Baal

Chapter 8

IN MOTTLED SHADOWS cast by the late-afternoon sun, Father Robson thrust his hands into his pockets and walked the orphanage grounds. He had completed what little paperwork he could concentrate on and finally, after filing it away in his office, emerged to breathe the crisp fall air that smelled of cold Canadian winds and leaves burning in Albany backyards. The Bible he had locked securely away in a safe.
He studied the ground as he walked. Above him wind suddenly swept through the brilliant trees and showered him with leaves that clung briefly to his coat before falling to the ground.
In his years with the orphanage, in his years as a man who observed the mentality of children, he had never before encountered anything like this. The child's hatred, the name he had chosen, his savage unnatural intelligence, the scorched handprint: perhaps they were, he thought, beyond any experience. There had been a child a few years before whose hatred was similar; this had been a child of the streets who had learned early to fight for his survival. He had hated everything and everybody. Father Robson could understand his motivation; in the instance of Jeffrey Harper Raines, or Baal or whatever, there was no simple explanation. Perhaps there was a persecution complex that manifested itself in anger, a desire to strike out, but that scorched handprint across the book... ? No, there was no explanation.
He'd kept the incident to himself. After he'd composed himself in the ravaged library he calmly put as many books as he could back into their proper places. He would talk later with the librarian about the books that needed to be replaced. He had returned to his office with the Bible underneath his arm. And after lighting a cigarette, he sat staring at the handprint until his vision was clouded by smoke.
Now, walking the grounds, he decided he could not yet tell Father Dunn. He would have to begin a quiet examination of the child; then, when his findings were complete, some explanation might offer itself. But until that moment arrived the questions were knots that ate at his guts.
As he crossed the paved parking area toward the administration building someone reached out a pale hand from the shadow of a tree and grasped his arm.
He whirled to face a woman in black. One of the sisters. "Oh!" he said, recognizing her. "Sister Rosamond."
"I'm sorry. Is something bothering you? I saw you walking..."
"No, no." He kept his head down. They walked together, two figures in flowing black, along the line of trees. "Aren't you cold? The wind's coming up."
She walked in silence. Ahead loomed the dark structure of the orphanage; lights in the windows made it seem like some kind of great dark bulldog, watching them with hooded eyes, crouched on powerful hind legs. "I overheard you and the Raines child in the library this afternoon," she said after a moment. "I didn't mean to be listening."
Father Robson nodded. She glanced over and saw the deep creases in his face, the spider-web lines around his cautious eyes. He said, "I don't know how to deal with this child. Over a hundred children here and I can handle all of them. All of them. But this one? No. I don't even think he wants any help."
"I think he does. Down deep, perhaps."
He grunted. "Buried maybe. Well. You've been with us two months now. Is this what you expected?"
"Yes, it is."
"Working with orphans appeals to you?"
She smiled, thinking that his psychologist's curiosity was working overtime. He returned her smile but his eyes were intent and watchful. "I'm attracted to them because of their helplessness," she said. "They need a shoulder on which to lean and I enjoy providing that shoulder. I couldn't bear the thought of them turned out in the world with nowhere to go."
"And yet many of them would prefer the street to being here," he said.
"Because they're still afraid of us. It's very difficult to shake our image of severe, black-robed instructors who strike rulers across the palms of children."
Father Robson nodded, intrigued by her passionate criticism of the sisterhood's past. "Agreed. You overheard the Raines child this afternoon; would you say a ruler across the palm would work in his case?"
"No."
"What, then?"
"Respect and understanding. He has a human core but it's going to take a great deal of effort to uncover it."
Yes, Father Robson thought, like digging with a pickaxe. "You seem to be interested in him. Are you?"
"Yes," she said without hesitation, "I am, and I don't know why." She glanced over at the man. "He seems so out of place here."
"Oh?"
"All the others are simply helpless, drifting; you can see it in their eyes. Jeffrey is different. His eyes reflect, to me, some sort of purpose, something he wants to keep hidden from any of us. If you ask any of the other children what they might like to become when they grow up you'll get the usual answers: firemen, detectives, things like that. But Jeffrey never says anything because for some reason he doesn't want us to know."
Father Robson nodded. "Good observation. Very good."
They neared the broad porch of the orphanage. Father Robson stopped walking and she looked at him.
"Would you like to help me?" he asked. "Jeffrey is not going to communicate with me at all. He's shut the door on me. I need someone who can talk with him, who can find out what's troubling him. I'd appreciate it very much if you would look in on him from time to time, as your schedule permits."
"Something torments him," she said. "He frightens me."
"I think he frightens everyone."
"Do you feel he's... mentally unbalanced?"
"I can't say. I need more information and that's where you can do me a great favor."
