“This morning the door was unlocked,” he finished. “The chain was loose, the chair was back over there … And I was a mess.”
Margo sank onto the sofa, despair washing over her like a wave.
“And you took them the tape?” she said softly. “Is that what happened?”
“What else could have happened?” Peter answered, spreading his hands in a gesture of frustration. “The only thing I had on them, and I gave it to them myself.”
“Maybe you didn’t,” Margo said suddenly, standing up. “Maybe you just hid it somewhere else, and forgot.” She began searching the room, methodically at first, but then more and more frantically, as Peter looked on. As suddenly as she had begun searching, she stopped. She looked at him, and for the first time Peter saw fear reflected in the depths of her eyes.
“It’s no good, is it?” she said bleakly. “I won’t find it here, will I?”
“No,” Peter said softly. “I don’t think you will.” He went to her and put his arms around her. She stiffened, then let go, her arms curling around him, holding on to him.
“Oh, God, Peter, are they going to get you too?” She believes me, he thought. At least she believes me. But he didn’t have an answer for her question.
Father Duncan looked up at them and smiled.
“Mr. Balsam,” he said. “What a pleasant surprise.” But something in his face told Peter it wasn’t pleasant at all. A surprise, yes. But not pleasant. He could almost see the young priest trying to sneak a look at the calendar on his desk, hoping he had not made a mistake, hoping his name was not there.
“It’s all right,” he said, trying to put him at his ease. “I don’t have an appointment.”
It was the right thing to say. Father Duncan relaxed in his chair, and his smile suddenly became genuine.
“Well, that’s a relief. Usually people come in here without an appointment, demand to see His Eminence,
then insist that they set up an appointment two weeks ago.”
“Then I can’t see him?”
“I didn’t say that,” the secretary grinned. “Honesty should be rewarded.” He pressed the key on the intercom. “Mr. Balsam is here for his ten-o’clock appointment,” he said smoothly. He winked at Peter, then included Margo in the wink. There was an ominous silence from the intercom, then the Bishop’s voice crackled through.
“I don’t see his name on my calendar,” he barked.
“Really?” Father Duncan said smoothly. “My mistake; I must have forgotten. But we can’t take that out on Mr. Balsam, can we?”
“Whom
can
we take it out on?” the Bishop’s voice came back.
“Your next appointment,” Father Duncan said. “It’s Mrs. Chambers. She wants to arrange for you to give some spiritual guidance to her Girl Scouts.”
“Little green trolls,” the Bishop muttered. “All right, show Balsam in.”
Margo settled herself in the secretary’s office to wait, and Father Duncan ushered Peter into the inner office. The Bishop was on his feet, his hand out.
“Nice to see you again, young man, however unexpectedly.” He tried to direct a severe look at Father Duncan and failed. “Any idea how long you can keep Mrs. Chambers at bay?”
“She won’t wait more than twenty minutes,” the secretary warned.
“Then let’s count on at least an hour’s chat, shall we? Sit down, Mr. Balsam, sit down.” The Bishop waited until Father Duncan was out of the room, then turned twinkling eyes back to Peter.
“He’s terrific,” he said. “Always manages to get the
people I want to see in, and keep the others out. But Mrs. Chambers won’t be easy.”
“I’m sorry,” Peter apologized. “I should have made an appointment, but I didn’t know I’d have any free time till just a couple of hours ago.”
“Of course you should have, but it doesn’t matter. I was going to have Father Duncan call you today anyway.” The sparkle left his eyes. “What’s going on in Neilsville?”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about.”
It took nearly thirty minutes for Peter to reconstruct the entire story for the Bishop. He tried to make the realities of the Society of St. Peter Martyr as palatable as possible, but the Bishop prodded him. “Out with it, young man. I’m not a prude, and I’ve been around.”
Peter told him as much as he could remember, and everything he and Margo had been able to piece together from the tape. The Bishop listened in silence.
“And you think the Society is connected with the suicides in Neilsville?”
“I do.”
“It sounds pretty farfetched.”
“I know it does. But what happened last night is pretty farfetched, too. “I’m sure I wound up in the rectory last night, and I know I didn’t want to go. I don’t remember going, I don’t remember being there, and I don’t remember coming home again. But I’m sure that’s where I was.”
