The Devil Will Come (19 page)

Soul Survivor

Winter had finally loosened its death grip on the city, and Spring was in the air. The sun shone brightly, gentle breezes blew through the trees, and the suburban lawns were finally starting to look more green than brown. Outside the house at 441 Chestnut Street, birds were probably singing, but I can’t say for sure— we had the windows tightly closed, so that all the screaming, shouting, and cursing wouldn’t frighten the neighbors.

It was a beautiful day for an exorcism.

We’d been at it for about nine hours, and things seemed to be going okay, if I’m any judge— and I guess I should be. I’ve assisted at five of these things over the years. Five, not counting this one— the one that went bad.

I’m a private investigator, not a priest. But the diocese likes me to be around when these things go down. We have an arrangement that goes back quite a long time.

Like I said, the ritual had been proceeding pretty much the way you’d expect. We’d gone through the Invocation, and the Naming, and we were into the third series of prayers of the Denunciation.

Then Father Dwyer dropped his crucifix, and the whole thing went to shit.

* * *

So I’m pretty new to the private eye business, in the game for a little less than a year. At twenty-three, you’re full of piss and vinegar, if not exactly good sense. That probably explains why I decide to kick open the door of that warehouse where the kidnapped kid is being held, instead of waiting outside for the cops, who I’ve just called from a pay phone.

So I go charging in there, waving my Colt .38 around like it was some kind of talisman, only to find that there are a few more kidnappers than the two I was expecting. Four more, to be exact. And these guys are all so well armed you’d think they were planning to invade Bolivia.

Shots are exchanged, as they say on TV— quite a few shots, before the cops finally show up. A couple of the kidnappers are seriously wounded, and things don’t work out too good for me, either.

There’s a line Wild Bill Hickok used to say at the end of some of his tall tales, like the one he’d tell about the time he was surrounded by 200 hostile Comanches and had just run out of ammo. He’d pause, and wait for somebody to ask “Well, what happened, Bill?” Then he’d say, “Well, boys, they kilt me!”

Which is pretty much what they did in that warehouse. Kill me, I mean.

* * *

Dropping the crucifix isn’t really a big deal during an exorcism. I mean, it isn’t like you have to start over, or anything. Normally, the priest just picks the thing up, wipes it off if need be, and continues with the ritual.

But Father Dwyer had let his crucifix fall onto the chest of our possession victim, a middle-aged guy named Arthur Dillard. He was tied hand and foot to the bedposts, of course. Demons always resist being cast back into Hell, and they’ll hurt you if you give them the chance.

Rule number one: don’t give them the chance.

Dwyer broke the rule.

Not his fault, really. An exorcism is incredibly stressful on everybody involved, and nine hours of it is enough to make anybody pretty damn tired. Tired, and maybe careless.

As Dwyer bent forward to retrieve his cross, it occurred to me that he was getting dangerously close to our victim. I was about to yell a warning when the demon inside Dillard made its move.

* * *

As I find out later on, one of the cops responding to the warehouse knows CPR. Took the Red Cross course and everything. Although he can’t find a heartbeat, he keeps my systems going through a combination of mouth-to-mouth and chest compression.

The ambulance shows up quick, for a change, and it’s a short ride to the nearest hospital.

Where I proceed to die in the emergency ward.

That stuff you hear about dying— the white light, the sense of floating above your own body— it’s all true. In my case, the light gradually seems to be getting closer, or maybe I’m drawing closer to it, I don’t know. I can hear voices, too, and they sound familiar somehow, but I can’t quite make out what they’re saying.

“Well, if this is what checking out’s like,” I think, “it ain’t so bad, really.”

But it turns out the doctor running the trauma team hates to lose. Just
hates
it. So he keeps the rest of them trying things on me for several minutes after the EKG machine is showing flatline.

And damned if he doesn’t pull it off.

