpected death.”

Casey’s extremities, as I have stated, were securely bound to the four ivory bedposts by handcuffs and extension cords. Once his parents and uncle had departed the room, Casey had seemed to relax to some degree, as if it had been the presence of his blood relatives that had agitated him. At this point, I tested each of Casey’s bonds to make certain he would not attack us. Then I rejoined Sutherland’s reading. “Deliver us, O Lord.”

“From the snares of iniquity,” Sutherland read.

“Deliver us, O Lord.”

“From fury, prejudice and enmity.”

“Deliver us, O Lord.”

At the continuance of our words, Casey first grew very still. This wasn’t the stillness I had witnessed upon first arriving that night, but was rather an alarmingly portentous posture, the alertness of his expression somehow gravid with anticipation. In other words, I realized at once it was not Casey who was now present in the room, but rather that diabolical
other
who reveled in torturing its host and frustrating our efforts to free the boy. The creature’s mouth was slack in a parody of a grin, the look in its eyes far away, almost dreamy.

I had a nasty vision of a mentally challenged person nearing orgasm and shooed the notion away, though it seemed revoltingly apt. Drool was leaking from the corners of the creature’s mouth, the teeth apart in that foolish, infuriating grin. And as paradoxical as it might sound, despite the creature’s idiotic expression, the impression its features conveyed was as ancient and knowing as any I had yet beheld.

That was when Casey’s knees began to crack.

My first worry was wholly irrational—perhaps conditioned by countless films about demonic possession and Satanism, I worried the walls themselves were groaning and preparing to give way. I cast a feverish glance at the ceiling, the floor, but found these surfaces as solid as before.

“From vulgarity and carnal thoughts,” Sutherland read.

I stared openmouthed.

“From vulgarity and carnal
thoughts
,” Sutherland repeated.

I remained dumbstruck, terrified by the groaning, cracking noises that filled the room.

“Father Crowder!” Sutherland yelled.

I jolted, realizing I’d ceased responding to his invocations. But I couldn’t find my voice and didn’t even bother locating my place in the Bible. I was too fixated on Casey’s legs.

They moved at first as though someone had snagged the skin of his kneepits and was hauling steadily downward. Then the movements became convulsive, erratic, the knees somehow grinding deeper into the mattress and then causing the mattress to creak.

The rapture on the creature’s face grew more obscene. I noticed with distant revulsion that its phallus was engorged, made tumid by the damage it was inflicting on its innocent host.

The knees continued their descent into the creaking mattress, and now became audible the discordant twangs of snapped mattress fibers, the force of the sinister gravity actually causing the mattress to split open.

The scrawny legs formed unnatural Vs now. The sounds of tearing cartilage and cracking bone were dreadful. Blood squirted from the distressed flesh. Jagged shards of bone punctured the skin. His patellas, drawn downward into a space unable to accommodate their platelike width, first domed the whitened flesh sheathing them, then exploded in purplish geysers, spewing bone fragments and gristle into the air.

I would like to claim I maintained some vestige of decorum despite the grisly scene playing out before me, but I have set out to record events faithfully, and must therefore admit to vomiting then. Thankfully, I was able to thrust open a window before I lost control. I saw, as I gave up my the supper to the tempestuous April night, that below Casey’s window there was a precipitous drop-off of three stories onto a stone patio that lay at basement level.

Suddenly fearful of tumbling out the open window and fairly confident my bout of vomiting had ended, I rammed shut the window and turned to find the awful contortion still in progress. Now, though the knees were so far buried in the lacerated mattress that I could no longer distinguish their gory ruins, a new, atavistic fear arose in me that the boy would simply be devoured by his own bed. For that was what appeared to be happening. The creature’s bonds, I noticed with a crawling dread, were serving now not to contain the creature, but were rather inflicting harm on Casey’s body. Blood flow seemed to have ceased utterly to his hands and feet, which were now bleached of color.

Panting, my hands planted on my knees, I managed to say, “Hospital. We have to get him to a hospital.”

“He’ll be dead by then,” Sutherland said. “His only hope is our intervention.”

Don’t you mean God’s?
I thought but did not say. I could scarcely say anything, so great was my horror.

Sutherland seized me by the back of the shirt. With an effortless tug, he straightened my bent back and jerked me closer so that our noses almost touched. “It is an illusion meant to break our will.”

I glanced at the ruins of Casey’s knees, the spatters of blood and the molted flesh. These were no illusions.

As if reading my thoughts, Sutherland shook me, spoke directly into my face. “I have witnessed these marvels before, Jason. They seem real. Our senses accept the deceit completely. Until the trance is shattered and the truth is revealed.”

My eyes again drifted to the macabre vision on the bed, but Sutherland dropped his Bible and grabbed me roughly by the chin. “Look at his wrists—you can’t deny they are healing! Look at his fingertips. They are covered over with flesh. You are deceived by its wiles, Jason. Have you learned nothing in our years together?”

This finally broke through the veil of terror that had been suffocating me. I didn’t totally believe his claims that the gruesome scene on the bed was chimerical, but I did have faith in Father Sutherland’s wisdom. I nodded, licked my lips, and said, “Deliver us, O Lord.”

Sutherland retrieved his Bible. “From lightning, thunder and tempest.”

“Deliver us, O Lord.”

What was left of Casey’s knees began to emerge from the bed.

“From famine, pestilence and war.”

“Deliver us, O Lord.”

Before my eyes, the flesh seemed to knit, the rills of blood that sluiced from the wounds diminishing to narrow trickles.

“From everlasting death.”

“Deliver us, O Lord.”

Sutherland’s voice swelled with greater authority, “By the mystery of your holy strength.”

“Deliver us, O Lord.”

“By your presence.”