“And you think they got you there by using some kind of mind control.” The Bishop turned it over in his mind. “Frankly, I don’t think it’s possible.”
“I wouldn’t have either, a few days ago. But when nothing makes any sense, you have to believe whatever the facts point to. Nothing else makes any sense at all—
it’s got to be some form of mind control or hypnotism … or something.”
“You make it ail sound rather sinister,” the Bishop commented.
“It is sinister. Two girls are dead. Two more nearly died. At first I thought the Society was just a sick pastime for some unbalanced priests. But it isn’t, Your Eminence. It’s something else entirely. Monsignor Vernon believes he
is
Peter Martyr—his reincarnation. And they think Pm a reincarnation of St. Acerinus, a man named Piero da Balsama, the man who killed St. Peter Martyr. At first I thought it was harmless, but I don’t think so any more. I think they’re all very sick, and I think they’ve found some way to inflict their sickness on everyone else.”
Bishop O’Malley leaned forward slightly.
“I wish I could agree with you,” he said gravely, “but Pm afraid I can’t I talked to a—” He consulted a pad on his desk. “—Dr. Shields this morning.”
“I know him.”
“He thinks Neilsville is experiencing a suicide contagion.”
“I know,” Peter said shortly.
“Then you should also know that I agree with him,” the Bishop said. “It is quite obvious to me that what’s going on at St Francis Xavier’s is a hysterical phenomenon. And, quite frankly, it doesn’t surprise me. Dr. Shields told me that the sort of thing we seem to be experiencing usually—almost without exception-occurs in mental hospitals.” The Bishop paused, considering. “Unfortunately, in small towns, parochial schools can become very institutional. I think we’re going to have to begin making some rather radical changes in the structure of the school.”
“Will that include Monsignor Vernon’s dismissal?”
Peter asked. He supposed the question was rude, or at best impertinent, but he didn’t care. He felt his stomach tighten when the Bishop shook his head.
“I don’t see that I can go that far,” he said gently. “Not right away, at least. It may become necessary if he refuses to go along with the changes I have in mind. But not now.”
Peter stared at the Bishop. When he finally found his tongue, the words tumbled out
“But he’s a danger now! It’s now that he’s doing whatever it is he’s doing! I had it all on the tape!”
“But you don’t have the tape, do you?”
Peter could only shake his head.
The Bishop stood up. ‘I’m sorry Mr. Balsam—Peter. May I call you Peter?” Balsam nodded. “Peter, I just don’t see that anyone in the world would believe the story you just told me. I don’t believe it myself. I grant you that I don’t think much of the Society of St Peter Martyr, but all you’ve given me are a lot of impressions about things you can’t even remember. After all, you could be wrong.”
It was over. Peter walked numbly through Father Duncan’s office, and Margo fell in step behind him.
“It didn’t go well, did it?” she asked, knowing by his face that it had not “What are you going to do?”
He didn’t answer the question for a long time. Instead, as he drove back toward Neilsville, he watched the barren countryside, and remembered how foreign
it
had looked to him when he had come in on the train only a few weeks earlier. Now, it all seemed terribly familiar. Now the countryside around Neilsville looked every bit as bleak as Peter Balsam felt
Beside him, Margo Henderson maintained the silence. She, too, watched the desert go by, and wondered if there would ever be anything else for her. She was
getting tired of desert; she’d lived in it too long. She’d hoped Peter Balsam would take her out of it. Instead, he was getting caught by it
As they approached the outskirts of Neilsville, he suddenly took her hand. “I know what I’m going to do.” He said it so quietly she almost didn’t realize what he was talking about Then, remembering, she looked at him questioning.
‘Tm going to play my part,” Peter said quietly. ‘I’m going to be St. Acerinus.”
Leona Anderson sat in her living room, staring vacantly ahead, trying to understand it She had sat like that all day, wordlessly, not hearing the condolences of her friends.
She had listened to Monsignor Vernon that morning, heard him telling her why her daughter could not be buried in sanctified ground. She had known it, of course, but until the priest had come to tell her, she had not believed it
“It’s that teacher,” she said bitterly, shattering the silence that had fallen over the room.
One of the women glanced at Leona, then away.
