The Case Against Satan (9 page)

Susan's head began to move restlessly from side to side, as if she were in the throes of fever.

“. . . with the intercession of the Immaculate Virgin and Mother of God, Mary . . .”

The girl's breathing became heavier, her breast rising and falling sharply.

“. . . Blessed St. Michael the Archangel . . .”

Her teeth chattered loudly in the tiny room.

“. . . and the Apostles Peter and Paul . . .”

Her slim body began to twist and squirm on the bed.

“. . . and all the Saints—”

With a wild yelp, Susan shot up and away from the bed as if catapulted, her body stopping with a sudden
slam!
against the opposite wall.

“Mrs. Farley!” called the Bishop, unlocking and throwing open the door. “Mrs. Farley—bring the rope!”

Pressed face to the wall as if held by a giant hand, her arms spreadeagled, her fingers clawing and raking the plaster, Susan looked like some crucified martyr who had been nailed facing the cross.

Gregory, when he tried to bring her back to the bed, found he could not budge her. It was only when he was joined by the Bishop and Mrs. Farley that it became possible to
pry
her away from the wall, her body feeling as if it weighed several hundred pounds, her toes clutching the carpet as they dragged her toward the bed.

“The mattress,” said the Bishop, his breath short with the effort. “Get rid of it. It will only be in the way, and it's bound to get stained, besides.”

Mrs. Farley pulled the mattress off the bed, tugged it out into the hall, and returned.

Gregory and the Bishop held the girl down to the stripped bed, her back pressed against the sharp bare springs. Her eyes still tightly shut, she fought with the strength of a very strong man. “Take some of this rope,” said the Bishop. “Wind it around her ankles. Tightly! Tie her feet to the foot of the bed-frame. I'll tie her hands.”

When she had been tied down, her arms and legs spread out in a large human X and the rope biting into the flesh of her ankles and wrists, Gregory looked down upon her and thought, with sadness:
the rack
. Stretched and bound to the stark iron bedframe, twisting with the unknown inner torture, she looked like a victim in some medieval dungeon, put to the rack for the slow breaking of her body.

Her body will not be broken here, thought Gregory; her limbs will not be stretched, her tendons will not be torn, her bones will not be disjointed; but here on this rack, what vital thing of her might be broken instead? Her mind? And is it possible for even a soul to be broken? To be snapped and sundered into fragments and sent whirling into eternal blackness? There are things worse than death, he had reminded the Bishop. And there is a breaking worse than the breaking of bones.

The Bishop's face was shining with sweat. “Go on to the Psalm,” he told Gregory.

Gregory opened the book of rituals and read:

“Let the Lord rise up! And let His enemies be scattered! And let those flee from His face who hate him!”

Gregory held out his hand. Into it the Bishop placed a heavy crucifix. Gregory thrust it aloft.

“Behold the Cross of the Lord and flee, ye adverse ones!”

From Susan's lips came a low groan, the groan of long sickness.

The Bishop, needing no book, took up the response:

“O Lion of the tribe of Judea, Root of David, be Thou victorious!”

Gregory read:
“Let the mercy of the Lord fall upon us!”

“We shall ever place our trust in Thee,”
said the Bishop.

Now the sounds coming from Susan were growls, beast growls of hate and terror. Though her eyes remained closed, her lips began to twist and stretch away from her grinding teeth in an expression of repelling ugliness.

“Oh dear God,” whispered Mrs. Farley, backing away from the bed. “Dear God, look at her face . . . look at her face! She's like an animal. God save us . . . God save us all . . .”

Gregory read:
“We exorcise you—”

A howl ripped the air; the howl of a martyr who has taken an impaling stake deep into her guts.

“We exorcise you, every unclean spirit, every Satanic power—”

And then she spoke:

“Stop this.” A coarse, low-pitched rasp. “Stop this mockery.” Her eyes did not open.

Hearing the interruption but not heeding it, welcoming it as a sign of progress but fearing it, Gregory read on:

“. . . every inroad of the Infernal Adversary, every legion, every congregation and diabolical sect, in the Name and virtue of Our Lord Jesus Christ—”

As Gregory paused only long enough to make the sign of the cross, the voice that issued from Susan's lips asked a question:

“Who is this whose voice tears at my fibres?”

