The Case Against Satan (6 page)

The priest nodded. “I've had a touch of the flu once or twice. I know exactly what you mean.”

“I walked into the kitchen and saw a big bowl of stew on the table—chunks of meat and vegetables swimming in gravy, with steam rising from it—and just the sight of it made me so sick that I couldn't walk a step closer. I had to turn right around and walk out of the room. Because I knew that if I stayed there another second, I'd—”

Father Halloran nodded.

“Well . . . going to Mass is something like that. It doesn't frighten me exactly, but when I see the church, when I see the spire with the cross on top of it—” She swallowed and took a deep breath. “I can't, I have to stop. I have to go away from it. Because I know that if I go any closer I just couldn't stand it.” Her eyes teared. “Isn't that terrible, Father?”

“Now, now. Don't you worry. We'll clear this up. Just don't worry. Now tell me—”

The phone rang and Father Halloran turned away from her to answer it. An elderly female parishioner began to unfold a long, complex and numbingly trivial problem. Father Halloran, a man with deep reserves of patience, listened to her, but told her he would have to call her back because he was really quite busy. His eyes, as he talked, were fixed on the carpet.

Suddenly he found himself looking down at two small smooth feet, bare, the toenails lacquered a shrieking red.

He hastily terminated the conversation and replaced the phone in its cradle. Looking up, he saw that Susan was standing before him, completely naked.

He had never seen a naked woman before.

In the soft light of the study, Susan's body glowed, and the scarlet toenails—her secret adornment—were out of tune with the unpainted fingernails and face. Father Halloran's heart contracted. She was more in need of help than he had ever dreamed, much more. The poor girl was terribly sick. Evenly, without shock or anger, he said, “Put on your clothes, Susan.”

He looked up at her face. It was a mask of slyness.

“Let's talk,” she said, and the voice was not hers. She was a ventriloquist's dummy and somebody else was moving her lips and saying the words. “Let's talk, Father.” She moved closer to him. “But not about church-going. Talk about the things you really want to talk about. Say what you really mean. Tell me what a pretty girl I am, and what a sweet little figure I've got. Tell me all the things that are running through your mind when you look at me. Tell me. I won't mind. You're a man, Father. All men think about those things.” She leaned closer and whispered in his ear. Her lips were wet, her breath was hot. She suggested a few specifics the like of which Father Halloran had not heard in all his
years of receiving confession. His stomach jumped to hear them. She snickered; then she seized his hand and licked it, like a dog.

He jerked it away as if he had received an electric shock. She reached swiftly for his other hand and pressed it to her breast.

“No, Susan!” He stepped back, knocking over an ash tray.

She threw her arms around him—they were like steel springs—and covered his lips with hers, fluttering her tongue inside his mouth.

“Stop!” He pushed her away. She went stumbling backward.

“Hypocrite!” she said softly when she had gained her footing. “You don't fool me! You want me—just as much as I want you! If you thought you could get away with it, if you thought nobody would ever find out, you'd grab me, wouldn't you? You'd paw me. You'd throw me down
here
, right
here,”
—she stamped on the floor with her bare foot—“and do all those things you're turning over in your mind. All of them. You'd glut yourself, glut yourself like a pig, like a
pig
you'd grunt and drool and sweat over me, empty yourself into me, cover me with your spit and slime—” Her voice rose higher, became coarser. “Hypocrite! Filthy lecher!
Pig!”

On the last word she threw herself at the priest—
“Help! God help me!”
he croaked—as she sunk strong sharp fingers into his throat.

When Garth dragged her wild naked body off Father Halloran, the nails of her hands were stained as red as the nails of her feet—but with the blood of the celibate.

The Bishop was sitting stunned at the grotesque story when there was a knock at the study door. Gregory answered it. Mrs. Farley, the housekeeper, murmured something to him and Gregory excused himself to the Bishop and walked into the living room.

Susan Garth was there, waiting for him.

“Hello, Susan.”

“Hello, Father.”

“What can I do for you?”

She shrugged. “I just thought . . . maybe you could help me . . . maybe we could just talk about it . . . or whatever you want to do . . .”

“Does your father know you're here?”

“He knows.”

“Fine. Well, Susan, you come at a rather bad time. I have a visitor. Perhaps—”

Mrs. Farley entered the living room and put a note into Gregory's hand. “His Excellency heard me tell you she was here,” she whispered in explanation.

The note read, simply:
Let me see her
.

Pocketing it, Gregory said to the girl, “Well, maybe this isn't such a bad time, after all. As matter of fact, Susan, I'd like you to meet someone. His Excellency, Bishop Crimmings. Do you mind?”