“It is,” Leona insisted quietly. “They were all in his class, all of them. Judy and Karen, and Janet and—and—” she broke off, knowing that if she said her daughter’s name she would lose control. She must not cry. Not yet First, she must destroy Peter Balsam. “When I first met him I knew there was something wrong. And look what’s happened to us.” She looked desolately from one face to another.
“Leona, we don’t know what’s happening,” one of the women said soothingly. Leona Anderson turned to the woman who had spoken, and a hardness came into her eyes.
“Don’t we, Marie?” Then, remembering that only a
few days ago Marie Connally had come close to going through what she was going through now, Leona spoke more softly: “But what if Janet had died? How would you feel then?”
Marie Connally smiled. “But she didn’t die, and she isn’t going to. She’s home, and she’s feeling fine. And that’s largely because of Peter Balsam. I’m sorry, Leona, but if you want to attack Mr. Balsam, please don’t do it in front of me.”
“Think what you like,” Leona said stiffly. “But mark my words. It isn’t over yet. As long as Peter Balsam is in this town, it won’t be over.”
The object of Leona’s bitterness emerged from the church into the darkness of night, and began making his way back down the hill.
Below him he watched the scattered lights of Neilsville glowing dimly in the night. It crossed his mind that the lights of Neilsville were as dim as his own faith. He had spent two hours in the church, seeking guidance and solace, and had found none. Instead, he had found himself.
A few minutes later he was on Main Street. But it was a different Main Street than the one he had walked up two hours earlier. Or he was different.
Now, as he felt the eyes of strangers on him, he met their glances, and smiled at them. They turned away, embarrassed. Once he heard a voice shouting at him from a doorway.
“Go away, teacher,” a woman shouted. “Leave us in peace!”
Peter turned around to confront the source of the shout, but the woman was gone, faded back into the cloak of the evening.
In the middle of town, music throbbed from the
Praying Mantis, and Peter found himself drawn to it. He paused at the door, then made up his mind. He pulled the door open, and stepped into the shabby discotheque.
In the flickering light the faces seemed gaunt and hollow and there was a heavy silence behind the blaring music. It was a moment before Peter realized that there were no girls in the room: the girls seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. He knew why. None of them would be allowed to go out tonight They would all be home, their parents keeping a watchful eye on them.
Someone waved to Peter, and he started across the floor.
Sitting together at a table were Jim Mulvey, Lyle Crandall, and Jeff Bremmer. Without waiting for an invitation, Peter seated himself in the fourth chair at their table. All three boys looked at him. He could see fear in their eyes.
“It isn’t all that bad,” he said softly. “It’s almost over now.”
“What is?” Lyle Crandall asked. He looted curiously at the teacher, and thought the man looked different. It was the eyes. There was something about Mr. Balsam’s eyes that had changed.
“The dying,” Peter Balsam said. “It won’t go on much longer. It can’t”
Jeff Bremmer stared at him. “Mr. Balsam, what’s going on?”
Peter smiled at the boy, a warm smile. “I wish I could tell you, Jeff.”
“But you know, don’t you?” Jeff said, more as a statement than as a question.
Balsam shrugged. “As much as anybody knows, I guess.”
“It’s my fault,” Jim Mulvey said suddenly. Peter shifted in his chair to look squarely at the boy.
“Don’t believe that,” he said. “Don’t ever believe that. Whoever’s to blame, it isn’t you. It isn’t any of you. Children don’t do things like what’s being done here.”
“But they do,” Jeff Bremmer said softly. “My dad says it’s called a suicide contagion, and it happens all the time.”
“In mental hospitals,” Balsam said. “That only happens in mental hospitals.”
“Then what is it?” Lyle asked. All three boys were staring at Balsam.
“It’s a game,” Peter said, more to himself than to the boys. They looked at each other, puzzled.
“A game?” It was Jim Mulvey, and now he, too, saw that something had changed in their teacher. “What kind of agame?”
“A religious game, I suppose you might say.” He was about to say something else, but he was interrupted.
The sound tore through the room like a knife, cutting through the music, through what little conversation was going on, through each of the people who heard it
It was the siren, wailing through Neilsville.
“Oh, Jesus, not again.”