“. . . vanish and disappear from the Church of God, from the souls made in the Image of God and redeemed by the Precious Blood of the Divine Lamb . . .”

Again, Gregory made the sign of the cross, and again the voice from Susan spoke:

“Who tortures me?
Who dares?”

Gregory looked up from the book. He saw the twitching, straining girl, the ugly face distorted with the snarl of fear.

Now, for the first time since the beginning of the ceremony, the girl's eyes opened. As the lids slowly and portentously lifted, Gregory saw that the eyes under them did not have to look about or focus or adjust in any way, even for an instant; they were looking directly into his own, as if they had been looking into them all the time, even under the closed lids. And they were blazing with insane hatred.

“INSOLENT WRETCH!” she shouted.

Gregory felt tempted to depart from strict liturgy and talk directly to the girl. He knew better, however, and patiently finished out the ritual, up to and including the final prayer and the sprinkling of the room with holy water. Several times during this, the girl's piercing objections drowned out his words, but still he kept stubbornly on to the end.

When it was over, the bound creature again asked, “Who does this? What creature dares? What is his cursed name?”

“What matters,” said Gregory, “what matters only, is
your
name.”

“My
name—” And then she caught herself, and burst into hideous laughter. “Ah,” she said at last, “that is for you to discover.”

“Who are you?”

The voice spoke in a travesty of innocence. “I? Who am I? Why, you know who I am. I am just a little girl. A sweet little
girl. A little girl with flaxen hair. A child, I am a child, a pure unsullied little child.” And then she burst into laughter again.

“A child,” echoed Gregory.

“A child.”

“A pure child, you say; an unsullied child . . .”

“Pure as the driven snow,” she said in a chant, “spotless, without stain . . .”

“Without stain,” Gregory repeated, and then asked, “Are you the same child, the same pure, spotless child
who made advances toward Father Halloran?
”

“LIES!” she shouted. “ALL LIES!”

“Lies, you say?”

“Yes, every word! Lies!” Then, craftily. “You believe me, don't you?”

Gregory reached for a chair which he placed next to the bed. He sat down. “Suppose you tell me all about it,” he said, kindly. “In your own way.”

“In my own way . . .” The blazing eyes narrowed, and their gaze flickered across the ceiling. “But such things will not make you happy. I doubt if you would even understand them.”

“Why not?”

“What do you know of these things? You are not a man. You are a priest.”

“I am a priest,” said Gregory. “I am a man.”

“And what is that?” she said with a laugh. “What is that thing, a man? Can you tell me?” Gregory was silent. “No? Ah, then you will let me tell you. Listen . . .” She began to whisper hoarsely, and Gregory had to lean forward to hear her. “A man,” she whispered slowly and precisely, “is a pile of dung, created in the image of dung, and his whole wretched span is spent in search of other dung to bury himself in.” She laughed silently, her body shaken with it. When the paroxysm had passed, she went on, in a stronger voice. “And this—this merging of dung—he calls by beautiful names. He calls it Love! He calls it Rapture! He calls it Ecstasy! He calls it many things, all beautiful. But—” and now her voice sank to a whisper again and she hissed confidentially into Gregory's ear “—he is a liar. There is nothing beautiful about it, or about him. It is all dung.”

“And you,” whispered Gregory. “Are you dung?”

“Why, of course. I am human, am I not? A little girl. A little girl with filthy desires.” And she yelled: “DUNG!”

Gregory recoiled from the shout in his ear. Susan laughed. Irritated, he pushed away the chair and opened the book again.

“Oh, lovely!” the girl mocked. “Going to read to me again? How sweet!”

Gregory started the ritual again from the beginning. She did not interrupt him until he came to the words:
“Do not dare, stubborn serpent, to deceive mankind . . .”

“Mankind is dung,” she said.

“. . . nor to persecute the Church . . .”

“The Church is a dungheap, a congregation of dung.”

“. . . nor to trouble and roil God's elect as if they were chaff in the wind . . .”

“
Dung
in the wind!”

Crossing himself again, he read:
“God the Father commands you . . .”

“Father of dung!”

Again the cross, as he read:
“God the Son commands you . . .”

“Son of filthy dung!”

Again the cross:
“God the Holy Spirit commands you . . .”

