Exorcist Road (4 page)

But I knew we had to.

Chapter Five

“What do you mean you don’t have enough proof?”

Despite the aggressive way that Ron had approached him, Father Sutherland did not seem abashed. Standing beside the grandfather clock in the foyer—he and Danny and I had finally managed to arrange Jack Bittner’s hulking form in the back of Danny’s cruiser—Sutherland stood with his hands folded politely before him, looking for all the world as though he were about to deliver a sermon on the perils of greed.

Sutherland said, “There are many requirements that must be fulfilled before we perform an exorcism, or even pronounce the child possessed.”

“Requirements,” Ron repeated. “You’re telling me you can’t see it already?”

“I will not rush to judgment. The only evidence I have is the child speaking in an unnaturally guttural voice—speaking in English, I might add, not in some unfamiliar tongue—and a secondhand account of anomalous strength.”

“What do you need? The kid’s head to swivel on his neck and spit pea soup all over you?”

“That’s not funny,” Liz said.

“Shut up,” he muttered without taking his eyes off Sutherland. “Whatever that thing is, it’s endangering my son. What if it kills him? What if Casey doesn’t recover?”

The words were out of my mouth before I knew it. “Are you sure it’s Casey you’re worried about?”

Ron rounded on me, and for a flickering instant I was convinced he’d punch me. “You got a mouth on you, you know it? You gonna do anything other than contradict me tonight?”

“Maybe you should get a grip,” Danny said.

“Screw all of you,” Ron growled, his voice echoing off the soaring foyer ceiling. “I should’ve taken care of this myself.”

“Allowing Danny to contact us was the one correct thing you did,” I said.

“Listen, I know I may not be anything as impressive as a priest or a cop—” he threw his brother a stony look, “—and I know you guys probably resent me for my venial lifestyle—”

“Asshole,” Danny muttered.

“—but I think you’re all overlooking the obvious here.”

“And what is that?” I asked.

“That Jack Bittner might have a good motive for claiming my son’s the butcher who’s been hacking up all those girls.”

Liz’s pretty face twisted with distaste, but Sutherland asked, “What motive?”

Ron spread his arms in amazement. “That Bittner’s the killer.”

We were all silent a moment as that sank in.

“Wait a second,” Danny started.

But Ron overrode him. “Think about it. The guy’s a beast. You all saw him up there. It took every one of us to bring him down—”

“Father Sutherland brought him down,” I reminded.

Ron shot me a surly look. “The point is, the guy’s got the brute strength and then some. Secondly, he’s a cop. Who’d know better than a cop how to murder someone and get away with it? Hell, he might even be working it from the inside, planting false leads, putting them off his trail…”

“You’re forgetting something,” Danny said.

“Enlighten me.”

“I’m his partner.”

Ron shrugged. “So? You had trouble passing shop class, Danny, so forgive me if I don’t place much faith in your deductive abilities.”

Liz was twisting her crucifix necklace, her thumb and forefinger on the silver body of Christ. “He did seem quick to blame Casey.”

“That doesn’t make him a serial killer,” Danny pointed out.

“Doesn’t make him innocent either,” Ron said.

Danny used a wet paper towel to dab at the cut between his eyebrows. “I know Jack was crazy up there, but you guys don’t know him like I do. He’s not a bad guy.”

Ron uttered a harsh laugh. “‘Not a bad guy’. God, you’re gullible.”

“We can’t all be pricks.”

But Ron was shaking his head. “So goddamned sensitive…such a bleeding heart. Always have to be buddies with everybody, always trying to play nice.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” I said.

Ron ignored me. “Hell, Danny, it’s no wonder you never married. Got your heart broke once, and now it’s like you don’t even notice girls.”

“It sounds like Bittner notices them too much,” I said.

Everyone looked at me.

“What about that, Father?” Liz asked. “How could Casey know Bittner’s thoughts?” She shivered. “Those awful things he fantasized about his daughter’s friends.”

“Let’s be fair,” Danny said, “Casey could have been making that up. It doesn’t mean Bittner really thinks those things.”

“Clairvoyance is not uncommon in cases of possession,” Sutherland said quietly.

Liz shook her head. “But how—”

“You saw how Casey’s face changed,” Sutherland said. “The moment Officer Bittner touched his skin, he seemed to surmise what was in Bittner’s mind.”