“No, I—guess not.”

“Then come along.” He led her to the study and opened the door. The study looked to Susan about the same as it had the one and only time she had been in it. Perhaps the books were different;
there was a typewriter that had not been there before; and seated in the leather chair Father Halloran had occupied was a big old man with white hair and a stern face.

Gregory asked the Bishop, “You'll want me to stay, won't you, Your Excellency?”

“No, Father,” said the Bishop crisply. “You may go.”

“Please
stay, Father Sargent!” the girl pleaded. “I don't want to be alone here with—” She looked down at her lean strong hands.

“You may
go,
Father,” the Bishop repeated.

Gregory left the study, closing the door.

It was very quiet in the room, but the quiet did not spell peace to Susan, as it had before. It seemed swollen with potential violence.

“Come here, miss.” The Bishop's voice was clipped.

Susan walked reluctantly toward him.

“Sit down.”

She sat opposite him, in the same chair she had sat in before. But, before, everything had been cozy and friendly. There was nothing friendly about this unsmiling, unblinking old man.

“Your name is?” he asked.

“Susan Garth.”

“I,” he said coldly, “am by the grace of God a bishop of Holy Mother Church. Is that the way you address me?”

“No, Your—Excellency.”

“I am told you are a bad girl.”

“I—”

“Silence,” he said cuttingly. “A bad girl; a girl with a filthy tongue; a girl who cursed her own father; a girl with hideous, unclean thoughts. A dangerous person. A violent person. A person who attacked her own spiritual advisor and would have murdered him had she not been prevented by sheer force. A person so depraved she cannot come near the door of the church without drawing back as if it were the gate of Hell itself. Is all this true?”

“Yes,” she said almost in a whisper, “Your Excellency.”

“Is it true, then,” he went on relentlessly, “that you looked with lust upon a priest of God, and laid the hands of lust upon his body? That you accused him of harboring lustful thoughts toward you?”

She nodded.

“Is it true that you cursed this holy man in fearful terms?”

She nodded again.

“All these terrible things are true?”

Avoiding his eyes, she murmured, “Yes. They—”

“Look at me when you speak!”

With difficulty she raised her eyes and looked at the granite face.

“They're all true,” she said. “All those things.”

The Bishop rose from his chair, slowly, solemnly, towering above her. He walked away from her, his hands clasped behind his back. Without looking at her, he said, “Adjoining this house we are in, this rectory, is a church. It is your church, the Church of St. Michael. It is only one of many churches in a diocese of which I, as Bishop, am the head. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

Still with his back to her, he continued: “Then you must understand that when I say something to you, it is not the same thing as if it were only your father speaking to you, or your priest, or the nuns in school. You are in the presence of your Bishop. Is this clear?”

She nodded. He could not, of course, see her.

“Is—this—clear!
I want to hear your
voice,
girl!”

Near tears, her voice quavering, she said, “It's all clear to me, Your Excellency.”

He turned around. “Very well. Then listen to me. I want you to stand up.” She did.

“I want you to walk over here to me.”

She did, but as if each step were bringing her close to death.

He put out his large hand. “I want you to take my hand.”

She drew back.

“Take my hand!!”

She did, her lips trembling. His hand, twice the size of hers, cold and rough, enfolded her hand completely and held it in a clamp-like grip.

“Now,” he said, “you see this door? No, not the one you just came through; this other door. Did you know it leads directly to the church?” He felt her freeze. “Directly to the church, with its
altar and its candles and its crucifix?” She could not remove her eyes from the door. “You and I,” he said, “are going to walk hand in hand through that door and into the church.”

“No!” She pulled but he held her firm.

“As your Bishop, I order you!”

“No, no, I won't, I can't!”
She made a mighty effort, broke away from him and sprang to the door by which she had entered the study. She twisted the knob, rattled it; the door was locked. She pounded on it. Finally, trembling, sobbing, her teeth chattering, she sank to the floor.

The Bishop sighed. The business about the door was sheer improvisation, of course; he wasn't sure—it had been a long time since he had set foot inside this rectory—but he believed it led to the dining room. The rectory was not physically connected to the church at all. Rectories seldom are. But so blinding had been the girl's terror that she had completely forgotten that.

He walked over to her, lifted her from the floor, led her to a chair. “Please sit down, my poor child,” he said gently. He sat down opposite her. “Now then. All those things were true, you said; all those awful things. But you are not a bad girl, are you? Not really.”

“I am. I am.”

“How can that be, dear? You are very disturbed by these things, very sorry. A bad person would not be sorry.”

She said nothing. She had not stopped trembling.

“My dear,” he asked, “why do you do these things?”

