The Darker Side (39 page)

“We have a new message from the Preacher. I only watched the beginning of it, but he’s showing his face and congratulating us on figuring out who he is.”

“Shit,” Alan and I say in unison, looking at each other.

“He had eyes on the Redeemer somehow,” I say. “He knew there’s only one reason we’d show up there, and he knows they left the thumbprint there.”

“Think he’ll run?” Alan asks.

“I don’t know. I think he wants to be caught, but now that it’s come down to it…” I shrug. “They could be having a change of heart. Let’s see the clip, James.”

He sits down and we all crowd around the monitor to watch, with the exception of Callie.

There’s no lettering at the beginning of this clip, no fancy editing. He’s communicating to us in as close to real time as this medium allows. The other difference is that we can now see his face.

I examine him and see that Michael Murphy is a man at peace. He’s certain. He is doing what he was meant to do and doesn’t go to bed at night worrying about whether he’s on the side of right or wrong. He’s calm, composed, happy. His voice is almost friendly.

“It’s come to my attention that those in law enforcement responsible for tracking me down have finally found out who I am. I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. My sister and I have been building to this moment for twenty years. Twenty years of hiding, twenty years of planning, twenty years of sacrifice.

“Many will ask: why? If you had something to say, why not just say it? I think the answer to that question is self-evident. Look around you at society today. We live in a world where, more and more, the idea of the soul is scoffed at if it’s even thought of at all. Mankind revels in the flesh, and the flesh, I am afraid, only believes what it can see.

“Talk to the flesh of truth and it will sniff and say: ‘Truth? What truth? I don’t see truth. I see sex. I see drugs. I see sensation.’

“I knew if we were going to prove our point and bring people back to God, that we would have to show them. They would have to see with the eyes, hear with the ears. Only then would they be able to know with the heart.

“And it’s working, praise God. The impact of the opus is already being felt. Discussions have opened around the world.” He picks up a paper from the table and reads. “‘The Preacher has opened my eyes again to the idea that I could get rid of that space I put between me and God, the space made up of the lies I’ve been unwilling to let go of. I listened to what he had to say and I walked to my local church and gave my first confession in ten years.’”

“Disgusting,” Callie says, curling her lip in scorn. “Did you also confess to agreeing with a murderer?”

Discomfort wiggles inside me. I too had been driven to the confessional by the Preacher.

I’ll make up for it by catching him.

“That is one of many. Not all agree with me, of course, but the point is—they are talking about it. They are discussing the subject of truth, lie, sin, God, confession, and salvation. The flame has been lit again, praise God. Attempts to block my message are a hopeless activity in today’s world. Copies of this and all of my other videos have been put on CD and are being mailed worldwide to media outlets, authors, religious scholars, and skeptics. The message can be slowed; it can’t be stopped.”

“He’s right about that,” James says.

“I feel certain that my sister and I will be captured soon.”

“He’s right about that too,” I growl.

“We welcome this. It’s the next step on the path we’ve chosen. It is time that we preach in person, that we be available for discussions, questions, and interviews. Before that happens, I thought it was important to show that we are able to practice what we preach. Come here, Frances.”

Frances, who I met as Andrea, steps into the camera lens. She too looks peaceful. Almost radiant. They are more attractive together than apart, light and mirrors reflecting back at each other. She smiles down at her brother, and turns to the camera. He continues speaking.

“Frances and I were born as twins. We were born healthy and have lived healthy, which, as you will come to understand, was God’s first gift to us. It could have been much, much different. We lived a difficult life, and it was not without sin or lies. We strayed from God’s path on more than one occasion. It’s time for us to do what we asked others to do: it’s time for our confession.”

“This I want to hear,” Alan murmurs.

“Our father,” he says, “was a Catholic priest.”

