Rabid (79 page)

Her brown eyes were solemn. “Kýrie eléison.”

Familiarity with the exorcism rite soothed Dante like Sunday Mass invigorates the faithful.

Most priests commune with the Divine and seek Grace. Dante was a dark mystic who battled the Diabolical, and thus knew that somewhere, somehow, Light from True Light must exist as the absence of the Darkness.

After the calls to God and the responses asking for mercy, Dante said, “Now we say the Litany of the Saints.”

She nodded, brown eyes wide.

“Holy Mother of God,” Dante said.

“Pray for us,” Bev said.

And so on through the next sixty-some invocations, Dante recalled each saint, and Bev asked for their prayers.

The empty church filled with their whispers like spiderwebs unreeling across the pews and kneelers, up to the oiled beams. The repetitive chants lulled him, and weight of the whisky tilted his body. Pressing the altar with his forearms steadied him.

Across the silk-draped stone altar, her cold hands wrapped his fingers. The fading light lit the pale part in her hair. “From all evil,” Dante said.

Together, they said, “Deliver us, O Lord.”

“From all sin,” he continued.

“Deliver us, O Lord.”

“
From the snares of the Devil.”

Bev choked and she turned her head, swallowing, when Dante said, “Deliver us, O Lord. Bev, are you all right?”

Her pianist-strong fingers tightened. Pink nail tips poked the skin on the backs of his hands.

“Bev? What is it?”

Her head jerked. “Release me,” she growled. Her hoarse, cramped voice spun in the waste space above them. Her hands sprung off the altar as if away from fire but his fingers tangled with hers.

Dante held on. Bev struggled against his hands.

Battle lust thrummed in his chest. “From
anger, hatred, and all ill will, deliver us, O Lord.”

“Let me go!” That smoky voice rasped from Bev’s body. Her tense fingers jerked in his hands.

Discovering the diabolical’s name is standard exorcism protocol. “Demon or devil, what is your name?”

Encouraging a patient to communicate with auditory hallucinations was not standard psychiatric practice.

Dante should, indeed, decide where his loyalties lay.

He yelled, “Devil or demon, I command you to tell me your name!”

Bev yanked her hands, trying to escape. “Let me go!”

Her voice sounded like thirty years of tobacco strata coated her throat. Bev jerked and pulled Dante against the silk-draped stone altar between them and slapped the air from his whisky-queasy stomach. His stomach scraped stone.

Dante called, “From lightning and tempest, deliver us, O Lord.”

Bev shrilled a cackle. Dante grabbed her wrists. She dragged him against the altar again.

“From plague, famine, and
war, deliver us, O Lord.
From everlasting death, deliver us, O Lord.”

Bev shrieked, “No!”

Was this a true exorcism? Had Dante been so wrong that he had missed that Bev was truly possessed?

He had been wrong about everything else. He gripped her hands tighter. “Devil or demon, what is your name?”

Bev flung herself sideways but was tethered by Dante’s hands.

She grated out,
“Murderer.”

He leaned toward her, hunting. Strength surged in him. He wanted this to be real, to be in the battle again instead of utterly defeated. “Is that your name,
Murderer
?”

“
Murderer
,” she gasped.

The trial’s graphic, repetitive descriptions of Conroy’s death had been too much. She had internalized the accusations.

Dante held her wrists.

Her trim hands double-locked over his arms. Her fingernails spiked his forearms.

Her arms rested on the altar. There was no demon in her.

The struggle, even with an imaginary demon, thrilled him.

Dante edited the Holy Rite of Exorcism because there was no need to go through the whole ritual. She was not possessed.

His voice projected over the pews. “I command
you, unclean spirit, ‘Murderer’ or whoever you are, along with all your minions now attacking this
servant of God, by the mysteries of
the incarnation, passion, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, by the descent of the Holy Spirit, by the coming of our Lord for judgment, I command
you to obey me to the letter, I who am a minister of God despite my unworthiness.”

Those were the actual words, and Dante felt them.

Bev’s head lolled backward and she panted. Her hands trembled but she did not struggle.

He untangled her fingers from around one of his arms, snared both her wrists with one hand, and reached across the altar to brace his palm against her forehead. The power of the exorcism surged in him, and he stood on his side of the altar. “They shall lay their hands upon the sick and all will be well with them. May Jesus, Son of Mary, Lord and Savior of the world, through the merits and intercession of His holy apostles Peter and Paul and all His saints, show you favor and mercy. Amen.”

“Amen,” Bev panted in her normal voice. The muscles of her skull shifted under her hair and his hands.