The white light starts to recede, and the pleasant voices in my head get fainter. The next voice I hear sounds a lot closer: it’s some woman yelling, “Doctor, we’ve got a heartbeat!”

They tell me later that I damn near beat the record, the length of time I was gone. And the fact that I came back without brain damage or some other major impairment is considered a miracle all by itself.

Of course, it turns out there
is
one major impairment, but nobody knows about that at the time, including me.

Everybody in the ER is eighteen kinds of happy about how they brought me back from the dead. The doctors and nurses on the trauma team are all grinning, exchanging high fives, all that.

Nobody ever asks me how I feel about it.

* * *

The demon possessing Arthur Dillard must have noticed fairly early on the flaw in the piece of rope that was tying Dillard’s right hand to the bed post. It felt the weakness, and waited.

Demons know all there is to know about waiting. They’ve had a lot of practice.

And they can move like lightning, when they want to.

Before I could even twitch, the demon had broken the rope and grabbed Dwyer by the back of the neck, gripping with the strength the damned often impart to their victims. By the time I came around the big bed, it had shaken Father Dwyer the way a terrier shakes a rat— and with the same result.

Dwyer, his neck broken, was probably dead before the demon let him fall to the floor.

The first thing I did was use my handcuffs to re-secure Stimson’s freed hand to the bedpost. The demon probably could have fought me over that and won, but I move pretty fast myself, and it wasn’t ready. It had assumed that, like any normal, sentimental human, I would run to Dwyer immediately, to try and help him.

I had counted on that assumption.

I mean, sure, I had liked Dwyer well enough. We’d worked together a couple of times before. But I knew he was either dead or dying. I figured the best thing I could do for him was to salvage what I could of the task he’d been trying to accomplish.

Trouble was, I didn’t know what to do next.

* * *

I’m still in the hospital, recovering from the gunshot wounds and my cancelled trip to the Pearly Gates, when the Archbishop comes to see me.

I don’t know him by sight, of course. For me, he’s just some guy wearing a black priest suit with the funny collar, although I do notice the red skullcap he has on. So he introduces himself. Archbishop Anthony Costello, and I’m betting to myself that nobody ever calls him “Tony.”

He pulls a chair up next to my bed without waiting for an invitation. “How are you feeling, Mister McBride? Or may I call you Tom?”

“Call me anything you like, within reason.” I try to shrug, and immediately wish I hadn’t, since it hurts so much. “Not bad, I guess. Some of the nurses are pretty, and I get all the dope I want.”

He leans a little closer, looking very serious. “What I meant was, how are you feeling, uh, spiritually?”

I just look at him. “Aren’t you a little too important to be making sick calls to lapsed Catholics? The chaplain’s already been around, and I told him I wasn’t in the market.”

“Yes, I’ve heard as much. Regrettable, but your privilege, of course. However, this isn’t a sick call, in the usual meaning of the term.”

“What, then?”

“Mister McBride, did you know that you were clinically dead for several minutes, shortly after arriving at the hospital?”

“Yeah, so they tell me. I’m supposed to be one for the record books. No offense, but what do you care?”

He looks at his hands for a few seconds. “It’s important because of an old and rather obscure church teaching that says a person who is truly dead and then returns to life may, under certain circumstances…
lose
something in the process of coming back.”

Something a lot colder than the night nurse’s fingers starts working its way down my spine. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, man. All I lost was a few pints of blood, and they’ve already replaced those.”

“No, I’m talking about something even more important than blood. Considering the length of time that you were wavering between this world and the next, I’m afraid there’s a very good chance that you may have become separated from….” His voice trails off, and he looks away.

I sit up a little, even though it hurts like a bastard. “Your Eminence, or whatever your title is, you are really starting to piss me off. Separated from
what
?”

He’s looking at me again now, and it’s when I see the genuine pity in his face, that I start to get really frightened— even before says quietly, “Your soul.”

* * *

The demon inside Arthur Dillard looked at me pensively. “I’ve got a wonderful idea about what you should do,” it said.