THE SINS
of
MICHAEL
and
FRANCES MURPHY

38

MICHAEL CROUCHED DOWN BEHIND THE CURTAIN AND CAREFULLY,
oh so carefully, put his ear to the wall of the confessional booth. Mrs. Stevens was in there, she of the blonde hair and the large bosoms. Mrs. Stevens specialized in sins of lust, which made for exciting listening indeed.

He closed his eyes and opened his mouth a little. It took a moment, but the voices began to filter through the wood.

“I can’t seem to stop touching myself, Father.”

A pause. Michael could imagine the priest covering a sigh.

“And where do you touch yourself, my child?”

A sharp breath, indrawn.

She likes this question, Michael thinks.

“Between my legs, Father. Under the panties, and inside the lips of my pussy.”

Michael’s mouth dropped open farther. What kind of harlot uses the word
pussy
in a confessional?

He chastised himself for his own hypocrisy. Hypocrisy was a form of pride, and pride was a sin. The truth was, the whole thing had given him a raging hard-on. The idea of Mrs. Stevens (she of the blonde hair and the large bosoms) touching herself
there
—heck, the idea of her in
panties
—was an image that boggled the mind’s eye.

The downside to this, of course, was that he’d have to come clean in confession. He’d have to admit—again—to hiding behind the curtain against the wall, to putting his ear up against the confessional booth, to listening to that most private of moments. In this case, he could add his own lustful thoughts to the quality of the sin.

It made it more difficult that the priest he’d be confessing this to was his own father. Not Father Confessor, but Father Dad. No way around it, though. Confession was a must, and Michael would never allow himself to withhold a confession, whatever the price. Failure to confess was a one-way ticket to an eternity in hellfire. Michael believed in hell. No secret was worth that.

One of the many things Michael admired about Dad was that he kept the separation between his job as a priest and his job as a father absolute. There was never a hint to Michael in real life that his dad had any personal opinion about what Michael had revealed in confession.

As Michael listened to Mrs. Stevens getting more graphic about her sin of masturbation
(wet, wet, she whispered, so very, very wet),
he experienced a moment of admiration and love for his father. Dad was the best man Michael knew, the most decent, the most honorable. It was a question of character, and Frank Murphy had it in spades. He needed no priest’s collar to prove it either.

Dad was the reason Michael wanted to become a priest. Dad was the reason he’d decided to enter the priesthood as a virgin. If he was honest with himself (and Michael prized honesty above all other things), that pledge was what he used to rationalize this moment. He was never going to know the touch of a woman, so was it really so bad to take a gander into the world of Mrs. Stevens and her wet white panties? Just a tiny, dirty peek?

Not so bad, no, he thought, but still a sin. Still to be confessed.

He was amazed at his father’s patience sometimes. Mrs. Stevens didn’t sound all that sorry to Michael. She sounded pretty excited, as a matter of fact. Even at thirteen, Michael could tell she was using this moment to sin some more, that she was getting off on confessing her masturbation to a handsome and celibate priest. She probably had wet panties right now.

Pubic hair as blonde as the hair on her head, glistening as she gasped…

This image both repulsed and excited him.

“Who’s in there?”

The whisper would have shocked him to his bones if he hadn’t sensed her coming. It was nearly impossible for them to sneak up on each other. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because they were twins.

Michael pulled his ear away from the booth with great care and some reluctance, making sure the wood didn’t creak. He turned to his twin and smiled.

“Mrs. Stevens.”

She made a face. “That whore? Why do you like listening to her, anyway? Does it make your pee-pee hard?” she teased.

“No,” Michael whispered in protest. “Of course not.”

Frances just smiled back. It was a knowing smile. Michael reflected that lying was the other thing they couldn’t do with each other.

He sighed and shrugged.

“I’ll go to confession.”

“Good.”

That would be the end of it, he knew. The final thing they shared, the thing in his life he was most certain of, other than his faith, was that his twin would always love him, no matter what.

“Let’s move away from here,” he whispers.

