William H. Hallahan - (26 page)

The work was stunning. The range of colors covered the spectrum
and the decorated letters contained dozens of illustrations of
animals and birds and people, some so small he must have worked with
a magnifying glass. Brendan wondered how those enormous hands could
draw such delicate lines.

Brother Luke smiled at Brendan. "It's a race between
blindness and the last page of the book."

"Think you'll finish it?"

Luke smiled and shrugged. "If I don't someone else will."

Brendan left him there, his enormous torso bent over the page of
vellum, doing a Zulu warrior's mask. Brendan strolled up and down the
corridors, then went and sat in his room. He thought about his office
and the long line of burnt-out children on the stairs and the phones
ringing and his desk untended. He wondered what Anne was doing. Her
image pained him. What would he do here for the rest of his life?
Knit? Paint? Bake bread?

He thought about living with these nine men, day by day, year
after year. A cardiologist, two stockbrokers, a football player, a
wheat farmer, a travel writer, a Cistercian monk, an electronics
manufacturer and an idle drug head.

And which one, he wondered, was worshiping Satan?
 
 

Later, Brendan had another conference with Brother Matthew in his
bedroom. Matthew suggested that Brendan take his time deciding
whether he wanted to become a monk. "You need a strong calling
to survive the monastic life."

"Do I have a choice?"

"Yes. The Lord always gives man a choice."

Brendan frowned doubtfully. "Give me a list."

"Well. You can stay for safety's sake. But we have no way of
knowing just how safe you'll be even here. You can live as a hermit
in a cave. You can take your chances living in a city."

"I don't see any choice in those three."

"Why don't you make yourself useful around here for a while?
Help with the housekeeping. Get to know the others."

Brother Zen put Brendan to work in the greenhouse, filling
grass-molded planters with loam. "We start springtime in late
January in here," he said. "It's magic." He left
Brendan with a great pile of loam and trays of planters to be filled.
"I must help Beaupréé bake bread."

Bake bread: Brendan couldn't picture himself doing that ever. He
wanted to be back in his city, climbing the stairs to the Wandering
Child offices, facing that unending stream of runaway adolescents. He
wanted Anne O'Casey. He wanted his Aunt Maeve and his family and
Jackie and--

He was in exile. Brother Matthew was right. He did have a choice.
And he wasn't sure he wanted to stay here. Maybe there were some
fates worse than death. Outside the greenhouse, nature was buried
alive in a white sepulcher of snow. And he was also entombed alive in
a monastery. Better a few months or weeks in New York than a few
decades in a monastery.

He worked at a steady pace, grateful to have something to take his
mind off his personal affairs. He filled one pile of trays and began
another. With a shovel and a barrow he got another load of loam from
the head-high pile at the rear of the greenhouse. When the shovel
slid across the concrete floor and into the pile of loam he began to
uncover a series of lines drawn in chalk. Curious, he shoveled away
some more. The damp loam had obliterated most of the lines but there
was something very familiar about what was left. He shoveled still
more until he was sure.

There could be no doubt about it. He was looking at a Tipperary
pentacle, a five-segmented circle, each piece of the pie a different
color with a different occult symbol used by the witches in Ireland
to summon demons. The last time he'd seen one was that summer down at
the seashore when his cousin Bernadette had drawn one in the sand
from her book on demonology. She was terrified when it began to
split.

Someone in the monastery had been summoning a demon. He sat back
on the bench with the small hand trowel and looked at the monastery.
Who in there would want to summon a demon? Then his eyes roved over
the frozen lake, seeking the creature. Was there any connection?

Lunch was the main meal of the day. And this day it was a
Mexican-style paella, stewpots filled with fish, shrimp and lobster.
Hardly an ascetic's bowl of honey and water. Brendan watched them
eating. They were all as individual as fingerprints, and he wondered
anew which one would tamper with demonology. The doctor, the wheat
fanner, the Cistercian monk? His eyes went from face to face. Brother
Luke sat with a box of pens, discussing the relative merits of each
on vellum with Thomas, the former travel writer. Paul, the doctor,
discussed the condition of Brother Matthew's heart with the three
monks Brothers Vincent, Zen and Beaupré; he was not optimistic.
Xavier sat separately and read a book.
Tom Jones
by Fielding.
How improbable. Which one drew a pentacle in the greenhouse and said
magic incantations to raise a demon? In due time he convinced himself
they all could have.

