Punish the Sinners (22 page)

Time almost stopped for him then, and his thoughts ceased to flow as he gave himself up to the religious experience that was unfolding around him. As he sank deeper and deeper into a state of trance, his senses sharpened. He felt the searing heat from each individual candle; the tongues of fire on the hearth seemed to be licking at his feet. He heard the voice of the Devil calling out to him in his head, and tried to close out the beckoning whispers. He began to feel the heat of hell glowing around him, and as his discomfort grew he became frightened. And then, as he felt himself being drawn downward, he felt the hands of angels upon him. He was suddenly cooler, and his mind’s eye saw the fires receding into the distance. As the angelic hands caressed him, he felt a calm come over him, and he began silently repeating the Acts of Faith and Contrition. Slowly, his ecstasy grew.

   The fire still burned in the fireplace, as high as it had when the evening had begun. The candles were shorter, but how much shorter he couldn’t discern. Around him, the six priests were gathered, sitting calmly, almost expectantly, in their chairs, watching him. Peter Balsam had no idea what time it was, nor how long he had been closeted in the study with the six priests. He discovered, to his own fascination, that he was not thinking about the ceremony at all; instead, he was almost entirely possessed
by a feeling of fulfillment, as if he had, somehow, received answers to questions that he could not now even formulate. And he was tired, with the weariness of a man who had just run several miles. Somewhere in the back of his mind a memory stirred, then disappeared.

He wondered if he was expected to speak. He looked from one face to another, and for the first time tonight saw each of the priests distinctly. In the warm glow of the candlelight the gnarled old faces took on a kind of beauty, and Peter Balsam realized that there was a gentleness in these men that he had not seen before. They were smiling at him, and he returned their smiles.

“Welcome,” Father Martinelli said softly.

“Welcome?” Peter repeated, just as softly. Suddenly, it was a word of many and marvelous meanings.

“We are glad to have you among us,” Father Prine murmured.

Monsignor Vernon nodded agreement. “Once again we are seven. Now we can continue our work.”

Balsam frowned slightly. “Work?” he asked. “What work?”

Monsignor Vernon shook his head. “No questions,” he said quietly. “Not now.”

The meeting of the Society of St. Peter Martyr was over. Peter Balsam had become a part of the Society.

   He walked back to his apartment slowly, savoring the night air, and the first feelings of true peace that he had felt in a long time, certainly since he had come to Neilsville. He breathed deeply of the warm, dry air, and looked to the sky in search of the stars he felt should have been there. The sky was black, except for a pale, almost ghostly glow where the full moon far above the clouds shone weakly through the mists. By the time Peter
Balsam reached his home, the rain had begun to fall.

light glared in the living room, hurting his eyes. Squinting, he stepped inside, then drew back. Margo was lying on the couch, sound asleep, an open book sprawled across her breast While he was wondering whether to wake her, her eyes popped open, and she jumped off the couch.

“What are you—” she began. Then she glanced wildly around and sank back down on the sofa.

“What am I doing here?” Peter asked, grinning at her. “I live here, remember?”

She looked up at him sheepishly. ‘I’m sorry,” she said. “I was going to be here waiting for you, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and dying to hear all about what happened at that meeting. So what do I do? I fall asleep. What time is it?”

Peter suddenly realized he didn’t have the vaguest idea what time it was. When he looked at his watch, he wasn’t sure he believed it

“That can’t be right,” he muttered, holding the watch up to his ear.

Margo looked at him quizzically. “What can’t?” she said. “What time is it?”

Peter sank down on the couch beside her. “My watch says three o’clock,” he breathed. “But it can’t be. I was only gone an hour or so.”

Margo looked at him speculatively. “You’ve been gone seven hours, Peter,” she said calmly. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Peter said blankly. He tried to. explain to Margo what had transpired at the rectory that evening, but in the telling none of it made sense. It all sounded like a dream, like disconnected fragments out of some religious fantasy. Margo listened to the story quietly.

“Why don’t you go get out of those clothes?” she said when he’d finished. “They look like they’ve been slept in. I’ll put on some coffee and we’ll try again.” She grinned at him mischievously. “So far, it all sounds exactly like what I thought it would be. A bunch of silliness.” But inside, she was more concerned than she had shown.