“What, go fuck myself?” I produced a tight smile and shook my head. “Tried that as a kid. It didn’t work then, and I’m even less limber now.”

“No, what I was thinking is that you should let me go. There are other sensations I want to experience with this body, and I can’t pursue them while tied to this ridiculous bed. So why don’t you turn me loose, and we’ll call it quits between us?”

“You don’t even expect me to say yes to that, do you?”

“Why not? You can’t continue the
exorcism
—” it sneered the word “— yourself. You’re not a
priest
.” Another sneer.

“You’re right, I’m not. But there are other priests available. One of them will finish the work of sending you back.”

“But I don’t
want
to go back,” it said, as if explaining things to an idiot. “So, I prefer not to wait for the next delegation of shamans to shake their rattles and feathers over me. That’s why you’re going to set this body I’m using free.”

“Why am I going to do that?”

“Because you’re intelligent— for a human. And you realize there are only two choices here.”

“I do, huh?”

“Yes, Eve-spawn, you do. Either you turn loose this body I’m currently occupying, or….”

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll take yours, which is fortunately free of fetters.” It grinned at me. “I hope you appreciated the alliteration.”

I shook my head again. “You won’t possess me,” I said, as calmly as I could manage.

“What’s to stop me? That worthless crucifix you’re holding? It didn’t save the late Father Fuckface over there.”

I put the crucifix down, reverently, on top of a nearby bureau. “No, you won’t possess me because you haven’t got the guts to do it. You’re all bluff and brimstone— and I hope you liked
that
alliteration, shithead.”

It’s not often you see a demon taken aback. “You dare to taunt me? You miserable thing of clay and spit, you
dare
?”

“Sure, why not?” I took a step closer to the bed. “I figure Arthur Dillard was easy for you. He was an agnostic, wasn’t he? Never prayed, never went to church, his wife says. But you know better than to make a move on a man of real faith, because you realize I’d chew you up and spit you out, like the piece of rotten meat you are.”

The demon made an enraged screech, and then the shit really hit the fan. Arthur Dillard’s body remained in place on the bed, but something
left
it— something I could almost but not quite see, nearly but not quite smell. But I could sense it, nonetheless. It came roaring out of Dillard like a charging leopard, and headed straight toward me.

* * *

It’s about five weeks since Archbishop Costello visited me in the hospital, and now we’re talking again— this time in his office at the Chancery building. He’s got another priest there, too, an old guy named Monsignor Galvin. Costello introduces Galvin as his “resident theologian.”

“You see, Tom,” Galvin says, “the Church has reason to believe that the ‘near-death experiences’ that some people report represent the departure of both the consciousness and the soul from the body. Now, if the biological experience of death is somehow stopped, consciousness can return. But sometimes the soul does not return with it.”

“So where does it go— the soul?” I ask him.

“Most likely to Limbo,” he says. “Not as bad as Hell, of course, but a far cry from the eternal joy of Heaven.”

“So, you guys are telling me that my soul is stuck in Limbo, and there’s nothing I can do about it?”

“Not necessarily,” Galvin says. “God is merciful, Tom, and He listens to the entreaties of those who serve Him.”

“There are means of assistance that Mother Church can offer you,” Costello chimes in. “Indulgences, prayers, other things. You know, tens of thousands of priests around the world offer Mass every day. It wouldn’t be impossible to have your intention included in some, if not all, of those masses— day after day, year after year, for as long as you live. In addition, there are orders of nuns, such as the Poor Claires, who spend much of their time in prayer. They’re amenable to special requests, if they come from the proper quarter.”

I give Costello the stare I used to reserve for door-to-door salesmen. “Don’t think I’m not grateful, okay? But I can’t help wondering why you guys are willing to go to so much trouble for somebody who hasn’t been inside a church for over ten years, apart from weddings and funerals. Pardon me for being blunt, Fathers, but— what’s in it for you?”