And now the girl said, “Stop.”

“Christ,”
Gregory went on, crossing himself yet again,
“the Eternal Word made Flesh, commands you . . .”

“Stop!” she said, louder.

“The Sacrament of the Cross commands you,”
read Gregory, making again the sign of that cross.

“Stop,
stop
, STOP!” the girl screamed. “WHAT DO YOU WANT?”

(Thus, thought Gregory, the wretches in the dungeons screamed with the wedges pounded into their bodies, when they could endure no more.)

And something like that must have struck Mrs. Farley, as well, for the woman went down on her knees to hear the girl's cries of agony. “Oh, Father!” she wept. “Oh, dear Father Gregory! The child . . . the child is in fearful torment. Must you go on?”

Gregory stood immobile.

“Must you hurt her more?” wept Mrs. Farley.

“Go on, Gregory,” said the Bishop.

“I—” Gregory started to talk, but could not.

“Go
on,”
said the Bishop.

Gregory suddenly turned and left the room. The Bishop followed him. In the hall, they carried on a swift conversation of harsh whispers.

“But did you see her, did you
see
her?” said Gregory. “How can I go on?”

“You must!”

“Must, must! All right, if it must be done,
you
go on!” He held the book out to the Bishop, who hesitated to take it. “Yes—
you
go on, if you dare gamble with her sanity, with her life. Here, take it! Take the book! Do you dare?”

“Dare?”
The Bishop, with one sharp movement, dashed the book to the floor. “I would dare
all
. I would dare all that is in my power to grasp. You ask me if I would dare,
me?
I am no doubter. I am no mincer of words.
I am no coward
.”

They stood in the hall, the air echoing with the anger of their unwittingly raised voices. They did not move. Their eyes were locked.

Then from the bedroom, they heard Susan's evil laugh. It was impossible to mistake it. It was a laugh of triumph.

It broke the deadlock. Gregory bent down and retrieved the book. He dusted it off, then walked wearily into the bedroom, and the Bishop followed him.

Standing over the girl, Gregory opened the book and turned the pages. Having found his place, he suddenly closed the book and put it down. The Bishop watched him closely.

Negation,
thought Gregory. It rolls from this girl, this thing, in chilling waves. He remembered the line uttered by Goethe's Mephistopheles: “I am the spirit that denies,” and he remembered, too, the Opera House in Rome where, many years before, he had seen Boito's operatic distillation of Goethe, with a basso of eardrum-rattling resonance—his face a saturnine mask of grease paint and putty—singing that same line:
Son spirito che nega,
the words sliding ominously downward as if the music were being dragged into Hell's pit. And the repeated word
No,
sung against a chord-change so sudden it was as if a trap door had been sprung under the listener.

So, Gregory thought as he looked down upon Susan Garth, you too are a spirit that denies, are you? So you too fling that syllable
No
at me, drowning me in negation and nay-saying and doubt. Well, we'll see about that. Let's have a
Yes
from you for a change, let's have a positive statement, unequivocal information. Let's have the truth.

“Who are you?” he asked. His voice was flat and tired.

“You have already asked that question,” she replied.

“Who are you?” he repeated, with no change of tone.

The mock-innocent voice was assumed again, as she said in a sing-song: “My name is Susan Garth. I am sixteen years old. I am a student at Sacred Heart High School. I live at—”

“MOTHER OF GOD!” roared Gregory.

No one spoke in the little room. It seemed as if no one breathed. Gregory's shadow was tall on the wall, and steady, for the candleflames flickered not a mite: each flame was like a little sculpture, long and thin and pointed. Then some eddy rippled them slightly, and the shadows wobbled, and the spell was broken.

But still no one spoke. The Bishop pleaded in a hushed voice, “Gregory, please go on.”

Gregory nodded.

“In the name of Jesus,” he said, in an all but inaudible tone that grew louder with each phrase, “and His most Blessed Mother, Mary the Immaculate, who crushed the head of the serpent—”

His hand swung out, grasped the crucifix and held it high.

“—tell me the truth!”

Susan snickered: “‘What is truth?' said jesting Pilate—” But her voice, under the veneer of mockery, trembled with terror.

“Who are you?”
Gregory thundered, relentlessly.
“What are you? What is your name?”