"Why do you think he might respond to me?"
"He came with you to the library, didn't he? Believe me, if you'd been Sister Miriam the best you could've hoped for was a curse or a rock. Anything but obedience."
The wind disturbed fallen leaves around their feet, making them crackle with the sound of a sudden brushfire. "Yes," she said, the lights from windows shining across her face. "I'll try to make some sort of contact with him."
"Good," he said. "I'd appreciate it very much. I'll say goodnight, then." He smiled at her and started back toward his office, wishing that he could have told her more, and damning himself for bringing her into this. He turned and said, "Be careful he doesn't... bite you," and then he disappeared into the deepening shadows.
She watched until she could no longer see him. On the ground before her was a yellow square of light, streaming from a window on the third floor, the floor that served as a dormitory for the children. She was abruptly jolted from her dreamy state of mind and stared at the square of light as a new gust of whirling leaves blew past. She thought she had seen someone move away from the window; a shadow had swept across the light at her feet. She walked out into the yard and looked up at the window as the wind wrenched violently at her habit. The curtains were open but no one was there. She shivered, thinking how cold the air had suddenly become, and climbed the steps to the doorway.
Sister Rosamond had almost seen him where he stood watching from the window. He had seen both of them, Sister Rosamond and Father Robson, as they approached across the grounds. He had watched as they spoke, surrounded by a swirling carpet of leaves. They had been talking about him. Father Robson would have been intrigued by what he'd done to the book; he was a stupid man, the child thought, who believed himself intelligent. And Sister Rosamond was no better, she thought herself a guiding angel of mercy when she was nothing but a whore in holy black.
He stood amid the rows of metal-framed bunk beds, cluttered with clothes and toys and comic books. He stood staring into the night that fell like the blow of an axe.
Behind him one of the sisters called in a shrill voice, "Jeffrey! Aren't you going downstairs for your dinner?"
He remained motionless. In another moment he heard her walk heavily through the corridor and down the staircase. Then the only sounds were of the wind and the muffled voices of the children, downstairs in the dining hall.
From the other end of the room someone, a child, said, "Baal?"
He turned slowly and saw that it was Peter Francis, a pale-fleshed, frail child who walked with an aggravated limp from an accident as an infant. The child, his eyes wide and pleading, made his way through the tangle of beds toward Baal.
Peter said, "You haven't talked to me today, Baal. Have I done something wrong?"
Baal said nothing.
"I have? What have I done?"
Baal said softly, "Come here."
The child approached, fear swimming in his eyes like darting red fish in dark waters.
Baal said, "You almost told, didn't you?"
"No! I swear I didn't! Whoever told you that is a liar! I swear I didn't!"
"I was told by someone who did not lie. He never lies to me. You almost told Sister Miriam, didn't you?"
Peter saw Baal's eyes change, from a thick terrible black through gray and on to a burning, uncontrollable red that froze his blood and scorched his flesh at the same time. He shuddered and, in a mindless panic, looked about for help before realizing that everyone, the children and the sisters, was now downstairs in the dining hall. He was beyond help. Baal's eyes became as red as pooling blood; they became white-hot, like molten steel.
Peter said, "I swear she made me! She wanted to know all about you and everything! She wanted to know about you and she said she could trust me!"
The power and heat from those eyes made his tongue bloat like a frog in a stagnant pond; it filled his mouth so he could do nothing but blubber unintelligibly. He tried desperately to cry out for the sisters, for anyone who would hear him, but the words were strangled in his throat.
Baal said, "I've seen your records, Peter. Did you know that? Yes, I have. They keep them in a dark cave beneath this place. I broke in there once and read all the records. Do you know how you got that limp, Peter?"
"No..." - the child choked - "... please..." He fell to his knees and wrapped his arms around Baal's legs, but the other stepped back quickly and let him drop forward. Peter whimpered, waiting for the crack of the whip.
"They never told you, did they?" Baal whispered. "Then remember, Peter... remember... remember."
"No... please..."
"Yesssss. Remember. They never wanted you at all, did they, Peter? And your father - your drunken old father - picked you up... remember?"
"No..." He held his hands over his ears and crouched down on the floor. In his mind's eye he saw a man with a leering crooked grin and red-veined eyes lifting him up. Then, with a harsh and desperate curse, the man threw him at a blank white expanse that would have looked like snow but for the cracks. And then falling falling with a searing pain in his hip and a smear of red across the white. "No!" he screamed aloud, feeling again the pain of broken bones tearing through infant flesh.
Peter sobbed on the floor, holding his hands over his ears but knowing that alone would not stop the pain.
"That never... that never happened... happened," he sobbed brokenly, in heaving shudders. "It never did..."
