Chapter 15
Marcia walked briskly to Richmond Street. Vacant stores alternated with marginal businesses and rundown saloons. Weeds grew from the cracks in the sidewalk. The marquee of a vacant movie theater said "REOPENING SOON," but it had said that for the past five years.
She consulted the slip of paper Higgins had given her and found that she'd passed the number. She retraced her steps to a store-front tucked back from the others, lying between a headshop-closed-and a luncheonette so dingy and uninviting that it hadn't even attracted a knot of teen-age loiterers.
The windows of the store were covered, from edge to edge, in script so tiny that she had to stand quite close in order to read it. It had been written on the inside of the window in white paint; the writer had done it all backwards, from his viewpoint. She was impressed by the amount of work that must have gone into the job, even though she had doubts about the sanity of anyone who would undertake it.
She began to read at eye-level, more than halfway down the inscription: "Hear, therefore, and shudder, O Satan, enemy of the Faith, foe of mankind, cause of death, thief of life, destroyer of justice, source of evils, root of vice, seducer of men, betrayer of nations, source of jealousy, origin of avarice, cause of discord, procurer of sorrows-why do you remain and resist when you know that Jesus Christ blocks your plans?"
She had read enough to get the flavor of the thing-an involved rigmarole addressed to the Devil. It went on and on in that vein. It was continued on the next window. The narrow margins were decorated with crosses, fish, doves, lambs, and smiling angel faces. They looked like the drawings of a very young child. She suspected that they were the work of Father Collins himself. Crazy or not, the window decorations had a certain naivete that appealed to her, perhaps to the all-but-forgotten faith of her childhood.
The door itself said "Enter! Welcome! Find Peace!" in several different languages. It was unlocked. She entered the dusty store. Mismatched folding chairs filled most of the interior. A cloth-covered table with a large cross lay at the end of the central aisle. Behind it, a partition hid the rear of the room.
"Anybody home?" she called.
She heard a creak, like someone stirring on the rusty springs of an old bed. A hoarse voice said "Just a minute, please," then lapsed into a severe fit of coughing. She heard the clink of glass.
She was surprised by what she saw when the inmate of this shabby hutch finally appeared. Ten years ago he might have been considered extremely handsome, but his looks weren't the sort that aged well. The boyishness of his bright eyes and frank grin didn't suit a face that was-she judged-about forty-five years old. His suit, worn with a Roman collar, was stained and baggy, but the body beneath it seemed trim and fit. His salt-and-pepper hair was disheveled, and he needed a shave. He seemed to be composed of contrasts: his unctuous charm wasn't consistent with religious eccentricity, and his athletic body didn't go with his slovenly appearance.
"How nice of you to drop in!" he said, as if he had invited her and had been hopefully awaiting her arrival. "I'm Father Collins, and this ... "
His voice and his smile faded. At first she thought he was taking exception to her snugly fitting sweater, or perhaps he objected to the camera slung around her neck, because his eyes had lowered. When he looked up again, he was plainly angry.
"What do you want here?" he demanded.
"I'm Marcia Creighton. I work for the Riveredge Banner, and I thought we might do a story-"
He cut her off with a bark of laughter that held no humor. "Don't you realize that you are standing on consecrated ground? Don't you know that I am a priest of God, with the power to blast the demons that guard you, to drive out the evil spirits that animate you? Go back and tell them, witch, go back and tell the others in your coven that Jerome Collins has not been stopped by ridicule, nor by physical violence, nor by spells and charms. Nor will I succumb to the temptations of the flesh, if that's your purpose in coming to me with your sleek body and beguiling face. I see you for what you are: a whited sepulchre!"
She wasn't frightened, even though he was lashing himself into a frenzy of righteous wrath. He was using what must have been his best pulpit voice for this bombast, but it just wasn't forceful enough to breathe life into his denunciation. The only quality he could project with any conviction was the charm with which he'd initially greeted her. It was as if any deeper qualities in his personality had been burned out, or had never existed. Now she got a whiff of liquor from his breath, and she wondered if that explained him. She was annoyed with Higgins for having steered her to this drunken fake. Perhaps he really did want her to quit and would continue to harass her with assignments like this one.
Collins was still raving about witchcraft. She interrupted him. "I don't know what you're talking about If you don't want to be interviewed, that's fine with me."
"Oh, no, you wouldn't know what I'm talking about, would you?" he said softly, his face twitching disconcertingly as he came closer. "Coming to me in the form of an angel-but I know you for a harlot from hell!"
