Bless the Child (67 page)

“And why should he do that? Surely your Prince despises failure, at least as much as earthly princes do.”

“There has been no failure, here. Merely a change of plan.” Eric turned away dismissively, but the air around them began to crackle ominously.

“Failed mortal!”
The thunderous words came from no visible source. “Thou hast chosen thy own fate.”

The walls began to quiver with the intensity of the sound. Eric suddenly clutched at his own throat, as if an unseen hand were strangling him. The three watchers saw him gasp and struggle for breath, like a man at the end of a hangman’s rope.

“There is a price to be paid!”
the awesome voice blasted the words, vibrating every nerve ending excruciatingly.

Eric’s body was seized by creatures they could not see, but whose strength must have been beyond calculation. His large body was tossed about the chamber as effortlessly as if he were a beanbag, in the hands of demented children. It seemed to hang upside down from an invisible meat hook high above them for a time, then it crashed repeatedly into walls and ceiling, with bone-crushing violence.

And, then the laughter began, as the demons tore him limb from limb. Eric’s shrieks nearly drowned out the ungodly sounds of rending flesh, as arms and legs were wrenched from the living torso. And there was flesh and bones, crushed and mangled and the stench of burning, and the roar of some beast that had surely never left the Pit, but lived in a swamp of blood at the feet of its infernal Master.

Maggie, dumbstruck by the grotesque spectacle, tried to turn her head away, but the Rebbe said firmly, “It is no more than he has done to others, Mrs. O’Connor. It is
just.”

The sounds of the debacle ceased; and Peter, Maggie, and the Rebbe stood stunned and uncertain in the wake of the carnage.

“Peter, Peter,
Peter!
” a male voice suddenly chided, startling their attention back to the altar. The voice seemed to emanate from Cody, but the child’s lips hadn’t moved. “I’m
so
glad you answered my call! Clever method I used this time, wouldn’t you say?”

Peter frowned. He knew the voice; he had heard it last in an Indian village, twelve thousand miles from Greenwich.

He steeled himself against the sudden rush of fear the voice provoked in him; for an instant, he had almost forgotten the child on the altar. He took a deep breath and turned his attention to the
Roman Ritual
in his hand; with reverence, he started to read the text of the Rite of Exorcism that dated from the third or fourth century.

“Do not remember O Lord, our sins, or those of our forefathers . . .’”
He felt the strength of the ritual begin to fill him with a sense of renewal; all thought of self fell away, and only the powerful words remained.

“‘
. . . lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil . . . Save this child, your servant, because she hopes in you, My God.’”

“Fuck that, you pusillanimous dung heap!” The child spat the words, but the voice was not hers. “This one was given to us free and clear for all eternity . . . You will be, too, before we’re through.”

Peter felt the Presence engulf him, like a wall of icy slime, oozing around him, looking for entry points.
I’m alone!
The thought was suddenly in his brain, and with it, an irrational terror. He felt as if an invisible hand clutched at his vocal chords and the unexpected force of attack rocked him. These encounters usually started slowly and built up momentum, but this malevolence was already formidable.

“Alone. Alone.
Alone!”
the Presence mocked him, somewhere inside his own mind. “You will always be alone!”

“You are
not
alone!” the voice was the Rebbe’s, clear as a trumpet. Forceful. In control. It jerked Peter back out, into reality.

“Don’t fuck with me, pig priest!” the voice on the altar squealed sullenly; there was a chalk-on-blackboard screech to it, that raised goosebumps on all the flesh in the room. “I’ll suck your wizened dick in Hell!” A demented laugh cackled out of the child’s mouth, and the very air seemed to explode. Maggie watched the spectacle immobilized by shock; it was inconceivable that the
thing
on the altar was Cody. She bent her head and tried to pray.

Peter glanced at the Rebbe and saw his composure had not altered even slightly. It was apparent he had no intention of engaging the entity in conversation, as yet. Peter had the distinct feeling the old man was monitoring the confrontation, on some other inner level of clairvoyant consciousness.

“‘Unclean Spirit!”
Peter intoned from the ritual. “
Whoever you are, and all your companions who possess this servant of God . . .’”

“You
know
who I am, Peter Messenguer!” the voice cried exultantly. “I’ve spent your whole life at your side. I’m the Prince of Pride! Your cosmic counterpart. I’m the one who led you down the garden path so neatly, you never even suspected me.
I
gave you the intellect . . .
I
made your seething, bloodsucking pride drown your faith in rationalizations. Oh, the singular horseshit of your puny efforts to know God! Peter the Great, Peter the Proud. Peter thinks he can fuck the bitch and God won’t notice!”

“Concentrate!”
The ferocity of the Rebbe’s voice slashed through Peter’s shock.

“And you, old hypocrite!” the demon roared, whipping his attention to the rabbi. “Do you think I’ll leave
you
unmolested?”

The Rebbe felt the ground begin to shake under him, and a terrible stench rose all around him. It was a smell that never could be forgotten. Burning bodies, crematoria.
Devorah!

The stench receded, but the iron band that had clutched his heart remained.

“Have patience, little man,” the demon said, through Cody’s mouth. “I’ll have fun with you later.”

The Rebbe felt the hair rise on the back of his neck; felt his stomach tighten. What madness, at my age, to fear anything, he admonished himself—but the stench of Auschwitz lingered in his nostrils and the memory of Devorah made him feel faint. He forced his concentration back to the sound of the priest’s voice, and cast his mind out into the cosmos once again, seeking the Infinite.

