46
THE TWO-STORY YELLOW-BRICK HOUSE STOOD IN A NEIGHBORHOOD once a testimony to middle-class success, now evidence of the stalled dreams of generations, proof of the destructive avarice of a political class that promised prosperity while robbing rich and poor alike. Sidewalks were cracked, canted. Iron lampposts, spotted with rust, were overdue for painting. Street trees, untrimmed for so long that they could never be properly shaped by an arborist, stood leafless and raging at the bleak sky with mutant arms and bristling fists.
The house rose behind a spear-point iron fence from which some weapons had been borrowed. In summer the lawn would be nearly as dead as it was on this October twenty-fifth.
Inside, the rooms and hallways provided narrow passages between cliffs of heavy old furniture. In spite of air stale with years of cigarette smoke, John thought that all seemed scrupulously clean.
Peter Abelard, once a priest, still dressed rather like a cleric: black shoes, black slacks, black shirt, with a dark-gray cardigan. For some reason, he wore a watch on each wrist.
Fifty-six, with a lean ascetic face and ash-gray hair combed back from his pale forehead, he was so thin and dry that it seemed he might subsist entirely on the cigarettes that he lit one after the other, the new from the butt of the old.
The house belonged to his ninety-year-old mother. She was currently in the hospital, dying of terminal cancer. Abelard had lived here since the Church finished with him.
After the meeting with Father Bill on the fourteenth, John spent eight days trying to learn who had been the diocese’s last exorcist and to locate him. The search became complicated because Abelard’s mother lived as Mary Dorn, having remarried after her husband died.
Another three days were required to convince Abelard, by phone and by proxy, to agree to an interview. If he didn’t fear policemen, he at least had developed an aversion to them.
In the kitchen where they conferred, the cabinets were pale green. Yellow Formica counters. The old stove and ovens were heavy, as if inspired by foundry works from the long-gone Soviet Union.
Yellow-and-white-checkered oilcloth covered the table at which they sat. A glass ashtray, a pack of cigarettes, a paperback copy of
He offered John neither coffee nor a smoke. On the phone, he made it clear that this would not be an extended chat.
For the fourth time in less than two months, John told the story of Alton Turner Blackwood. He spared himself nothing, wanting to be certain that Peter Abelard had every fact that might matter.
He spoke also about the recent murders and his investigation, beginning with his first visit to Billy Lucas at the state hospital.
“Blackwood will kill another family in thirteen days. If I can’t stop him, he’ll kill
Abelard’s eyes were the same gray as his hair, as if they had once been another color but, like the rest of him, had been steeped in smoke until they paled to this somber shade. They were clouded pools of sorrow and enduring dread.
“Never offer your soul even as a joke or in frustration. You think no one is listening or will make a deal. Someone is—and will.”
“Then you still believe.”
“I failed as a priest and as a man. But even in those days, I believed. Now more than ever. That is the horror of my position.”
He drank some of the inky coffee, drew deeply on his cigarette, and exhaled a cloud of smoke that wreathed his head.
“Father Bill was right about one thing,” Abelard said. “Your true enemy isn’t a ghost. Rarely, a suffering soul in Purgatory might, by divine permission, be allowed to haunt this world to seek an intercession that will shorten his time of purification before he may enter Heaven. But no soul in Hell returns of his own volition.”
Because Abelard’s manner was authoritative but without a trace of pride or pretense, and because his voice seemed to be as haunted by remorse as it was seasoned by tobacco, John offered no argument.
“Blackwood’s ritual tells us by whom you’re truly confronted.”
“There must’ve been a hundred interpretations of the ritual.”
Abelard blew twin plumes from his nose. “Only one interpretation is correct. The rest are the theories of psychologists. The quarters were symbolic payment to Death for ferrying the souls of Blackwood’s victims to Hell, where he intended one day to follow them. The disc of feces was a mockery of the Eucharist, to solicit the favor of his satanic master. Each egg symbolizes the soul of the victim. The eggs contain the Latin word for ‘servant,’ because Blackwood was sending his victims to Hell to serve him there later. They’re supposed to be his retinue, his entourage, his slaves for eternity.”
John’s voice thickened. “My parents and sisters aren’t in Hell.”
“I didn’t say they were. Blackwood’s ritual was his delusion. However, no doubt
Homicide investigation was a career in madness. Sometimes John wondered if by association with so many murderous mad ones, he might one day come unhinged.
“What about the three bells he carried?”
Abelard said, “They tell us the identity of your true enemy. It has brought Blackwood with it, but it’s the sole entity of power in this game. Do you believe in demons, Mr. Calvino?”
“Three months ago, I probably would have said no.”
“You’ve been one of that ‘wretched generation of enlightened men,’ as Eliot called it. But now?”
“My life is all about evidence—knowing when it’s true and when it’s false, how it will play in court. I’m good at knowing all that. The evidence of Blackwood’s return—I’d take that into court.”
With the dexterity of long habituation, Abelard finessed a new cigarette from the pack one-handed, rolled it across his fingers in the manner of a magician manipulating a coin, brought it to his lips, and lit it from the glowing butt that then he crushed in the ashtray.
“The names of the important demons come from the Bible or have been handed down to us by tradition. Asmodeus, Beelzebub, Belial, Lucifer, Mephisto, Meridian, Zebulun … But often in an exorcism, when the exorcist demands and eventually succeeds in getting the malevolent spirit to identify itself, the name is also its purpose or the sin that it most particularly advocates—names like Discord, Envy, Jealousy or like Perdition, Disease, Ruin.”
“Ruin,” John said. “The word etched on Blackwood’s bells.”
“He sought the intercession of the demon Ruin to ensure that the souls of his victims were received for him in Hell. Most likely, the only soul he sent there was his own, but perhaps Blackwood’s life of murder and nihilism pleased this entity called Ruin, and now perhaps it wishes to see the killer keep his promise to you.”
“Why?”
“Why not? Evil doesn’t exist to justify itself. It exists for the pleasure of corruption and the destruction of the innocent. Your children are the primary lure. Young and tender.”
John half felt as if he were sinking in the smoky air like a drowner weighed down by lungs full of water. He breathed deeper, more often, to keep his mind clear.
“This thing, this Ruin, is in my house. I know it is. Can it be forced out with an exorcism?”
“Sometimes a residence or other buildings are exorcised, but not often. A demonic presence in a house can do little real harm. Noises in the night. Footsteps. Doors opening, closing. Foul smells. At worst, poltergeist phenomena—levitating furniture and that sort of thing. A demon isn’t long satisfied with such simple play.”
Gesturing, the hand with the cigarette was as pale as a ghost’s hand except for two nicotine-stained fingers that were the singular greenish-yellow hue of the tissue of a corpse in a particular early stage of decomposition.
Peter Abelard said, “When it’s in the flesh, however, the entity can do unlimited damage, both to the one