“You believe it then?” Danny asked.

“I believe nothing yet,” he said, “which is why we must go upstairs and perform the tests necessary to confirm or dismiss demonic possession.”

My stomach plummeted.

“Finally, someone sees the light,” Ron said. “I guarantee Bittner’s place is full of evidence.”

But Sutherland turned a pitiless eye on him. “Jack Bittner is not the Sweet Sixteen Killer.”

Ron scowled. “How the hell can you know that?”

“Because the killer visited my confession booth three days ago.”

It was as though someone had unleashed the gates of a spillway and doused us all in freezing water.

Looking thoroughly displeased with himself, Sutherland went on. “I am bound by my vows to maintain secrecy in these matters. However, as this case is proving extraordinary, I will say this much: Based on what the man in my booth told me, I suspect very strongly that he is the individual responsible for the atrocities. He shared with me many specifics that have not been in the papers…items he’d collected from his victims and hidden in his home.”

“Why didn’t you go to the authorities?” Danny asked.

Sutherland met Danny’s accusation with neither defiance nor asperity. “I didn’t know what to do,” he said simply. “People look to me for guidance, for wisdom, but so many times I am as bewildered as they are. I don’t know the correct course of action any more than any other man. All I can do is beseech God for His guidance, for His wisdom.”

Ron’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “And I suppose God told you to sit on the information while that madman impaled girls on meat hooks—”

“Don’t,” Liz said.

“—while he mutilated their faces and skinned them alive.”

“That’s enough, Ron!” Danny snapped.

Ron spun on him. “And you’re just as bad as the Father here. You’re charged with protecting this city, and all you do is drink yourself into oblivion—”

“Stop it,” Liz said. She put a hand on Ron’s arm, but he flung it off.

“—and when I call you for help—the one fucking time I make the mistake of relying on you—you let that idiot of a partner attack my son.”

Danny’s voice trembled. “Shut up, Ronnie.”

But Ron laughed, his expression vicious. “Hell, I remember when Liz said we should make you Casey’s godfather. I said to myself, ‘Why not? Danny surely can’t find a way to screw that up’. Boy, was I ever wrong.”

Danny looked for a moment like he might lunge at Ron, but before he could, Ron stalked off toward the kitchen, mumbling obscenities.

Liz said, “Danny, don’t listen—”

But before she could finish, Danny averted his eyes and said, “I’m gonna check on Carolyn.”

Leaving the three of us in uncomfortable silence.

“We’d better go to Casey,” Father Sutherland said.

We’d started toward the stairs when Liz asked, “How do you know it wasn’t Jack Bittner? The man in the confessional?”

Sutherland regarded her a long moment. “The man spoke Greek with a very specific dialect called Tsakonian, one that only people in the Peloponnese region still use. Earlier, Danny told us that Officer Bittner was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago. He could hardly have acquired such an accent in that kind of environment.”

Liz was standing very still, a troubled look on her face. I was about to ask her what was wrong, but before I could, Father Sutherland grasped my shoulder. “We must go to Casey now, Father Crowder. In one way or another, he needs our help.”

I nodded and started up the stairs, but I cast one backwards glance at Liz, who was staring up at me with a look of dread.

My skin crawling, I followed Father Sutherland to Casey’s room.

The next hour passed in a haze of nightmarish vignettes. Because I must record my story quickly, I will forego most of the details and will include only what is essential to my narrative. But imagine if you can…

Sutherland asks, “Can you tell us your name?”

“Malephar,” the boy says.

Sutherland tenses. “Where did you hear that word?”

No answer.

“Casey,” Sutherland says, “do you want me to believe you’re possessed by a demon?”

The boy leers, his light-brown irises darkening, going muddy. Then…spreading. Tiny threadlike tendrils of murk squirm over the whites like fast-growing roots. Or tiny serpents. Soon Casey’s eyes are pure obsidian.

“How did you do that, Casey?” Sutherland asks.

“Touch me,” the creature says in a hushed voice.

Sutherland does not.

Twenty minutes of questions, holy water, rites and crosses. The boy alternates between lewd ridicule and enigmatic whispering. At Father Sutherland’s request, the boy speaks in Latin. In ancient Hebrew. In Aramaic. In tongues I’ve never heard before. Even Sutherland looks baffled.