“I don't know.”

“Can you—describe, can you tell me what it feels like when these things happen, when you do and say these terrible things?”

She tried. “It's—like it isn't me at all. Like it's someone else, taking over.”

A ventriloquist's dummy
. Wasn't that the term Gregory had used?

The Bishop patted her hand, and sat back in his chair. Suddenly, brightly, he said, “How would you like to play a little game?”

“A game?”

“With me.”

“All right . . .”

“Good.” He reached into his trousers pocket. “We will take a quarter . . . and a half dollar . . .” He selected these coins and put the rest back in his pocket. “You see?”

She nodded. Her eyes were red, but the tears had stopped.

“Now you must close your eyes,” he said, “and I will touch your arm with one or the other of these two coins several times and you must tell me which coin it is, the quarter or the half dollar. All right?”

She nodded, and almost smiled.

“Fine. Now close your eyes.” She did. The Bishop placed the quarter flat against her bare arm.

“I think . . .” she said, uncertainly, “. . . is it the half dollar?”

“I mustn't tell you until it's all over. That's part of the game.” He touched her arm again, this time with the half dollar.

“I don't know,” she said. “The quarter? But it could be the half dollar again.”

Now the Bishop abandoned the quarter entirely. He pressed only the half dollar to her arm, several times. She said: “The half dollar . . . The quarter? . . . The quarter again, I think . . . The half dollar . . .”

While the girl went on guessing, the Bishop's free hand was carefully, silently searching for something in another pocket.

“The quarter . . . I'll say the half dollar . . . Still the half dollar . . . The quarter? . . .”

Again and again he placed the coin on her arm. “The half dollar . . . The quarter . . . The quarter . . .”

And then she yanked away her arm and yelped in pain.
“You burned me!”
she screamed, opening her eyes. “You burned me with something! What was it?” She moaned in agony and shattered trust, one hand clapped tightly over the hurt spot. The Bishop pried her hand away and looked—with fear and sadness but no surprise—at the burn, which had begun to glow a vicious pink.

It was precisely the size and shape of the crucifix dangling from his rosary.

The breviary dropped from Gregory's hands when he heard the scream of pain. He shot from his chair and ran from the parlor, quickly unlocked the study door and threw it open.

“What happened?”

“Susan's been hurt,” the Bishop said hoarsely. “Perhaps your housekeeper can put some unguent on her arm . . .”

The girl whimpered, her hand over the burn.

“I know it hurts,” said the Bishop, “but the pain will go away. Forgive me, my dear. Go with the Father and he will take you to the housekeeper. She'll make it feel better. Then sit in the parlor and wait for us. You can read a magazine or something.”

Gregory took the girl away. Alone, the Bishop bowed his head and clasped his hands together. When Gregory returned, the Bishop said, “Shut the door.”

Gregory did so. “What's wrong with her arm?”

“Did you see it?”

“No.”

“Gregory,” said the Bishop, “I'm frightened. They say there was a case like this in Bavaria, back in the 1890's. A little boy. And in Africa a few years after that. In China, too, in the twenties. And in this country, too: in Iowa and in Illinois.” Adopting a matter-of-fact tone, he said, “You know more than I of such matters—give me the psychiatric explanation why a good, devout young girl should suddenly be incapable of stepping inside a church.”

“It's hard to say,” shrugged Gregory. “I suppose it might have something to do with an unpleasant childhood experience connected in her mind with the Church, or something she has done that makes her feel unclean, unworthy . . .”

“And cursing her father—how might that be explained?”

“He insisted on her attending Mass, which had become abhorrent to her.”

“And her advances toward Father Halloran?”

“Well,” ventured Gregory, scratching his head and moving about the room, “priests—despite the vow of chastity—can't help being a little glamorous, I guess. We're symbols of authority, of power. I suppose this might be attractive in a way. And in an already disturbed mind, this could perhaps take the form of—the kind of thing Susan felt toward Father Halloran. As for trying to strangle him, it could be nothing more than the old story: a woman scorned.”

“Yes,” said the Bishop. “Yes, that's all very interesting, Gregory. Very plausible.” He stroked his chin, reflectively. “Now tell me why just now, in this room, while her eyes were closed, I pressed a series of coins to her bare skin but when unbeknownst to her I substituted the crucifix from my rosary and pressed
it
to her skin, she cried out in pain.”

Gregory sat down. “That's what it was?”

“Yes.”

“But I see nothing in that. If she reacts violently to the church, why not to the cross? And to a girl in her mental condition—hysterical—it's not unbelievable that her mind should play a trick on her and make her think the cross had burned her.”

