Rabid (78 page)

Cyberstalking was not the issue. “So you could have had both the man and God, from what the Blessed Virgin Mother of God told you.”

“She didn’t make me choose. He did.” Bev palmed the Rosary and poured the beads in a long stream from one hand to the other. “And now I’ve lost her, too.”

Her denial of continuing symptoms might mean that there had been only the one hallucination. A mere schizophreniform disorder rather than full-blown schizophrenia was possible. “And you never heard voices again.”

“No. I could feel the presence of God, but I didn’t ever see or hear Her again.”

One schizoid episode did not a schizophrenic make. The feeling of an aura, whether sacred or merely ecstatic, could be a manifestation of any of several physical maladies, from epilepsy to migraines.

Dostoevsky had ecstatic epileptic auras of such intensity that psychiatrists still refer to them with his name, though Dostoevsky’s auras never offered relationship advice.

His tense lower back spiked from sitting on the hard floor. Resting his forearms on his bent knees stretched his twitchy ligaments. “You don’t need a personal intervention from God. The Church provides spiritual intervention by priests. And thus, I can hear your confession, and you can feel the presence of God again because you will be forgiven.”

“Sometimes,” her head swiveled to look at the towering statue of the Virgin, “some sins are so terrible that they can’t be forgiven. Some people can’t ever repent enough.” Her words were slow and measured. “They’re going to Hell, a real Hell, forever.”

Dante rubbed his eyes until he saw blue neon streaks. “And you?”

She nodded. “It’s kind of liberating, in a way.”

“Because you think you are going to Hell, so now you can sin all you want?” That was an old heresy. He had excommunicated priests for it. He held back his hair with both hands, wanting to rip until black fiber filled his palms.

“What a terrible thought.” She held her palm out pensively, and cobalt blue light from the windows filled her hand. “I’ve been worried all my life about attaining Heaven and dreading and avoiding the pains of Hell. Now, when I do something, I do it because it’s the right thing and because it pleases God. There isn’t a Heaven cookie dangling in front of me and a Hell stick beating me from behind.”

Dante’s own soul was damned to hellfire in which he had no belief.

Such certainty was a dark comfort and too severe for someone as fragile as Bev.

He said, “You are not going to Hell. Catholicism has all the answers. It is one of the benefits of being Catholic.”

She hesitated and bit her lower lip. “It doesn’t feel right.”

“Maybe you need a doctor.”

“It’s not that.” Air flowed through her voice, as if she couldn’t find the strength to vibrate her vocal cords. “Maybe I need a priest.”

“They are sending another priest here, soon, to help with Mass and confessions, if I’m not suitable.” His hair itched the corners of his eyes, and he held it back from his temples. There was nothing priestly for which he was suitable.

“Dante.” Air flowed through her voice, as if she couldn’t find the strength to vibrate her vocal cords. “Maybe it’s something else.”

“Like what?” The cast of the sodium-yellow light on the oak floor resembled the deep glow that suffused Vatican windows.

“Maybe,” her soft alto voice dropped to nearly
sotto voce
, “Maybe I can’t take communion because I know it would burn my tongue, and sometimes I can’t remember things about the night Conroy died and then other times it feels like I can remember but it’s like it happened to someone else, and there’s
rage
, this penetrating
rage
, like that first day you were in the confessional. It’s been going on for a long time, and it feels like it’s building, and it doesn’t feel like
me
.”

Resistance to communion, blackouts, alienation, alien emotions, these described possession by demons. “Bev, you are not possessed.”

“But what if I am?” Her breath rasped and her hand reached up to her mouth. “What if God didn’t send you here to save my marriage? What if God sent me an exorcist?”

Such things, the laity worried about. “How long you have thought this?”

“Months.” Her hands crept up over her mouth and to her warm brown eyes.

“You are inside a church. You are praying to the Virgin Mary. You are holding a Rosary. Did you bless yourself from the font when you entered?”

Her hands covered her whole face. “I couldn’t bring myself to touch it. I haven’t for months.” Her voice shrilled. “I would contaminate the font. Can’t you check somehow?” Her hands lowered to her blouse collar. Her grip suggested that she might rip the blouse open or claw at her neck. “Isn’t there a test you can do?”

As if there was a blood test or an fMRI that could detect demons. Perhaps there was a demonic colliery for Leila’s God and neurology hypotheses. “A bishop must make a finding of possession before an exorcism can be performed.”

“But you examined priests who molested children for signs of possession.”

“Yes.”

“What if the vision of the Virgin Mary was a demon and it was all a lie? What if there’s something else
in
me?” Her fingers curled on her white collar, ready to rip.

Her revulsion of her own flesh was reminiscent of his mother’s tearing at herself near the end of her dementia. “You are not possessed. You can say the name of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Name of Jesus, and God. You obviously have no aversion to the Church, as you are here and pray every day. Have you spoken any unknown languages?”