After the meal, when he went back to the potting shed, he noticed
that someone had spilled water on the concrete floor by the pile of
loam and scrubbed away the chalk marks.
 
 

That night at supper, Brother Luke spoke to Brendan in a low
voice. "You know that horse you told me about? The one with the
twisted neck? Now there's a herd of dairy cows that's been killed on
a farm on the other side of the mountain. Same thing. Their heads
were nearly twisted off." His eyes searched Brendan's. "That's
pretty good, twisting a cow's neck. I wouldn't even try to twist her
tail." He pushed his hands into the sleeves of his gown and
watched Brendan eat his soup. "You see that thing that followed
you anymore?"

Brendan nodded. "Yes. Sitting on the ice out there, watching
the monastery."

Brother Luke regarded Brendan with skepticism. It was a strange
war of emotions that roved across his face. "Next time you see
him, call me, okay?"

In the morning there was more news. When Brendan sat down to eat,
a subdued tête-à-tête was going on. Luke told him another herd of
six cattle had been killed, all with their necks broken.

"They discovered some six-toed footprints," he said. "Is
that what you saw?"

Brendan found all eyes regarding him. No one spoke.

"That's what I saw," he said.

"How come it didn't twist your neck?" Brother Thomas
asked.

Brendan shrugged. "Maybe it's afraid of sinners."

No one smiled.
 
 

That afternoon, Brother Matthew's life reached a crisis: The
founder of the monastery was dying. And Brother Paul hurried into his
room with his medical bag. Shortly later the door opened and all the
monks were invited in. After looking at the grave expression on
Paul's face, no one spoke. Matthew lay gasping. After beating
twenty-five years longer than it should have, the former
stockbroker's heart was exhausted. His eyes were bright and desperate
as he looked at the nine faces ranged around him. "I want a vow
from you all. No fighting. You'll ruin this place if you do. A vow.
Now."

They all looked around at one another and nodded. A vow.

"Another thing. No demon worship. A vow. Hurry up."

Again they all nodded and looked at the other nodding heads, then
nodded again at Brother Matthew. Another vow. Then they all knelt by
his bed and prayed. Brother Benedict wept. When they raised their
heads, Matthew was in a coma. Paul began to usher them out of the
room, then paused. He listened with his stethoscope, then shook his
head.

"Dead? Is he dead?"

He nodded.

The monks knelt once more and began the prayers for the dead.
 
 

The meeting at eight that night almost didn't take place. Several
monks came, sat down, then left They returned later. No one spoke for
a long time, then Brother Paul delivered a eulogy. He spoke of the
first time he had met Matthew, of his relationship as his
cardiologist, of his own experience as a weekend monk under Matthew's
influence and finally of the profound effect Matthew had had on him.

"This monastery is indeed a league of puzzled men seeking
answers to cosmic questions. I came seeking God. Instead I found
love. And just possibly that may be the whole secret. I love you
all."

After he'd spoken, the group sat without talking, watching the
fire burn down. At eleven they all went to the chapel and prayed for
Brother Matthew's soul.

While the monks were in the chapel, Brendan stepped outside into
the frosty night. It was a splendid skyscape. Great clouds sat
motionless to the north, drenched in silver by the three-quarter
moon. The stars had the hard-edged quality of absolutely clear air.

Brendan regretted he hadn't known Matthew better--only a few
weeks. He was a sunken face with purple lips, gasping on a pillow to
Brendan. What was more to the point, he wondered at his own position
in the monastery. He was here at the sufferance of a man who was now
dead. No one else knew about his purple aura and his need for
sanctuary. He was liable to be dismissed by the new leader of the
monastery. Then where would he go? Suppose he confided his plight to
the new leader only to discover later that the new leader was
secretly the demon worshiper?