She hadn't been expecting a physical assault, and she screamed with sudden fright when he grabbed her necklace and wrenched it from her neck. It clattered to the floor as she jumped back, rubbing the stinging nape of her neck.
"You're nuts!" she exclaimed.
He ground one of the tiny black triangles under his heel, then snarled at her. "You want everyone to think that, don't you? Oh, yes, poor old Father Collins believes in the Devil, there must be something wrong with him. There really aren't people in this enlightened day and age who worship Satan, who are actively paving the way for him to take over the earth. All that sort of nonsense was fine for nitwits like St. Thomas Aquinas, but we know better now. It all has to be interpreted symbolically, psychologically, right?"
"You're putting words in my mouth," she said coolly. "If you were sober, you might realize that I haven't said anything at all, except hello. Now if you'll get out of the way and let me pick that up, I'll say goodbye, and you can go back to your bottle."
He stepped back, looking momentarily abashed. Maybe her cold rage had impressed him enough to convince him that he'd made a mistake. Maybe her reference to his drinking had embarrassed him.
He seemed to be on the verge of making an apology before she stooped to retrieve her necklace, so it unnerved her completely when he screamed "Don't touch that!"
"Oh, for God's sake!" she cried, jumping back. "I've had a rotten day, father, mister, whatever you are. I've had a rotten week, as a matter of fact. I don't need your problems. I don't want to know about them. I just want to pick up my property and get out of here, without having to call the police. Is that too much to ask?"
"Wait a minute," he muttered. "Please. Please don't touch that. I've been a little abrupt, perhaps, but I've been under a strain, too, this week. These years."
Poised to flee, she watched him closely. Some of his charm had returned. It stemmed, she realized, from weakness and vulnerability, traits she normally disliked in men; but somehow she found herself disposed to make an exception for him. She was willing to let him explain that erratic behavior, although she doubted that he could,
"I don't know what you think that is-was," she said, gesturing toward the necklace. "It's just a piece of junk jewelry that was given to me by someone who makes that sort of thing."
"Sit down a moment," he said, adding, "please."
She sat on the very edge of one of the folding chairs. He dropped to one knee, studying the necklace with the total attention and respect of a naturalist who has come upon a fascinating species of poisonous snake.
"Why does it upset you?" she asked.
He looked at her for a moment "It has no significance for you?"
"No. The man who gave it to me didn't tell me what it was supposed to mean. I assumed it didn't mean anything, that it was just a random design."
"Stay away from that man," he said, "if you value your immortal soul. To say nothing of your body and your mind, which are also in grave danger."
He was partly right. Her mind was in danger. The erratic behavior of Ken and Melody, and even of Lucifer; the shock of Ron Green's death; Higgins's nastiness: it was too much pressure from too many sources. Forces that she couldn't see or comprehend seemed to be in ominous motion around her. The necklace-of course, it was nothing, just wood and stone and wire; but its designer may have murdered Ron Green. Perhaps Father Collins knew what it meant to that man.
"Why do you say that? What is it?"
"These triangles symbolize the wafers dispensed a the blasphemous Mass of St. Secaire-the Black Mass."
"They're just ... triangles."
"Look," he said, and he held up one of the stones at just the right angle to the light, revealing a mark she hadn't noticed before, a serpentine hieroglyph. All the stones, she now realized, bore a similar mark.
"Well, even so-"
"A coincidence? A pretty design culled from some book of symbols? Perhaps. Perhaps the craftsman was ignorant of what he was duplicating. But if he knew what he was doing, then he believes himself to be a witch. By giving you this trinket, he was trying to gain power over you. Even if you are a sensible, modern woman who doesn't believe in witchcraft and Satanism, you can still admit that there are people who do believe in such things, can't you? And if you can grant that much, then you have to entertain the possibility that the gift was a hostile act, that the giver meant you harm."
Despite the annoying touch of condescension in his tone, she was forced to admit that his reasoning made sense.
"So if I can appeal to nothing else," he continued, "let me appeal to your self-interest in urging you to stay away from someone who secretly wishes you evil, to your self-respect, in urging you not to wear such a deceitful gift."
She refrained from pointing out that she now had no choice. The necklace, ripped from her throat and stamped upon, was no longer in any condition to be worn. "I see your point," she said.