Peter struggled to keep the words of the ritual in sharp focus.
Careful, Peter,
he admonished himself.
Don’t lose control.

“The Long Road from Calvary,
indeed,” the demon hissed at Peter before he’d finished the thought. “You pompous windbag! Did it never occur to you that the road was so
long
because you were headed in the wrong direction?” Demented laughter echoed through the room in nauseating shock waves that left everyone’s nerves raw and bleeding. Maggie’s eyes sought Peter’s; she could see the livid hurt exposed there.

“How blithely you let me lead you right to Gehenna! A little turn here, a judicious twist there, and your superior intellect deftly came to all the wrong conclusions! You said yourself, it isn’t the big decisions that sell you out, Peter, just the little expediencies, the small self-indulgences that open the door to the Enemy.”

Could it be true?
Peter’s mind and heart slid inexorably toward the Abyss.
Dear Christ Almighty, what if it’s true?
Confusion made him falter, momentarily unable to remember his place on the printed page.

“He lies!”
the Rebbe rebuked, sternly. “He is not bound by Truth!”

The child’s head swiveled toward the rabbi, a grotesquely lascivious smile on her small lips.

“Was Du erlebst, kann keine Macht der Welt Dir rauben,” the voice said in perfect German.
What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.
All eyes were on Rebbe.

“She was so soft and pure, wasn’t she,
liebchen?”
the demon whispered, intimately. “Her hair, her skin, the way she used to say your name in bed at night. Why didn’t you save her?
Coward.
Self-serving worm! They raped her, you know. All six of them. They thought she was soft and pretty, too. They made her suck them, did you know that, Itzhak? They told her if she didn’t drink every drop, they would torture you to death. She thought she was saving you, poor terrified innocent that she was. All she saved was a poor old fake who tells people he’s holy, while he let his wife be tortured in his place. She died in
agony,
Itzhak . . . she was quite mad by then, of course. Did you know she watched them kill the children?

Anguish etched itself in the old man’s face, and tears ran unchecked down his cheeks, but he held his ground.

Devorah . . . Devorah. Set me like a seal upon your heart . . . love is as strong as death.
He had waited a lifetime to find her again. Death could only bring him peace . . .

The old man wrenched his consciousness back to the present, with supreme effort, the words of the Torah burning in his ears . . .
for the L-rd your G-d puts you to proof, to know whether ye do love the L-rd your G-d with all your heart and with all your soul.

Peter could see how well the poisoned barb had been set in the old man’s heart by the malevolent Intelligence; he turned on the Demon, furious as its wanton malice.

“I exorcise you, Most Unclean Spirit!” he thundered. “
‘Invading Enemy! All Spirits! Every one of you! In the Name of . . .’”

“Speak to me, gentlemen!” the voice shrieked, drowning Peter out. “Speak to
me!
This will not do at all! Hiding behind the printed page. This is a
wrestling
match. I’ve called you to, not a chess game! You’ll sweat with me, or I’ll kill the child before you ever finish reading from your stupid little book!”

To underscore the threat, the body on the altar began to bloat, its arms and legs filling up like balloons. Maggie stood transfixed, watching the horror happen, not knowing what to do. Cody’s face was contorted with pain and an agonized groan issued from her lips.

“I order you to leave this child without harming her in any way!” the Rebbe commanded. “You have no power here!”

“No power!” The demon’s shriek of outrage rattled the walls around them.
“I destroyed the Temple!”
The laughter echoed and reechoed, peal after peal, as if all the asylums in the world had loosed their most deranged inmates.

“I will use the Words of Power to dislodge . . .” the Rebbe began.

“Words of Power!” the demon cut him off, exultantly. “Oh, do let’s talk of Words of Power.
Coward.
Craven. Recreant. Cur. Deserter. All they wanted from you was a
Name.
Don’t you remember,
Liebchen?
Here . . . Let me help you . .. “

The Rebbe staggered backward, as a crashing blow seemed to strike his solar plexus; before he could recover his balance, he felt himself transported backward in time . . .
There were dead and dying all around him. They had taken him to the edge of a communal grave. Made him watch the men digging their final humiliation. Made him watch the pathetic, skeletal humans, hardly plumper the shovels in their hands, as they were clubbed or shot from behind by the laughing soldiers. Made him listen to the sobs for mercy from those who, not quite dead yet, felt the earth shoveled in on top of them.

“You can save them! they had told him. “Tell us the Name.” But his lips had been sealed and the men had died, although their agony had lodged within him, forever.

Then they had shown him the women and children in the hospital; the starved and the gangrenous and the dying. “You can save them,” they had told him. “Tell us the Name!” But he had remained steadfast, although his heart was shredded and bleeding in his breast.

Then they had shown him his beloved. Devorah of the gentle eyes and gentler heart. Mother of his children, companion of his soul. The one true love there would ever be.

She was naked in the room, trying to cover her hunger-shrunken breasts with her hands, as they fondled her. She had not begged for mercy, where none could be, but tears from her beautiful desperate eyes had glistened in the harsh glow of the naked light bulb on the ceiling. And, they had pushed him into the room to watch. She had died then, he knew, in her soul. He had caught her eyes with his own and seen the horror and humiliation that was more terrible than death.

“You can save her!” they had said. “Tell us the Name!”

“Rebbe.
Rebbe!
” Peter was shouting and shaking the Rebbe by the shoulders. “Listen to me! The demon is doing this to you! You
must
listen to me!”