Ritual. Part 14

'I don't see how any ramifications can allow the law to turn a blind eye while my son is allowed to remain in the hands of people like that.'

The sheriff said, 'The problem is, the law and the ramifications are kind of tied up together. You see, those Celestine people used to be nothing much more than a small secret society, maybe twenty or thirty people, no more than that, centred on New Orleans. They were two separate bodies in those days, the same way that the Irish Republican movement is split up into the IRA, which is technically illegal, and the political wing, Sinn Fein, which is technically legal, although who knows where one begins and the other ends? You understand me? The Celestines in New Orleans were divided between their religious order, which was recognized as an official religious body, and their secret society of flesh-eaters. In those days, the flesh-eating side was kept totally under cover. Several FBI agents tried to penetrate it and couldn't. All the law-enforcement agencies knew that it was going on, but there was no way of proving it. The National Enquirer printed a story about it, and all that happened was n.o.body believed it and the Celestine Order successfully sued them for four and a half million dollars.'

Confused, Charlie said, 'What are you trying to tell me?'

'I'm trying to tell you that for years the Celestines had to carry on this cannibalism business in total, one hundred per 146.

cent secrecy. Their people used to walk the streets of New Orleans. They'd meet up with young, disaffected runaways, get to talking to them, then introduce them to the legitimate side of their religion. When they were sure that they weren't dealing with undercover cops masquerading as runaways, they'd introduce them to the other side of what they were doing. One secret FBI report estimated that between 1955 and 1965, more that eighteen per cent of all young people who went permanently missing in the New Orleans area became Celestine followers, and finished up as their own Last Supper.'

'If the FBI knew all this, why didn't they stop it?' Charlie asked.

'They almost did, more than one time. But the Celestines had first-cla.s.s lawyers, and since n.o.body could prove kidnap, abduction, imprisonment, or any criminal act either local or federal, they had to let them go. There is no law in any state which says that it is a criminal offence to devour yourself; nor is it an offence to offer parts of yourself to other people for no charge for whatever purpose they may care to put it. I guess the legislators just didn't envisage anybody wanting to do things like that.'

'But people who want to eat themselves must be mentally incompetent,' said Charlie. 'Surely somebody tried to put a stop to the Celestines with mental health legislation.'

'Oh sure. There was a test case put before the Louisiana Supreme Court on n May 1967. It was held in camera, so it never got reported. They called expert witnesses to testify as to the sanity of a nineteen-year-old girl who had eaten both of her arms. They had psychiatrists, priests, social workers, theologians, anthropologists, the whole cast of thousands. Not one of them could tell the court with any conviction that the girl was nuts. She had mutilated herself for an explicable religious reason, in accordance with the teaching of a recognized church. Her lawyer pointed out that millions of young boys all over 147.

the world are mutilated every year - circ.u.mcised, that is - for religious reasons that are far less profound that those embraced by the Celestines. The case for committal to a mental inst.i.tution was dismissed, and the girl went back to New Orleans and ate the rest of herself.'

'Is that why they're so brazen about what they're doing?' said Charlie.

The sheriff nodded. 'That's part of the reason. They know now that anybody who tries to challenge them in the courts is going to have a real difficult time - apart from attracting all kinds of very unwelcome publicity. Women don't like to tell the police they've been raped; you think parents like to come along and admit that their children have been eating themselves?'

'What's the other part of the reason?'

'The other part of the reason is that the daughter of a very senior member of the United States government died two years ago at a Celestine house in South Carolina. The scandal would have been a doozy, believe me. The FBI undertook a six-month covert investigation and found out that the sons and daughters of countless socialite, celebrity and big-business families were also Celestine Devotees. Worse than that, at least four top-ranking politicians and at least two members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were involved. Several of them were Guides. Do you know about Guides?'

Charlie nodded numbly.

The sheriff sucked up some more coffee. It was too hot to drink without making a lot of noise. 'The government decided that so long as the Celestines never actually committed any illegal acts, they were to be left alone. They have what you might call diplomatic immunity. It's national legislative policy, my friend, all the way down from the Oval Office to yours truly, the sheriff of Litchfield County.'