“When she didn't know it was a cross?”
countered the Bishop. “Her eyes were closed, remember!”

“Are you sure?”

“I'm sure!”

“But,” groped Gregory, “even with her eyes closed she surely could tell the difference between a round coin and a cross. The sense of touch—”

“There medical science will refute you,” interrupted the Bishop. “Ask that psychologist brother-in-law of yours. He will tell you that the fingertips, yes, are clusters of nerve ends that are extremely sensitive and capable of distinguishing subtle differences in the shapes of objects.
But not the arms
. Try it some time.”

Gregory rubbed his forehead. “I admit I'm stumped for the moment,” he said, “but you told me she was
really
hurt, you
wanted unguent applied to her arm. Were you just humoring her or—”

“Never mind that now,” said the Bishop. “One thing at a time.” He seemed to drift away, began talking half to himself. “St. Michael's Church . . . there's a kind of fitness to this happening here, and with the Feast of St. Michael almost upon us . . .” He turned abruptly to Gregory. “Let's see how much you remember from the seminary. Who is St. Michael?”

“Why,” said Gregory, “the Archangel who led the rout of Lucifer and cast Lucifer and his legions into Hell.”

“There is a prayer,” said the Bishop, “which is recited at the end of low Mass. You say it almost every day. How does it go?”

Gregory, bewildered, recited the familiar prayer:

“St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our safe-guard against the wickedness and snares of the devil. Restrain him, O God, we humbly beseech Thee, and do Thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God cast him into Hell with the other evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin and destruction of souls.”

“Thank you,” said the Bishop. “Can you tell me who composed that prayer? Do you remember the story?”

“Was it Pius X?” Gregory hazarded. “Or, no—”

“His Holiness, Pope Leo XIII,” said the Bishop. “One day after Mass, they say, His Holiness was in conference with the Cardinals, and was mysteriously stricken. He fell to the floor. They called a doctor. The doctor examined His Holiness.
The pulse was not beating
. He was given up for dead, when just as mysteriously he awakened and spoke of a terrifying vision he had been permitted to see: a vision of a future world dominated by the legions of Satan. St. Michael appeared, however, and routed those legions as he did long ago when he first cast them into the Abyss. That was the end of the vision, and when it was over, the Pope's pulse began beating again and he returned to the living. It was then that he composed the prayer in honor of St. Michael, the prayer that is recited at the end of the Mass the world over.”

Gregory said, “I remember the story now, Your Excellency. But why are you telling it to me?”

“To prepare you,” said the Bishop. “To prepare you for what is to come. It will not be easy for you to believe.”

Gregory waited, not without impatience.

“I have come to the conclusion,” said the Bishop finally, “that the girl is—not in a manner of speaking, but literally and actually—possessed.”

 • • • 

Filtered through multiple walls, into the silent womb of the study penetrated dim tokens of the outside world—a brief single blare of a klaxon, a long shout of a playing child—the sounds reduced to fuzzy miniatures of themselves. A small electric clock on the study desk whirred discreetly.

Possessed
. A short and simple word—but a word that, in a fragment of a second, made the shattered, scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle fall together in Gregory's mind. Possessed—by the Devil. “Not in a manner of speaking, but literally and actually . . .”

For the first time in his life, Gregory was forced to think of God's Adversary—truly think of him, focus all of his mind upon him, all of his belief, all of his faith. The existence of God he had never doubted; the existence of Satan he had never doubted, either—but, on the other hand, Gregory now asked himself with creeping terror, had he ever
really
believed it? He felt cold. To disbelieve the existence of the Evil One was heresy—something infinitely more serious than an occasional drop too much of brandy. If God existed, logically his Adversary existed. Gregory believed in God—not only intellectually, but emotionally, possibly instinctively; he accepted Satan only with the surface of his mind, because it was logical to do so, because his acceptance had never been put to the test, because not to accept Satan was the act of a heretic.

He knew he had never been the best kind of priest. A priest needs a head on his shoulders, and Gregory undeniably had that, but more important he needs a heart. Gregory, like other cold men, had always equated “heart”—which a popular song insisted you gotta have—with sentimentality, trumped-up feelings, the thing that in actors is called ham. Ham; schmaltz; corn. Derogatory words all meaning similar things—but how odd, Gregory
suddenly thought, that they should be words that also mean food, nourishment, sustenance.

Sustenance: that which sustains.

Gregory had entered the priesthood with much to offer: a strong desire to serve, a talent for efficiency and order, a love of the Church and its history and literature and romance, a lively interest in theology and scholarship, a quick mind and rich intellectual gifts—everything except a simple, all-consuming zeal. He had known this when he began, but had told himself: There is no perfect priest, no priest can have everything, some may have the zeal and nothing else; I will make a good servant of the Lord; what more can be expected of me?

