Mad Gods - Predatory Ethics: Book I (16 page)

“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?”