'Why are you telling me all this?' asked Charlie. 'If it isn't true, I'm bound to find out that it isn't. If it is, then I would 148.

have thought that it wasn't the kind of story you would want to spread around.'

The sheriff shook his head. 'I have a very good reason for telling you, and that reason is that right now you're feeling mad. You want the law to go busting in to Le Reposoir and rescue your son, Rambo-style. And if the law won't do it for you, then by G.o.d you're going to take the law into your own hands and do it yourself. Am I right? Am I reading you right?'

'How would you feel, in my position?' Charlie asked him.

'My friend,' said the sheriff, 'I was in your position. My own daughter of twenty-one years old was one of the first Celestine recruits around here, and believe me I did everything I could to get her out of there. I got hold of a search warrant, and I went through that building like you wouldn't believe. And I found her; and do you know what she'd done? She'd already cut off her own hand.'

He stared intently at Charlie just to make sure he wasn't missing the point of what he was saying. Just to make sure that Charlie didn't believe that he was the only father in the world who had ever been through agony and doubt and grief because of the Celestines.

'Let me tell you something,' he went on, and his voice was as soft as tissue now. 'I sat down by my little girl's bed and I pleaded with her to come home with me before she hurt herself more. And do you know what she did? She touched me with her one hand, and she smiled at me, she smiled, and she said, "Daddy, for the very first time in my life I'm truly happy." That's what she said.'

The sheriff paused. He obviously found this bitterly painful to remember. 'That was when I used my authority, or rather my gun. I took my little girl and I got her out of that place by force. They didn't try to stop me, they just smiled at me the same way that my little girl had smiled at me, and they said, "See you later, Susan," - that was my little girl's name. I'll 149.

never forget to my dying day the way they said that. They were so f.u.c.king cheerful.

'Susan came home for two and a half weeks. That was as long as I could persuade her to stay. You don't know what those two and a half weeks were like. She was so depressed I had to take her to the doctor and the doctor put her on tranquillizers. By the end of the second week things were so bad she was begging me to let her go back there. Do you know what she said? She said that what the Celestines were doing was showing her the way to heaven, and that even if I kept her chained up to her bed for the rest of her life, she would never be happy in this physical, material world that the rest of us have to endure. That's just what she said. "I've broken free," she told me. "Free of any kind of physical need. All that's holding me back now is my earthly body, and I'm going to eat that.'"

The sheriff ran his hand through his scrubby red hair and said, 'Jesus! How do you cope when your daughter tells you something like that?'

'What did you do?' Charlie asked him, in a haunted voice.

'I didn't do anything, except to make sure that Susan was handcuffed to her bed every night. Then one morning we woke up and she was gone. She had bitten away all the flesh around her hand and wrist so that she could get out of the handcuff. The pillow was plastered in blood and bits of flesh. I knew then that I was never going to get her back. Those Celestines had won her over and that was it.'

'Didn't you take it any further?'

'Oh sure. I took it all the way to Hartford. But in the end I was quietly taken aside and told to lay off. That's when I found out everything that I've just told you. I made one last effort and took the story to the media, and I found one reporter on the Hartford Courant who was prepared to take a risk. But after about a week he called me back and said the story wouldn't stand up and that was all there was to it.'

Charlie looked at the sheriff coldly. 'So what you're telling me is that I have to accept Martin's kidnap - I have to accept the fact that those people are going to persuade him to eat himself alive - because of some national conspiracy of silence?'

The sheriff said, 'That's part of the story, sure. But the other part - the real important part - is that no kid goes to that place unless they want to. I found that part the hardest of all to accept, when Susan went. She wanted to go.'

'Did you ever get to see her again?'