He smiled again, somewhat nervously. "Please try to excuse my abrupt behavior. This-" he let the necklace fall from his fingers to the floor-"this sort of thing has become an obsession with me. That was the word they used, obsession ... Never mind. The fact is, the people I've been tracking down for many years are worried by me at last. The hound is in danger of becoming the fox, but the fox may have more tricks than they bargained for. They've already tried to silence me, they succeeded in duping my superiors into believing I was crazy. An embarrassment to the Church, they said. Not many people want to hear the truth, even good people, honest people. I see you're looking at me a bit oddly now, and you seem a reasonable woman, an impartial observer who hasn't heard all the lies spoken about me. The Father of Lies, you know, that name wasn't just made up out of thin air. Maybe I am crazy, recognizing a danger, an evil that no one else wants to hear about; concentrating on one thing long enough. But this thing is so important, you see, that nothing else is even worth thinking about. If they succeed, that's all there is to it, that's the end of everything. Not just civilization, but humanity-the qualities that make us human-right down the drain. Right down into the Pit."
She grew progressively more alarmed. Father Collins spoke with great intensity, as if from a passionate need to be understood and believed, and yet wariness-paranoia was probably the better word-kept him from more than hinting at his meaning.
"I've been watching them. I'm on their trail, as I've said. Now they're on mine, so that's why I thought you were one of them. They've been alarmingly active here during the past month or so."
"The hippies-" she began.
"Oh, the hippies. Peace. Love. Do your own thing. Did you know that their peace sign is a Satanic emblem, too? You look skeptical You think I'm some kind of right wing crackpot, but I have no interest in politics. There are more important things, far more important things. Yes, the hippies; certainly, their presence is obvious-but there are others, people whose names would shock you. Respectable people, lots of them, who've come here-for what? May Eve is coming up, you know, and I think that's the reason. Murders. They say a dead man walked. That should give you an indication of the sort of forces at work in this unhappy town."
"Father ... what on earth are you talking about? Can you be more specific? Who knows? Maybe I'll believe you."
"What on earth, indeed? In hell, you mean. Not the kind of hell the good sisters scare you with in grammar school, but one whose existence is being suggested on the furthest frontiers of modern science. 'Cast into hell-Satan and all the other evil spirits roam through the world seeking the ruin and destruction of souls.' Into a hell that exists here and now, but on a different level of perception that can sometimes be glimpsed by men in dreams, or with drugs, or with certain heathenish mental disciplines. Cast out, these beings now seek to return because the constellations have turned after many millions of years to just the right position. They'll return when the stars are right-that prophecy can be found in a book that should have been burned long ago, a book not to be read by anyone who values his soul or his sanity. Oh, they've tried to come back before. The stars must have seemed right, back in the sixteenth century, and that spawned a plague of witchcraft that festered for two hundred years. They weren't successful, of course; maybe their timing was wrong, maybe they failed because men still had the faith and the will required to stamp it out utterly. But now-God help us, what can a liberal democracy do against witchcraft? They have the full protection of the law, this time; they have the freedom of their blasphemous religion-even if their object is to unleash hell on earth."
"Are you suggesting that we ought to burn people at the stake?"
"Yes," he said, "or crush them with stones, or hang them. All those methods were effectively used the last time. "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,' you know, that's one commandment that seems to have fallen out of fashion lately, although it's just as direct and to the point as the others. Now it's the most important of all. So many of them, though. Thousands. Who knows? It may be too late."
Father Collins stared gloomily through the crazy writing on his window, no doubt wishing that he had all the resources of the Inquisition at his command.
"Let me get this straight," Marcia said. "You believe there are-devils, whatever-that have somehow been exiled to another world, to the Fourth Dimension. Now they're trying to get back, and there are people, witches, who are actively trying to help them. Have I got it right so far?"
"You aren't laughing at me," he stated. He seemed genuinely surprised.
"I'm trying to understand. It's not my business to laugh at you, or to agree with you, either. I'm a newspaperwoman."
A sneer twisted his mouth. "I see. And you'll stand aside and take notes when all hell breaks loose. 'Because thou art neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm, I shall spew thee from my mouth.' They must have had lady reporters in Biblical times."
Marcia overlooked this slur. "All right then, well assume that I've followed you up until now. How do they propose to do this? Bring back these devils, I mean?"
He seemed to be about to speak two or three times, but each time he lapsed back into an embarrassed silence. She supposed he had grown wary of ridicule. She composed her face in an attitude of polite attention. She wanted to hear more. She knew that she would never be able to write a story about this pathetic crank, but his theory would provide her with an amusing anecdote to tell back at the city room.