“No.” Her brown hair swept her face and chin. Strands clung to her moist cheeks.

“Displayed feats of unnatural strength?”

“I killed Conroy.”

“You said that you do not remember what happened that night. Bev, you were drunk. I was shocked you were able to drive over there.”

“That whole night feels far-off, like it happened to someone else. Like
something else
was in control.”

“You are cobbling together what you have heard in the court. It is not a real memory.”

“There’s something
in
me. I can feel it. Please,
do something
.”

The court case was over. The jury was deliberating. This was not a plea for an insanity defense or manipulation by a canny defendant, as might have been the case with a pedophile.

Yet exorcisms should only be attempted by priests free of sin and strong in belief, and neither of those specifications applied to him. Battling demons with one’s own soul mired in a state of mortal sin was suicidal.

He was also a little drunk, surely a disadvantage when confronting the Great Diabolical.

Exorcisms could continue for hours or days, and Leila was leaving tomorrow. Tonight was his last chance to talk to her.

God, what an ass he was, scheming about an assignation with Leila while Bev feared her body was afflicted by a devil. God should not countenance such depravity in one of His priests. Free will was not an adequate answer. God should defend His flock from priests as depraved as Dante, as evil as Nicolai, as cavalier when faced with horror as Samual.

Merda
.

He had driven Bev to adultery and not saved her from her own fury that he had seen on his first day in this terrible church.
If
he was damned,
since
he was damned, nothing could damn him further. The Rite of Exorcism might ease Bev’s mind.

It was, in effect, a placebo exorcism. Maybe he could write a paper on it.

Exorcisms should be conducted under controlled conditions and in private. There was no one else in the church among the empty pews overlaid with jewel-toned polygons of light.

Perhaps he could abbreviate it for her.

He said, “I need to prepare.”

Before an exorcism, a priest should confess his sins and receive communion. There were no other priests left to confess to. The Dominicans had taken them all. Dante must make a confession directly to God and allow the Holy Spirit into his shredded soul.

“Pray,” he told Bev, “to the Virgin Mary for strength and guidance.”

Bev swiveled on her knees to face the alabaster statue robed in blue and gold stars.

Dante’s back and legs complained as he stood and approached the altar in the center of the church. Gold light from the window behind the towering, carved crucifix slanted past him and onto the floor. The exorcism rite proscribed that a crucifix should be present. Dante wore a silver crucifix, of course, but the five-meter colossus of the suffering, dying Christ also filled the role. The Christ’s wooden foot was cool in the summer evening light, even though the church was warm.

He prayed, “Come Holy Spirit into my soul. Enlighten me that I may know the sins I ought to confess and grant me Your grace to confess them fully, humbly, with a contrite heart.”

Dante’s chest seized up. Once, even a few months ago, these words meant something to him, back when he had believed in good as well as evil. If he was to battle demons,
since
he was to battle demons, he needed comfort and grace.

The putative Holy Spirit had been writhing in his soul for months. “Bless me, Lord, for I have sinned. I have had sexual relations with a woman, a vulnerable woman, violating my Holy Orders and her marriage vows. It was my fault. I didn’t stop myself, and I hurt her. Please forgive these sins, and all the myriad other ones, wrath against Conroy Sloan, lust for Leila Faris and Bev Sloan, pride when I was so wrong, and envy for Conroy Sloan’s family life and Leila’s intellectual freedom. Grant me forgiveness so I can say the rite for Bev, even though she isn’t possessed. She is an alcoholic, and confused, and hurt, but not possessed.”

The setting sunlight dimmed on the statue of the suffering, dying Christ.

The act of contrition rolled from his mouth as facilely as the rest, “and avoid the near occasion of sin, Amen.”

He pushed his creaking body up from its knees.

In his shadowy library, his surplice and purple stole were in the desk drawer, folded neatly as if for long storage. The stole warmed on his neck.

He locked the church doors and walked back to the altar rail. His fingertips dragged on the altar as he passed. The silk caught in his rough fingertips. “Come over to the altar.”

Bev walked to the altar rail and kneeled outside it, as if to receive communion.

“Inside the rail, with me.”

Her eyes darted sideways and she bit her lip. “All right.”

“Lay your hands on the altar.” Standing on what he still thought of as his side, the priest’s side of the altar oversaw the empty pews that furrowed the church.

Bev stood on the other side, her back to the church.

He flattened his palms on the cool white fabric embroidered with scratchy gold crosses and blue silk stars on the altar.

Bev did the same.

This dispelled any lingering superstitions that a demon might reside in Bev’s body. Laying one’s hands on a consecrated altar encasing the relic of a saint would scald a demon.

He had seen it happen.

This was, indeed, a placebo exorcism.

He said, “Respond as during the Mass.”

Bev nodded.

“
Kýrie eléison
.”