'Yes.' The sheriff nodded. 'Just once. I went up to Le Reposoir against the specific instructions of my superiors and I forced them at gunpoint to let me see her. They were so d.a.m.ned polite they gave me the creeps. I mean, they were even humorous about it. They took me into the room and there she was, or what was left of her. I wish to G.o.d that I'd never gone. Did you ever see that old movie Freaks? There's a guy in it who's just a head and a kind of a caterpillar body in a cotton sock? Did you ever see that? Well, that's what Susan was like. I never knew that anybody could lose so much of their body and still live. There was her face, that same face I loved so much, still with that wavy red hair, and underneath that face there was nothing at all but a body no bigger than a leg of pork, all wrapped up in a white cotton stocking.'

Charlie swallowed. His throat was dry; but he knew that if he tried to swallow any coffee he would probably gag.

The sheriff said, 'You may not believe me, but that wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it was that she lay there in the suns.h.i.+ne and she smiled at me and said, "Daddy", and I knew that she was completely contented. They called me about two weeks later to tell me that she was gone. I didn't say anything. I didn't trust myself. I took a week's vacation that was owing to me and I stayed drunk from Friday evening to the following Sunday night.'

'How am I going to get my son out of there?' Charlie asked him.

ISO.

'I don't think you've been listening to me, my friend. Your son is there because your son wants to be there, and you're not going to get him out of that place without the US Marines.

'And the same thing happened to you, to your only daughter, and you just accept it?'

'Tell me what I can do about it!' the sheriff said, his jowls shaking. 'Tell me just one thing that I can do about it! Short of killing the Musettes outright, and burning the whole d.a.m.ned house down - and, believe me, that wouldn't help either. There are nineteen Celestine houses in the continental United States; there are more in Eurpoe. If you burn down one, there will always be scores of others. You'd be p.i.s.sing in the wind.'

Charlie stood up. He laid one hand on the sheriffs desk and looked him steadily in the eye. 'Is this what it's come to?' he said. 'The country that was founded on the principles of life and liberty?'

The sheriff gave him a defeated, sideways look. 'Sometimes the price of life and liberty is pretty high.'

'Tell me who else in Alien's Corners has lost a child.'

'Apart from Mr Haxalt, there must have been eleven or twelve. Some of them know where their children have gone, others don't.'

'Like Mrs Kemp, you mean?'

The sheriff nodded. 'We don't tell 'em if they don't find out. We don't want to cause any more distress than we have to.'

Charlie rubbed his eyes. He felt as if he were dreaming all this; but the dream was so procedural that he knew it was true. Apart from that, he couldn't wake up, no matter how hard he tried.

The sheriff said, 'I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll go on up to Le Reposoir myself, and talk to them about your son. Martin, is that what you said his name was?'

Charlie said, 'You've got to get him out of there, sheriff.'

'More parents have said that same thing to me than I like to recall.'

152.

'I promise you - if you don't do it - then I will.'

'I can't stop you from making promises, my friend. But it's my elected duty to uphold the law, and I'm telling you right here and now that if you attempt anything in the way of aggravated a.s.sault on those people, or damage or intrude on their property, then I'm bound to give them a.s.sistance.

Charlie said, 'What's your name, sheriff?'

'Podmore,' he replied.

'I mean your given name.'

'What do you want to know that for? It's Norman, as a matter of fact.'

Charlie said, 'I want to be able to say to you, "Norman, this is Charlie. You've lost your daughter, I'm in danger of losing my son." I want you to think about that, Norman, what that means. And you tell me something else, Norman. That boy's mother doesn't know what's happened yet. You tell me what I'm supposed to say to her?

CHAPTER TWELVE.

Grey-faced with rage and frustration, Charlie drove back up the corkscrew road to Le Reposoir, the tyres of his Oldsmobile howling and squittering on the blacktop. He swerved into the entrance and collided at nearly ten miles an hour with the front gate, with a noise like the gates of h.e.l.l being clanged shut. Two or three of the gate's iron uprights were bent, but the locks held, and all Charlie ended up with was mild whiplash and two shattered headlights.

He climbed out of the car and stabbed furiously at the intercom b.u.t.ton. M. Musette - who must have inspected the damage to his gates through his closed-circuit television camera - answered almost immediately.

'Mr McLean, what can I do for you? You seem to have suffered an accident.'