As she put the kettle on, Margo wondered if she was making a mistake. Perhaps Peter wasn’t what he seemed to be. Perhaps he wasn’t the nice, simple, rather straightforward person she had become so fond of. She spooned instant coffee into two mugs and tried to clear the last remnants of sleep from her mind while the water came to a boil.

A few minutes later, as she started into the living room with the two steaming mugs, Peter appeared in the doorway, his face pale.

“Margo—” he began.

She set the cups down quickly, and hurried to him. “Peter, what is it?”

“I don’t know,” Peter gasped. “When I took off my shirt, I—” He broke off again and unconsciously touched the belt of his robe.

“What
is
it?” Margo said, more urgently. He clutched his robe tighter around his torso, and stared at her, wild-eyed. Peter was frightened. Very frightened. She moved closer to him.

“Let me see, Peter,” she said gently. His hands fell to his sides, and he let her untie the cord around his waist. Then she opened the robe, and let it fall to the floor.

On Peter’s back, from his shoulders to his waist, were angry red welts. Though the skin was not broken, the marks had swollen and stood out in painful relief from the pale whiteness of his back.

“My God,” Margo breathed. “What happened?”

Peter shook his head mutely. “I don’t know,” he said. And then the full horror of it struck him. He began shaking. And with the shaking came the tears.

“I don’t know, Margo,” he sobbed. “And that’s the worst of it. I don’t know where they came from!”

   ‘They did something to you,” Margo kept insisting. “While you were in that trance, or whatever it was, they did something to you.”

Balsam shook his head in despair. “They coulant have,” he repeated yet again. ‘I would have remembered it I wasn’t unconscious. I was in some kind of odd state, I know, but I was conscious of my surroundings.”

“But you thought you were gone only an hour or two, and it was seven hours.
Seven hours
, Peter! If you really remember everything that happened, how could you have lost five or six hours?”

“I don’t know,” Peter said helplessly. ‘I suppose something happens to your time sense when you go into a trance. But I know I wasn’t unconscious. I know it”

As the dawn came, they gave it up. They were both too tired to retrace the same ground. Peter went to the window, and watched the sun rise slowly over Neilsville. The clouds had gone, but there was a heaviness in the air that said they would be back soon. Peter turned back to Margo.

“You’d better go,” he said. “It’s awfully late.”

She nodded dully. “I know.” Her voice was lifeless. She looked at his tired eyes and she wanted to put her arms around him, to feel his arms around her. “Oh, Peter,” she said, the words choking her a little. “What are we going to do?”

He tried to smile at her, but the attempt failed. “I don’t know,” he said. Then a touch of irony crept into
his voice. “I don’t seem to know much of anything, do I?”

Now she did go to him and put her arms around him. “Yes, you do,” she said softly. “There’s an explanation for all this. And we’ll find it Really we will.”

Peter wanted to believe her; he told himself that he did. But inside, he wasn’t sure. Inside, he was terribly frightened, and terribly alone.

He sent Margo on her way, then sat for an hour, trying to fight off the sleep he was suddenly afraid of. At seven o’clock he called the school and told them that he had become ill in the night, and would not be in today. Then he went to bed and spent the day sleeping—and dreaming. In the dreams, there were many explanations of the strange marks on his back. But when he woke up every now and then, none of them made sense. Or maybe they did.

“You look like hell.”

Dr. Shields stared at Margo and motioned her into a chair.

“I feel like hell,” she admitted. “I was up all night”

The psychiatrist put the report he had been reading into the top drawer of the desk, and leaned back in his chair.

“Peter Balsam?” he asked.

Margo nodded mutely, then, reluctantly, began telling him about the discussion with Peter that had kept her up all night At first the psychiatrist listened in silence. Then, as she continued her story, he began interrupting her with questions. When she was finished, he sat with his hands folded in front of him, lost in thought

“Do you want some advice, or did you just want to talk it out?” he asked finally.

Margo shrugged helplessly. “I don’t really know. If you have any advice, I suppose I might as well hear it.”

The doctor nodded noncommittally, then looked sharply at Margo. “Just how much does Peter Balsam mean to you?”

“I don’t know,” Margo said dully. “A lot, I thought But after last night, I’m not so sure. The whole thing
sounds so weird, I’m not sure I want to be involved at all.”