It was never as if he lacked faith or doubted the existence of God. The idea of God sustained him. It is not difficult to believe in God. God is goodness, for which all men yearn; He is the fountainhead of life; He is Our Father Who Art in Heaven, a great concept, and there is nothing loftier, nothing nobler, nothing more dignified, nothing more awesome. “God is not mocked,” for such a figure is beyond mockery; but the Devil is and has been mocked down through the centuries—he has been a sideshow puppet, a mustache-twirling city slicker, a costume for stage magicians, a trademark for a laxative water. No, it is not difficult to believe in God—the very flesh reaches out for such belief—but for an intelligent man of the twentieth century to wipe from his mind the centuries of ridicule that have been heaped upon the Devil, for him to take the Devil seriously, as seriously as he takes God; that is difficult. And yet to fail is heresy.

Am I a heretic?
Gregory thought with a stunning horror.
Am I no longer a priest of God?

And—he asked himself—if this is true, how long have I known it? How long have I perhaps tried to wash away that knowledge with liquor?

Heretic
. For a priest, it is the most terrifying word in all of language, the most horrifying thought the mind can conceive.

He became aware again of the electric clock's steady whirr, of the Bishop's presence, of the problem at hand. “Possessed,” he repeated.

“Yes, Gregory.”

Gregory nodded slowly, and absently fingered some papers on his desk. “I see.” Inside, he said, No I don't see. Not here in this comfortable study, surrounded by my books. Not here in the middle of the twentieth century.

“It's hard to believe, isn't it?” said the Bishop. “And yet, a long time ago, when Christ was here among us, he cast out the Devil many times, didn't he?”

Gregory nodded.

“And the Devil spoke to him in the desert, and Christ saw him and answered him.”

“Yes. But as you say—that was a long time ago.”

“Have things changed that much?” the Bishop wondered.

“Things can change a lot in almost two thousand years.”

“Oh, little things, yes,” the Bishop agreed. “The way people talk, the way they dress, the houses they live in, the weapons they use, the way they get from place to place—these things change. But the important things, the basic things, do you really think
they
change? Love? Hate? Fear? Pity? Right and wrong? Good and evil? God and the Devil?” Taken with a random thought, he added, “Yes, what about that? Has God changed? Truthfully now, Gregory, no evasion, just a straight yes or no—do you believe in God?”

Momentarily caught off guard, Gregory said, “Why . . .”

“Do you believe He exists? Or don't you know?”

“I know,” said Gregory, his equilibrium regained. “God exists.”

“As an entity? A being?”

“Yes.”

“You're absolutely sure?”

“Absolutely,” answered Gregory, a bit louder than he wished.

The Bishop seemed satisfied. Then he asked, “And Diabolus?”

The Latin name for the Devil, familiar as it was to Gregory in Latin contexts, seemed odd in a vernacular context—the sound of the word was cold, disturbing. “What about Diabolus?”

“I'm asking you what you believe about him.”

A floodgate of potential replies opened in Gregory's mind: information, theories, dogma, a deluge of remembered reading and reflection. But he could only say, gropingly, “Diabolus, the
Devil, is evil—I mean the force of evil in the world, everything that is negative, bad, corrupt—”

“Yes, yes,” the Bishop cut in, “but does he exist?”

“Of course he exists,” said Gregory quickly, “but—”

“But!”
The syllable was like an arrow. “Gregory, this word
but
seems to be a favorite of yours. And how strange, how frightening that it crops up in your speech again and again only when you are talking about accepted articles of faith. I fear that word on your lips.”

“I fear it myself,” said Gregory quietly, “although I was only going to say ‘But is the Devil as real as God?'”

“That's
only
what you were going to say? Only that? Do you mean—but no, of course you don't—you don't mean that perhaps the Devil is only a symbol?”

“You know better than that, Your Excellency. Of course I don't mean that. We have no symbols. The wafer and the wine we use in the Mass—they don't simply represent the flesh and the blood of Christ, they
are
his flesh and blood, his literal, corporeal flesh and blood. So I can't say the Devil is only a symbol. Not to you. You would tell me it was—heresy.”

“Yes, Gregory,” said the Bishop. “I would indeed.”

“But is it heresy,” asked Gregory, “to shrink from accepting a mustachioed villain out of grand opera? Do you want me to believe in a flamboyant red fool with horns and a tail, holding a trident?”

The Bishop said,
“Yes
. If that would make Diabolus real to you, as real as this floor, as real as that chair, if it would stop this talk of symbols—”