'Open up,' Charlie demanded. 'I want my son back.'

'Mr McLean, you know as well as I do that your son wishes to remain here.'

'I don't give a s.h.i.+t, Monsewer Musette. I want my son back and I want him back now.'

'Do you always treat your son's wishes with such contempt?'

Charlie yelled, 'Don't you start getting fancy with me, you G.o.dd.a.m.n cannibal! Now open up, and give me my son back!'

'I'm sorry, that's impossible. If your son has a change of heart, then obviously I shall be glad to let you know. But at the moment he is very happy where he is. Why don't you talk to the sheriff?'

Charlie said, with more control, 'I already did that, thank you.'

154.

'I hope he was sympathetic.'

'Yes, he was. Yes, he was sympathetic. That's all that anybody seems to be good for, around here: being sympathetic.'

'Well, I quite understand your feelings, my dear sir. You don't want sympathy, do you? You want your son's affection.'

'I'll worry about his affection when I get hold of him again.'

'He's not a dog, monsieur. He's an intelligent human being - quite capable of making his own decisions.'

'And what are you?" Charlie wanted to know.

The intercom clicked once, and then remained silent. Charlie returned to his car, started the engine, slammed into reverse, then back into drive and collided again as hard as he could with the gates. Then he backed up and crashed into the gates a third time, and then a fourth, until he could hear his radiator fan clattering against its cover, and a grinding sound in the transmission like a Cuisinart full of broken gla.s.s.

He sat in his car and screamed at the gates of Le Reposoir in helpless rage. Then he crossed his arms over his steering wheel and bent his head forward and sobbed. He stayed like that for almost a quarter of an hour, while the emotionless eye of the remote-control camera watched him from the trees.

Eventually, he sat up and dug out a crumpled handkerchief and wiped his face. It was clear to him now that a frontal a.s.sault on the Celestines was not going to work. Nor was any appeal to the police, or to the media. The Celestines had won for themselves the kind of charmed lives that only true fanatics seem to be able to achieve. If he wanted to get Martin out of Le Reposoir, he was going to have to do it alone. What's more, he was going to have to make sure that his plan was properly thought out. Martin would have to be taken someplace secure, where it would be impossible for him to escape and return to the Celestines. And there was no doubt that he would need deprogramming, either by a psychiatrist or by one of those people who made it their business to deprogram Moonies and other adolescent victims of obsessional cults.

155.

It was very hard for him, but he reversed his car away from the entrance to Le Reposoir and drove slowly back towards Alien's Corners with his transmission crunching and his suspension complaining at every b.u.mp. The sun, which for most of the day had been enveloping itself in hazy grey clouds, now suddenly decided to make an appearance, and it lit up the coppery fall leaves for miles around. There was a tang of woodsmoke in the air, and Charlie knew that he would never be able to come up to Connecticut again, in fall, whether he was able to rescue Martin or not. It would always remind him of mutilation, and self-inflicted pain, and the Celestines.

He returned to Mrs Kemp's. Mrs Kemp herself was standing at her front door, almost as if she had been waiting for him; but in fact she was lifting her face to the sun. Her eyes were closed and her fists were clenched and there was an odd little smile on her face as she basked her wrinkles.

She opened her eyes as Charlie walked up the front path.

'Mr McLean,' she said.

'How are you doing, Mrs Kemp?'

'I'm enjoying this suns.h.i.+ne. It'll be winter before you know it. You're back soon. I didn't expect you for at least a year; if ever. Your boy not with you?'

'Martin's ... having a break.'

'I thought you said you were taking him to Boston with you.'

'Well, I was.'

Mrs Kemp frowned at him, and touched his arm. 'Something's wrong, isn't it? I can tell.'

'Everything's fine, Mrs Kemp. I just need a place to stay for the next few days. Some place quiet, where I can think."

He tried to step into the porch but Mrs Kemp stopped him. 'He's gone, hasn't he? Your Martin?'

'Yes, Mrs Kemp,' Charlie admitted. 'He's gone.'

'What's the matter? Did you have an argument? Did his mother come to take him back?'

156.