“Well, it’s not that bad,” Dr. Shields said gently. “After all, you aren’t involved with his problems. Yet.”

“Yet?” she repeated.

“Yet. I mean, so far, everything that’s happened to Balsam has only happened to him. Any time you get too uncomfortable with it, all you have to do is stop seeing him.”

“But I’m not sure I want to do that. I want to know what’s happening, before I make the decision. Does that make any sense?”

Dr. Shields nodded. “So how can I help? What’s bothering you most?”

She looked at him levelly. “The marks on his back. The welts. Dr. Shields, you have no idea what they look like. They’re awful!”

He leaned forward now, and stared at her intently. “Tell me about them.”

She closed her eyes, and as an image of the strange markings on Peter’s back came to her, she did her best to describe them. As she talked, a chill passed through her. When she was done, she looked at the doctor.

“Well?”

“You’re sure the skin wasn’t broken? Not even abraded?”

“I’m positive. And they didn’t hurt him, either.”

“That figures. It sounds to me like their origin is hysterical.”

“Hysterical?”

“It’s not an uncommon phenomenon. Although in this case it seems to me to be a rather bizarre manifestation. Essentially, it’s the same thing as psychosomatic illnesses. The wish becomes the reality.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Margo said. “Are you telling
me Peter has a subconscious desire to be beaten?”

The psychiatrist shrugged eloquently, but when he saw the expression his gesture brought to Margo’s face, he tried to reassure her.

“It doesn’t necessarily indicate that at all,” he said. “The subconscious works in all kinds of strange ways. And don’t forget the circumstances of the manifestation. If what you say is true—and I don’t have any reason to doubt it—it sounds to me like Balsam’s got himself mixed up with a pretty crazy bunch of priests. Do you think they practice flagellation?”

“As far as I know, priests don’t do much of that anymore,” Margo said, trying not to sound as defensive as she felt. “Besides, even when they did do it, it was ritual. They never used the kind of force that would leave marks like Peter has.”

Dr. Shields’s brows arched in skepticism. “Under normal circumstances, of course, they don’t. But what about other circumstances? From what you’ve said, that society sounds like an odd group. And your Peter Balsam could fit in very well with them. Isn’t it true that he once studied for the priesthood?”

“That was years ago,” Margo said vehemently. “And he gave it up.”

“Right,” Dr. Shields pounced. “Gave it up to go into psychology. And you know what people say about us. No one’s as crazy as a psychologist”

“Including you?” Margo asked.

“Did I ever say I was sane?” Dr. Shields replied, the first traces of a grin playing around the corners of his mouth. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Let’s forget about it all for the time being. Well, not really forget about it, but I don’t really think any of us, including your friend Balsam, knows enough about what’s going on to make any reasonable judgments. So let’s just keep our eyes
open, and see what happens next. And tell Balsam that if he’d like to talk to me, I’m willing.” Then he had an idea. “You know,” he mused, “it would sure help if we knew what really went on in those meetings of the—what do they call it?”

“The Society of St. Peter Martyr,” Margo said dully.

“Lovely name,” the psychiatrist said sarcastically. He gave her a reassuring smile. “Go home and get some sleep. And Margo,” he added as she opened the door to the outer office. She turned. “Be careful,” he said seriously. “You don’t really know very much about Balsam, do you? He might be very different from what you think he is. Granted, he seems like a nice guy. But he could be crazy, couldn’t he?” Margo stared at him wordlessly, then closed the door behind her. Dr. Shields sank back into the chair behind his desk, and stared thoughtfully at the closed door. He liked Margo, and didn’t want to see her hurt He hoped he was wrong. But inside, he didn’t feel he was. And if Peter Balsam was, indeed, as sick as Dr. Shields suspected, it could only mean trouble.

Then he remembered Judy Nelson, still a patient in the hospital And who had come to the hospital right after she had been admitted? Peter Balsam.

For the rest of the afternoon, Dr. Shields tried to convince himself that Balsam’s visit had been nothing more than the concern of a teacher for one of his students, that there was no connection between Peter Balsam and Judy Nelson’s attempt on her own life. But when he went home that afternoon, he was still unconvinced. There
was
a connection. He was sure of it