Baal reached out and savagely clutched the child's face in one hand; until the flesh was white, the eyes devoid of hope. "It happened," Baal said, "if I say it did. You are mine now. I have your past and your future."
Peter was hunched over, his crying now without tears or noise.
Slowly, the red intensity drained from Baal's eyes and they went back to the deep black of a bottomless cavern. His fierce grip softened; he stroked the child as one would stroke a dog after whipping it. "No, Peter, now you can forget those things that harmed you. You're safe. They can't reach you here."
The child grasped Baal's legs. "They can't? They can't?" he asked through swollen, blubbering lips.
"No. Those shadows are gone. If you belong to me they can never reach you."
"I do... I do..."
"Peter," Baal said softly, "Sister Miriam must not know. No one must know except us. If they find out they'll try to kill us. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"And if Sister Miriam - if anyone asks about me you must not tell them. I want you to stay away from Sister Miriam. When she speaks to you again you will not even answer. She is evil, Peter. She can bring the shadows back."
The child at his feet tensed. "No!"
"It's all right now," Baal said. "It's all right. Stand up."
The child stood on trembling legs. One tear hung, ready to drop, from the point of his chin. Peter looked up sharply, over Baal's shoulder and past him, and Baal stood as motionless as if he had suddenly turned to stone. Someone was standing behind them; someone had been there for several moments, watching.
Baal turned to gaze at Sister Rosamond in the corridor doorway, her arms hanging limply by her sides and her face questioning. He had been too engrossed with Peter to sense her there.
"Jeffrey?" she asked. "You didn't come down for your dinner. I wanted to see if anything was wrong." There was the faintest tremor in her voice, an uncertainty in the eyes.
"Peter... stumbled and hurt himself," Baal said. He held his hand beneath the child's chin to catch in his palm the falling teardrop. He offered the glistening intact tear to Sister Rosamond. "He's been crying. You see?"
"Yes," she said. "I see. Peter, are you all right? Are you hurt?"
"I'm okay," he said, wiping his face with a shirtsleeve. "I tripped over something."
She moved closer so she could see the two boys clearly beneath the globe lights that studded the ceiling. She said, "You're going to miss your dinner, Peter. Go downstairs now and eat."
"Yes, ma'am," he said obediently, and with a final glance over his shoulder at Baal he went past Sister Rosamond. In another moment they heard him descending the corridor staircase.
"I'm missing my dinner too," Baal said. "I'd better go."
"No," she said quickly.
He looked her fully in the face, his eyes narrowing. "Isn't that what you're here for? To ask me to come downstairs to dinner?"
"That's why I came here, yes. But I saw you and Peter. And I know he didn't fall."
"Didn't I say he fell?"
"I was standing there watching, Jeffrey."
"Then perhaps," Baal whispered, so low she had to strain to hear, "your eyes are at fault."
She realized that her breathing had quickened. She felt suddenly cold though the window was closed. The window; yes. This was the window she'd seen from the ground. She rubbed her eyes because they'd filled with water; her eyes stung as if she had rinsed them in sea brine. She said, "My eyes..."
"Perhaps your vision is fading, Sister," Baal said. "Surely your sweet Jesus would not rob the sight of one of his ladies-in-waiting?"
The pain was increasing. She gasped, pushing her palms against her eye sockets. When she took her hands away she found that her vision was hazy, confused, as if what she saw was reflected by fun-house mirrors. Where the child's head should have been there was an intense white glow like the globe lights on the ceiling. She blinked, water fell from her lashes. I've gotten something in my eyes, she thought. Some dust or something. When I wash them with water they'll be all right. But the pain... "My eyes," she said aloud, and her trembling voice shamed her as it echoed off the walls.
She reached out both arms to feel her path through the beds and toward the doorway. But his hand clamped itself firmly around her wrist. He would not let her go.
Through the murky tears she saw him step forward and felt him run his fingers lightly across her eyelids; she felt a strange heat that, penetrating her skull, seemed to burn at the back of her head.
"There is no need to be afraid," he told her. "Not now."
She blinked her eyes.
She was standing on a street corner. No, it was a bus stop. Around her the city was absorbing the blue tinge of early evening. Lights, garish neon, flickering bulbs, hot white, gleamed off mounds of dirty snow piled in gutters and around alleyways. She was dressed not in the black habit but, instead, in a long dark coat and dark gloves. She knew what she wore under the coat. A dark blue dress with a striped belt. Her birthday present.
Christopher stood beside her. He blew into his hands to warm them. His eyes, normally so carefree and laughing, now were as cold as the bitter February wind that sliced across the avenue. He said, "This is a hell of a time to tell me. Jesus Christ what a time to tell me!"