Brendan went to bed hesitantly. He looked long and hard out on the
lake, then he wedged a dowel into the track of the sliding door and
drew the drapery.

Later that night, he had a premonition, a sense of alarm, and he
rose from his bed and went to the draperies. Carefully, he parted
them. There, right on the other side of the glass pane, with its back
to Brendan, sat the creature. It seemed to be watching the greenhouse
door intently.

A moment later the creature stood up, and with that low titter it
crossed the courtyard and bounded the wall with a leap. Like
quicksilver, it was gone in an instant. Brendan had yet to see its
face.

The next day they prepared for the funeral. They had no tradition
for death. A number of men had come there over the years and taken
what they wanted and left. Some later had died elsewhere. But here in
the monastery they had never been confronted with a funeral. To
compound matters, the ground was frozen; and besides, Brother Matthew
had left explicit instructions. He was to be cremated. There was to
be no ceremony at the crematorium. His ashes were to be dispersed, no
remnants retained. There were to be no memorials, no busts or plaques
or eternal flames or candles, no scholarships or charitable funds or
annual ceremonies. Let the dead bury the dead.

Forget me, he commanded.

They discussed that. Some wanted to disobey him. He was a founder.
He'd inspired others with his presence, his thoughts and beliefs. He
was a monument, a beacon in the night to the lost and the despairing.

"Other men said what he said--only better," Brother
Benedict chided them. "Other men set greater examples. Other men
had an influence of larger magnitude. And they have all been
forgotten. Trying to memorialize him is a puny gesture. We were not
meant to be remembered. Man can survive only by forgetting the past,
lest despair pull us all into the grave."

While they were sitting, Brother Thomas strolled curiously to the
window and looked out at the night skyline. There was a great smudge
of red in the northeast like a miniature dawn. "Fire," he
said. "Must be in Ealing." The others gathered at the
window and watched the changing shape of the glowing red. Some
building was dying. The glow remained for two hours.

A horn cried in the night. Then another. The whole monastery woke
and went to their windows. Brother Vincent came from the phone. "An
Episcopal church in Ealing."

"Oh!" Brother Paul said. "I know it well! A lovely
building."

"Burned to the ground along with the rectory and another
building. And the minister was killed. Murdered. His neck was
twisted. The whole town is up in arms. They're on a sweep, chasing
some kind of animal."

The horns were shrill noisemakers mounted on cans of compressed
air. And their noise carried over the lake to the monastery like
cries of dismay. Then distantly through some trees on the shoreline,
Brendan saw the creature faintly in its white grave cloth. Brendan
found Brother Vincent looking at him and they both knew. Both had
seen it. Brother Zen then quietly touched Brother Beaupré and nodded
in the direction of the running creature. The three knew. They all
looked at Brendan, then averted their eyes. They had drawn the
pentacle on the greenhouse floor; they had raised this demon.

It was hours later when Brendan heard the hunt returning, their
snowmobiles chattering distantly. He parted his curtain and
involuntarily drew back. In the dark the creature was standing in
front of the glass door with its back to the room. Its broad back
filled the glass. It was watching the procession of snowmobile
headlights cross the ice. The creature languidly placed a hand
against the doorjamb, enjoying the spectacle.

It must have been eight feet tall or taller, covered in a dirty
gray shroud. Its face was turned away and partially wrapped in a
linen band.

It rose and without once looking back walked away from the
building down to the greenhouse and disappeared there by the wall,
just as dawn was breaking.
 
 

So the witchcraft that Brother Matthew spoke of before he died was
practiced by not one but three of the monks, Vincent, Beaupré and
Zen. Their eyes had told him. They had raised a demon and it was now
marauding the countryside, learning its trade as it went.

Of the three, Brendan decided, Brother Vincent was the one to
speak to. After breakfast he found the man washing the windows of the
conversation room. The habitual cigarette hung from his lips as he
peered myopically at the glass.

"Still wearing your civvies, I see," Vincent said.

"What are you going to do about that creature?"