They pad away from the confessional booth like master thieves. They head back to the living quarters, and their shared room. It was a small room. Some might even call it bleak, but it was home to them.

The room was separated by a curtain hung from the ceiling that they could draw shut when they needed to. Father had put it up when Frances had begun to develop breasts.

“This is a wall,” he’d said. “A wall with no door. When you draw it closed, only the person who drew it can open it again. You understand?”

“Yes, Father,” they’d agreed, not really understanding the need for it at the time.

They understood better now. Michael masturbated at night, sometimes, after Frances had fallen asleep. He’d fight the urge, but it could become overwhelming. In a hidden place, inside a dark grotto that he wasn’t quite ready to peer into yet, it was somehow more exciting to do it while thinking of his sister there, an arm’s length away and yet untouchable. He tried to be silent, but knew, sometimes, he gasped louder than he should. Had she heard him in those moments? He thought maybe. Yes. Maybe she had.

He’d heard her too. Late at night, when she must have thought he was sleeping, he’d heard her little sighs and muffled moans, and had realized that she was touching herself. It shocked him at first, then intrigued him, then brought forth something he decided not to look at.

He’d never touch his sister, not in a million years, but he admitted something to her once.

“I’ll never have sex,” he told her. “But…if I was going to, it would be with a woman just like you, Frances.”

“I know,” she’d said and smiled. “I feel the same way.”

Some might call it twisted; they called it love, and were careful not to look too deep. Besides, nothing ever happened.

Frances was going to become a nun. It was their plan. The fact that it would separate them was difficult, very difficult, but wasn’t suffering one of the things that God demanded of the faithful?

There was a reason for everything, they both believed that. Father had a twin sister as well. Father had not gone to the seminary a virgin. He’d lain with a woman, and had gotten her pregnant. She’d died in childbirth. It was difficult, but, as in all things, Father was up to the task God had placed before him. He had raised them and had convinced the church to allow him into the seminary. His twin, Aunt Michelle, had cared for them while he was in the seminary. When father returned as an ordained priest, he took them back, and Aunt Michelle joined a convent and became a nun.

It was an unusual life, they knew that, but Father was a good father. He was kind, he was wise, he was hard but fair. He raised them to love God above all things, but he also demanded that they test their faith with intellect, putting them into public, not private schools, and exposing them to the sinful world outside the walls of the church.

“There are far more people in this world who do not believe in God than do,” he’d told them. “If you want to spread the word of God to the faithless, you have to understand them. Understanding breeds compassion, compassion breeds love, and love is the best way to bring Christ into a sinner’s heart.”

Michael and Frances did as he said, and entered that world together. They viewed it like two soldiers who’d been sent on a mission. They hung out together, socialized little but were not unfriendly. They were both so attractive that other oddities were forgiven. Michael’s refusals of advances drove the girls crazy, while Frances’s refusals convinced the boys that she was the most desirable creature on earth.

They had no real friends at school, only acquaintances, and that was fine with them. They were content in the path they saw before them and had no doubts about their future.

Father and Aunt Michelle were twins, and had become a priest and a nun. Frances and Michael were twins, and shared the same destiny. What else could this be but a sign from God?

They sat down on their beds to do their homework. Michael was uncomfortably aware that he still had an erection. The image of Mrs. Stevens was a vivid one. He glanced over at his twin and was shocked to see that she was looking at him.

She knows. She always knows.

It excited him, it disgusted him, it filled him with guilt and something far darker.

The expression on her face was one of speculation. She smiled and reached for the curtain. Before she drew it between them, she said:

“Be sure to go to confession tomorrow.”

He swallowed and nodded.

“I will.”

“I love you, Michael.”

“I love you too.”

She drew the curtain closed.

MICHAEL AND FRANCES WERE SIXTEEN
when everything changed.

There was no evidence that their world was about to come crashing down around them. The world—and God—were strange and cruel like that. This was something Michael had always known and accepted, until it happened to him.