“Deliver us, O Lord,” I said, and the tremor in my voice was no longer audible.

“By your birth and baptism.”

Casey’s legs were whole again, the only sign of damage the blood darkening the bed around his knees.

“Deliver us, O Lord.”

And now even the look of lunatic sadism had vanished from Casey’s face and had been replaced by a drowsy expression, one I was certain Liz would recognize. Casey looked like a child ready to drift off to sleep.

Together, Father Sutherland and I finished our rites, and by the end, Casey appeared to be dozing tranquilly. The older priest placed a hand on my arm and led me away from the bed.

“I’m sorry for losing faith, Father,” I said.

He didn’t acknowledge my words, instead kept his eyes trained on Casey’s slumbering form. “I need to check the boy’s heart rate,” he said in an undertone. “I don’t want to rouse the presence, but I must make certain Casey is out of danger before we leave the room.”

“Maybe if we sedate him…”

He shook his head emphatically. “Precisely why I want to avoid doctors and paramedics, Father Crowder. The first thing they’ll do is administer a sedative, and that might prove disastrous.”

I thought of the boy’s knees. It hadn’t been a vision, I knew, but rather an incredible act of violence followed by some inexplicable regeneration. But it
had
happened, of that I was sure. “Father Sutherland,” I said, “if you’re worried about his heart—”

“Only one of them lived.”

I stared at him, uncomprehending.

“I lied to the Hartmans, Jason. I’m not proud of it, but it was necessary to gain permission for the exorcism.”

I frowned and opened my mouth to speak, but he went on briskly.

“The exorcism in which I was the lead priest, that one was successful. The one on which I assisted was not. Like you, I was convinced that medical attention was necessary. I had seen exorcisms end badly before and was wary of the entire process. My mind was very much in keeping with our modern system of beliefs—that religion is an enemy of science and should never inhibit scientific logic.”

He looked at me with those profound blue eyes. “But these are not matters of science, Father Crowder. They are matters of faith. And when the lead priest—a good, rational man who felt the same as I did then and as you do now—failed to drive the demon out of the host swiftly and decided to take refuge in modern medicine, the results were catastrophic.”

“What happened?”

“The host died,” he said simply. “And the malevolent presence overcame the officiating priest.” Sutherland’s eyes filled with tears. “He was my mentor, my shepherd. He had handpicked me from the seminary and nurtured me for more than a decade. He wasn’t a good man, he was a
great
man. A legend in the eyes of many and an individual whose gentleness and piety were renowned throughout the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.”

Sutherland’s voice broke. “And he nearly strangled me.” With a fierce tug, Sutherland tore away his collar and the top of his cassock, revealing to me a familiar wormlike scar that spanned the right side of his throat all the way to the collarbone. The scar had long been a mystery to those of us who knew Sutherland. “His thumb and index finger punctured my skin,” he explained. “The fingers burrowed into me and ripped a bloody trough through my flesh. Had he attacked the other side, he would have severed my jugular. As it was, he still perforated the carotid artery, and the doctor who had arrived to administer aid to the afflicted child was able to apply sufficient pressure to save me from bleeding to death.”

To fill the terrible silence that followed, I asked, “Did your mentor die too?”

“Not immediately. It took several paramedics and two policemen to bring him down, but eventually he was cuffed and taken away. He died at the hospital that night.”

I gazed uneasily at the sleeping figure on the bed.

“And that is why, when I was permitted to lead an exorcism,” Sutherland went on, “I was determined not to allow the same catastrophe to occur a second time. It was a decade later. I was older, wiser. I remained steadfast in my faith. And the demon was driven from the host.”

I frowned. “Did you really need to lie to the Hartmans?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have. I understand why you might be bothered by my misleading them, but I wanted them to take refuge in the Lord.”

“Aren’t you worried they’ll call an ambulance?”

He favored me with a singularly cynical grin. “And have Ron risk the exposure of his bad deeds to all of Chicago? He’d sooner permit his son to die than face such mortifying publicity.”

I asked, “Do you think Casey…”

“Is the Sweet Sixteen Killer?” Sutherland finished for me.

I waited.

“I doubt it, Father Crowder, but who can know? Perhaps Bittner is correct. Or Bittner himself is the killer. I’ve seen enough tonight to make me question everyone. There’s Danny…he’s a bit of a loner, and he’s saddled with an alcohol addiction. And then there’s Ron, who has proven to be amoral. Who better a killer than a man who thinks of no one but himself?”

I considered this. “Ron doesn’t have the stomach for it. Danny…he’d never do those things.”

“Perhaps you place too much faith in man’s goodness.”

I exhaled a tremulous breath and tried to clear my head.

“Now,” Sutherland whispered, “quietly.”

I followed him back to the bed and saw that the beatific expression still lingered on Casey’s face. It was difficult to believe that he’d been grinning horribly while his legs were being mangled only minutes earlier.

Father Sutherland produced his white handkerchief and, careful to keep the cloth positioned between his hand and the skin of the boy’s wrist, he probed for a pulse. Finding one, he gazed down at his watch, silently counting the beats against the revolving third hand. A single bead of sweat formed at the corner of his eyebrow and dripped onto his cheek, but Sutherland didn’t move at all, only maintained his concentration on the watch.

Casey’s hand clamped down on Sutherland’s wrist.

Sucking in air, Sutherland dropped the handkerchief and attempted to pull away, but Casey’s grip was implacable. And when the eyes opened, revealing glassy orbs as black as fresh pitch, the legs beneath me went rubbery with terror. The Casey-thing’s face split into a nasty leer, and its abominably sharp teeth moved as if the creature were preparing to speak. Then a look of stupefaction came over the malign features, as if some stunning revelation had just been imparted from its contact with Sutherland’s flesh.