"I'm sorry, Chris," she said, and instantly chided herself because she had said she was sorry so many times. She was tired of explaining her decision. In the last few days she had had endless long-distance telephone conversations, tearful ones, with her parents in Hartford. They had finally, she hoped, come to understand the reasons for her decision. Now this man with whom she had fallen in and out of love again and again demanded once more to know why.
"I was hoping you would understand," she said. "I really thought you would."
"Is it that you feel useless or something? Do I make you feel useless? Is that it?"
"No," she said, and inwardly winced. Yes, that was part of it. The love she felt for him was for the most part physical. Emotionally and intellectually, she had come to realize, he left her untouched. "There are things I want to do that perhaps I can do by making this vow. We've talked about this before, Chris. You know we have."
"Talked about it, yes. Talked about it. But now you've actually contacted them and you're going to go through with it? I mean, hell, that's putting your neck in the rope, isn't it?"
"Rope? I don't consider it a rope. I consider it an opportunity."
He shook his head and kicked at a frozen mound of snow with one foot. "Right. Right. An opportunity. Listen, you want to be an old lady in a convent somewhere? You want to give up everything? You want to give up... us?"
She turned around and looked directly into his face. My God, she thought. He's actually serious. "I have decided," she said flatly, "that my life belongs to me."
"To throw away," he said.
"I will take the vows because I believe in some small way I can do something for someone else. I've been considering this for quite some time and it is the right choice to make."
He stood looking at her to see if she would suddenly start laughing and nudge him in the ribs to let him know this was all a joke. He mumbled, "I don't understand. You don't have to run from anything."
She glanced up the avenue. Her bus, its tires throwing slush, had made its turn and would be there shortly. "I am not running from anything, Chris. I'm running toward something."
"I don't understand," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "I never knew anybody who wanted to be a nun before."
Her bus came closer and slowed. She could hear the crunch of the tires on packed gutter snow. She had her fare ready, as she always did, clutched tightly in her hand. Christopher kept his head down, seemingly absorbed by the pattern the dirty slush made as it ran through a sewer grating. She unconsciously jingled the coins in her hand.
He looked up suddenly. "I'll marry you. Is that what you want? Really. I mean it. I'll marry you."
The bus braked to a halt. The doors hissed open and the driver peered out at her.
She stepped up into the bus.
"I'll marry you," he said again. "I'll call you tonight, Rose. Okay? We'll get together for a little while. Okay?"
She dropped her coins into the fare box; they fell like shells exploding on some foreign battlefield. Behind her the doors closed, cutting off his voice as surely as if they were cutting off his head. When she sat down and the bus pulled away from the curb, she looked back again and saw Christopher standing in a floating white cloud of bus exhaust.
The child dropped his hand from her eyes; no, not the child. Christopher. She saw him standing beneath the harsh white light of the ceiling globes. Christopher smiling, his eyes clear and untroubled. He'd come to see her! After all this time he'd finally found her!
Baal's hand fell to his side. Slowly her vision cleared until she recognized his black, slitted eyes. Her breath was forced and rasping, her flesh cold as if she had just stepped indoors from the snow.
He said, "You should have married him. You broke his heart, Sister. He would have been good for you."
No, no, she screamed inwardly. This is not happening. "He didn't understand what I needed," she said weakly. "Not really."
"That's a shame," Baal said, "because he loved you so much. And now it's just too late."
"What?" she asked, her head throbbing. "What?"
"Didn't you know? That's why he never looked for you. That's why he never called your parents to find you. He's dead, Sister. He was killed in an automobile accident - "
Her hand went to her mouth. She choked.
" - that mangled him horribly. Oh you wouldn't have recognized him, the way he was. He had to be cut... piece by piece... out of his car."
"You're lying!" she screamed. "You're lying!"
"Then why," Baal asked, "do you believe me?"
"My parents would have called and told me. You're lying!" Clapping her hand over her mouth because she knew her lips were as white, as brittle as dried bones, she backed away from him toward the corridor. And she saw him grinning and the grin became a wide smile on Christopher's face. Christopher held out his arms for her and said in a soft, distant voice, "Rose? I'm here. I know how much you need me now. And I need you, darling. I keep falling asleep at the wheel." She screamed, a long thin scream that cracked and left her throat raw, and bolted from the dormitory into the corridor. As she ran down the stairway, her habit flowing, her feet missing stairs, she saw the faces of the sisters looking up the stairwell at her. They were whispering.
She stopped to steady herself, her hands gripping the banister to prevent a fall as a thick wave of nausea suddenly shuddered its way through her. Am I going insane? she wondered. Am I going insane? Her hands were clenched so tightly around the banister she could see the blood as it raced through the veins toward her wildly pumping heart.