The boy falls silent and unresponsive.

Sutherland says to me, “Put your hand on Casey’s forehead.”

I look uncertainly from the boy to Sutherland and back to the boy. Casey, whose black eyes are now closed, that hideous leer no longer contorting his face, appears to be sleeping. I place a tentative hand on the boy’s forehead, and the black eyes shutter open; a monstrous, chortling laugh gusts out of a mouth that reeks of pestilence, of sulfur, a mouth now lined with daggerlike fangs rather than his mother’s perfectly straight teeth.

The thing that no longer resembles Casey stares up at me with a look of measureless knowledge. The thing that isn’t Casey says, “You’ll never master your fears, Jason.”

I resist the urge to bolt from the room, am held in check not only by my desire to impress Sutherland, but by my terror of the thing on the bed.

“So much discipline,” the thing says, its voice an ode to suffering, to malice. “So much self-control, yet so much fear. Was it your mother that twisted you so, Jason? Was it the way she walked around the house naked that so transformed the female body into an unknowable goddess? Something to be worshipped and feared?”

“Don’t listen, Father Crowder,” Sutherland cautions.

But I listen. Oh, do I ever. I listen with a mixture of horror and self-loathing.

The thing on the bed goes on, “Something to flagellate yourself to in the small hours of the night. Something to fantasize about while you squirt your pitiful seed onto your pristine white sheets, sheets that grow yellow and crusty and stained with fear sweat. Your foreskin so chafed and red you can see pinpricks of blood as you stare at your emaciated body in the mirror, hating yourself and craving punishment for your fantasies.”

“Jason!” Sutherland shouts. But I am doubled over beside the bed, weeping.

Delighted, the thing crows, “You’ve already imagined it haven’t you? Already fantasized about Liz Hartman, a vulnerable woman who needs your help. What will she say when she learns of your pathetic carnal imaginings? Fantasies in which you cease to behave like a castrate and seize her from behind, knead her mounded breasts and thrust your miniscule phallus into her sex as she moans out her want. As if you had the audacity to commit adultery…as if you were man enough to seduce a woman so libidinous.”

“She’s your mother,” I sob.

“She’s
Casey’s
mother,” the thing says, its voice suddenly deepening.

“And where is Casey?” Sutherland demands.

“In hell,”
the thing says and begins to laugh.

Forty-five minutes in, the room smells of feral dogs and feces, of spoiled yeast and brimstone.

The thing on the bed is levitating.

The hips are three feet off the mattress. The body is splayed, arched like a dome, the chained limbs straining against their bonds. Even the fingertips are several inches above the mattress.

The smell grows worse.

The thing on the bed thrusts its wrists against the handcuffs again and again, the hands pumping heavenward in spasmodic mockery. It is leering at us, its mouth frozen open in a salacious intaglio. The sound the flesh makes soon becomes a gruesome squelch. Sutherland demands that the thing stop. The thing does not stop. Its staccato jabs persist, the sound becoming wetter. Squishier. I cover my mouth and look away. The thing gloats at my revulsion. Its guttural voice challenges me to look. Sutherland orders the thing to cease its mutilation of Casey’s body, but the thrusts continue, crimson gouts of blood pelting the sheets. I retch at the sound of flensed bones, of pulping meat. I plead for it to stop. But through it all, the thing on the bed grins with rapturous sadism. A smell of sheared copper mingles with the rank odors of sulfur and diarrhea. Soon I can see one of the thing’s wrist bones. I gag.

Five minutes later Sutherland too is coughing into his handkerchief, yet he is still attempting to recite the passages marked in his Bible.

“Touch me,”
the thing commands.

The young body has lowered to the bed, but it is now writhing in a most disturbing way. Undulating like windswept water. The bones as malleable as a serpent’s. Black ichor has begun to seep from the thing’s mouth. Its rapier teeth grin savagely through the viscous liquid, which reeks like boiling sewage.

Sutherland proceeds with his incantation, but the thing shouts,
“Touch me, you craven old woman!”

But Sutherland does not.

After the endless hour had passed, I staggered out of the room and stood for a long time in the hallway. I felt nauseated. Moving with my hand over my mouth, I gained the nearest bathroom and leaned against the closed door.