Dante dipped his fingers in the holy water font beside the altar. “May the blessing of Almighty God,” he touched her forehead with damp fingers and she did not recoil or scream, “Father,” her sternum, “Son,” her left shoulder, “and Holy Spirit,” right shoulder, “come upon you and remain with you forever.”

“Amen,” they said together.

Dante shouted to the oak domed ceiling far above them. “Almighty Lord, Word of God the Father, Jesus Christ, God and Lord of all creation; who gave to your holy apostles the power to trample underfoot serpents and scorpions; who along with the other mandates to work miracles was pleased to grant them the authority to say: ‘Depart, you devils!’ and by whose might Satan was made to fall from heaven like lightning; I humbly call on your holy name in fear and trembling, asking that you grant me, your unworthy servant, pardon for all my sins, steadfast faith, and the power—supported by your mighty arm—to confront with confidence and resolution this cruel demon.”

Energy grabbed his chest and rattled him.

“I ask this through You, Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, who are coming to judge both the living and the dead and the world by fire.”

“Amen,” Bev said and wiped her damp cheek on her shoulder.

Dante said, “I cast you out, unclean spirit, along with every Satanic power of the Enemy, every spectre from Hell, and all your fell companions; in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Dante genuflected and traced a cross on Bev’s grief-wrinkled forehead.

“Begone and stay far from this creature of God.”

He genuflected again and inhaled a great lungful of air to cast the demon out.

“For it is
He
who commands you,
He
who flung you headlong from the heights of Heaven into the depths of Hell. It is
He
who commands you,
He
who once stilled the sea and the wind and the storm.”

He touched Bev’s forehead again.

She shook her head as if trying to escape his damp palm and fingers.

Dante pressed her head more firmly. “Be still, I command thee.”

She stilled.

Holding Bev’s head, Dante called into the air and glimmering wood above them, “Hearken, therefore, and tremble in fear, Satan, you enemy of the faith, you foe of the human race, you begetter of death, you robber of life, you corrupter of justice, you root of all evil and vice; seducer of men, betrayer of the nations, instigator of envy, font of avarice, fomenter of discord, author of pain and sorrow.”

Bev struggled delicately again.

Dante restrained her hands.

“Begone, now! Begone,
seducer!
You might delude man, but God you cannot mock. It is
He
who casts you out, from whose sight nothing is hidden. It is
He
who repels you, to whose might all things are subject. It is
He
who expels you,
He
who has prepared everlasting hellfire for you and your angels, from whose mouth shall come a sharp sword, who is coming to judge the
living
and the
dead
and the
world
by
fire
.”

Bev gasped, “Amen.”

“Almighty God, we beg you to keep the evil spirit from further molesting this servant of Yours, and to keep him far away, never to return. At your command, O Lord, may the goodness and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, take possession of this woman. May we no longer fear any evil since the Lord is with us; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever.”

Bev said, “Amen,” with him.

He let go of her hot hands so she could genuflect and wipe the tears off her face. Her palm smudged with pink, black, and gold makeup, and she rested it upward on the white altar cloth.

Dante stepped back and bent to stretch his back, which had tightened from fighting her over the altar. Sweat trickled in his hair.

This farce might have exorcised a splinter of a multiple personality generated from her mother’s abuse, or it might have indulged her mental illness and imbued it with religious trappings.

“There
was
something. I was possessed.” Bev looked at her hands, spread-eagle on the altar cloth.

There was nothing to do but concede the validity of the rite in order to maintain its placebo effect. “It appears there was something, but it’s gone now.”

“How do you know it’s gone?” One of her cheeks was pale without its rouge.

“My exorcisms always work.” He smiled gently. “It is the one priestly thing I am good at. Usually, the afflicted takes communion at this point.”

She shook her head. A strand of her gold rust hair caught on her wet eyelashes. “I can’t.”

“If the demon is gone, you can.”

“
Murderer
. The demon was named
Murderer
. But I can’t take communion. I killed him.”

“This suggests that you were not in control. You can confess.”

“I don’t feel enlightened to unburden my soul. It wouldn’t be a real confession.”

His facile opinions about confessional validity had come back to haunt him. The laity was too impressionable. Bev was too fragile. “As an ordained and sanctified priest, I should make that determination.”

“It’s all right, you know, that I can’t confess, that I can’t take communion.”

“You can’t mean that.”

“It’s all right. I couldn’t really say I had
faith
before, because I’d
seen
the Virgin Mary and I’d
felt
God. I had proof. If I doubted, I prayed or confessed, and God returned, and I had proof. But now, I can’t feel that. I have to have faith.”

Dante was so empty of a soul that his ears whistled through the air as he shook his head. “You can be reconciled with God.”