"Read the confessions," he said abruptly. "The confessions extracted from witches. The data we have from that source is enormous, overwhelming. Most of it is nonsense, of course: peasants cavorting in the woods with their breeches down, mocking the village priest; cynics using the apparatus of witchcraft to indulge their own depravity. Torture, too, you have to make allowance for that when you study the confessions. But even making all of these allowances, approaching the material with the utmost skepticism, you find a terrifying consistency, a hard nugget of truth beneath it all. Under certain conditions, these creatures can have sexual intercourse with human beings. Offspring can be produced-have been produced. Sometimes they are entirely human in appearance. Sometimes they are creatures without physical form at all, but able to take over the bodies of the lower animals. Witches are often associated with such possessed animals, known as familiars."
She supposed it was unavoidable that the priest's morbid fantasies should take an erotic twist, but she was unprepared for the enthusiasm that entered his voice as he spoke of sexual intercourse with devils. She became acutely aware of the fact that she was alone with him. He looked like a strong man, and he had started the interview by paying some left-handed compliments to her attractiveness.
"As an altar for their Black Mass," he continued with rising intensity, apparently not noting her uneasiness, "they traditionally use the body of a virgin-no longer a virgin when their obscene ceremony is over, but violated in every possible way, subjected to every perversion that depraved men and women can dredge up from the seething cesspools of their souls. Forced, squirming and screaming in her nakedness, to submit to men, to women, to animals, and ultimately, to some fiend crawling forth from a gap in the geometry of our universe. They take her singly, in succession, in groups, until their frenzy and the shame and pain of their victim sets up certain psychic vibrations, releases unknown sources of spiritual energy, creates the climate necessary for these creatures to reach out into our space and time. The writhing victim, degraded below the level of the beasts, becomes the vessel for demonic forces. Always these victims testified that the fiend's sperm was cold, colder than ice. How could that one detail be constant, if they were independent fabrications? These witches-their filth, their blasphemy-disgusting!"
The last word was a choked sob as he apparently succeeded in shocking himself with his own perverted and repressed visions. All this lunacy about devils from the Fourth Dimension sprang from Father Collins's pathological horror of sex, Marcia believed. She saw that he was a man struggling to contain unbearable pressure, and she didn't want to wait around for the explosion. She rose, trying to make her movements toward the door seem casual.
"Have you had much success here with your ... mission?" she asked, trying to divert his mind from her retreat.
He snorted gloomily. He seemed depleted, depressed. His manner reminded her so strongly of the detachment sometimes exhibited by her husband after an orgasm that she began to wonder if telling her of his hallucinations hadn't actually produced one.
"You're going," he stated.
"Yes, I have to ... work, you know, the paper-"
"Wait," he ordered, and he rose to stride briskly to the partition behind his makeshift altar, genuflecting on his way.
This, she reflected, might be the only chance she would get to make a break for it: maybe he was going to fetch some handcuffs and a whip. She had grown used to dealing with eccentrics in her work; but she'd never met one so unpredictable as Father Collins, nor one whose quirks were so blatantly sexual. She resolved that she would find some way to get out of it, the next time Higgins sent her to interview someone he offhandedly referred to as crazy. The last one had been Peachtree.
She had hesitated too long, and now he was coming back. He no longer looked quite so overwrought. Perhaps he'd sneaked a drink during his brief absence.
"Take this," he said, "and keep it with you always."
He held something out to her, and when she didn't immediately reach for it, a crafty look entered his eyes.
"A witch would refuse to accept it," he said, "and-"
She startled him by almost snatching it from his hand. She didn't want to give him another excuse to start raving. He seemed relieved when she took it.
She looked down at the object in her hand. It was a pendant in the form of a cross, ornate and surprisingly heavy. Unlikely though it seemed, she suspected that it was pure silver.
"What is it?"
"A medal of St. Benedict, traditionally effective in warding off evil spirits. You don't believe in such things, I know, but the time may come when you are forced to."
The medal looked old and valuable. She knew she ought to refuse it, but she didn't want to prolong the interview. She put it in her bag, thanked him, and once again began moving toward the door.
"Wear it always," he said, "and take no more gifts from the witch who gave you that necklace."
"No, I-"
Her voice faltered, and she went quickly out the door. She remembered that Melody had one of those necklaces, too. She'd been wearing it last night.