And Never To Return

Sensitive content: Religio-horror.

The plated sterling silver cross glinted in the jaundiced full-moon light that crept through the Venetian blinds. A tornado whirl of Thomas Merton books and a paisley comforter and black-leather slip-ons and a colorful tapestry from Lascaux, along with dozens of other items, commenced with a throaty roar in Monsignor Padraig O’Shea’s grand two-bedroom, one-bath rectory apartment, grand for a priest of notoriety.

           He was alone, and yet he was not. Present inside him was a being, an entity, hell-bent on conquest. Not of him per se, but of everything.

           The cross burned with electric charge deep into the nerves of the monsignor’s right hand like a steel rail supporting a runaway train. A voice howled above the din, as the pages of a worn leather Bible flipped on the tiny cloth-covered end table, next to a bowl of holy water that was swishing back and forth in waves, like a pond in the midst of a severe summer thunderstorm. An inky revolver, an O’Shea family heirloom, spun as if it was part of a game of Russian roulette.

           “You are a heretic!” the entity screeched in a curling manner using Monsignor Padraig’s vocal cords. The words were directed toward the floor where the verdant deep-pile carpet lifted, straining the steel tacks that held it in place, making the floor seem as if it was rising and falling, mimicking the waves in the bowl of holy water.

           “The Holy See will excommunicate you!” it blathered on. “There will be consequences!”

           Consequence was indeed the right word, Monsignor O’Shea absently considered, a former lit teacher at Bishop Besler Catholic High but now head pastor of St. Bridget’s, the biggest parish on the south side of Chicago, established in 1883 for the influx of Irish immigrants. That included monsignor’s great-grandparents, who escaped the aftershocks of the mid-century potato famine only to find that America’s streets were not paved with gold.

           With that, there came from the corner of the room a guttural bleat that appeared to shift the pattern of the tornado of the monsignor’s belongings. Tiny flecks of paper stung his face with paper cuts and he ducked to dodge a thick copy of the Code of Canon Law, but another book, this one authored by St. Augustine, he observed, caromed off of his ample forehead, knocking his thick-rimmed glasses to the floor, where they slid under the bureau.

           Monsignor O’Shea retook his voice.

           “Be silent!” he bellowed. “In the name of all that is holy, be silent, you foul demon!”

           That lasted but for a moment.

           “You cannot cast me out,” came the acid response, eerily spoken in an even tone, despite the spinning winds of the grand apartment. A photo of Monsignor O’Shea at his ordination flanked by his four sisters and three brothers spun wildly in a brass frame and hit him in the shoulder like a missile, prompting both a grimace and a yelp.

           You cannot destroy me, the monsignor replied, though only with thought, not with spoken word. He didn’t possess his voice anymore.

           “You will kneel before my lord like the Irish swine you are. The time has come for your reckoning, when the consequences of your misdeeds will be felt.”

           Consequences again. A shiver of fear burst from the base of Monsignor O’Shea’s spine to his medulla oblongata. He did his best to push the feeling out into the storm, where it would be dissipated by the winds of destruction emanating from the farthest reaches of the underworld.

           The entity was correct on one count.

           As a parish priest on the north side, at St. Wenceslas, in the shadow of Wrigley Field, where Cubs players often participated in 7:30 a.m. Sunday mass before heading to the ballpark, then-Father O’Shea spent hours on his knees, praying for the opportunity to be more than a simple parish vicar.

           He wanted more than a title; he wanted O’Shea to be a brand name that would resonate among his flock, and especially with those that had fallen away. There was always room under the tent, to use a Protestant saying.

           Surely that would impress Cardinal Angelli. And maybe Rome itself.

           The monsignor now realized that the entity had subtly whispered in his ear as he raised his arms in front of the cross and the host in cavernous St. Wenceslas that Holy Week over five years ago.

           “I will make it come to pass,” the entity had said. “Your name will be renowned.”

           “No. No, be gone.”

           “You will acquiesce,” it said. “You will.”

           There was no response to this, verbal or thought.

           Exactly one week later—seven days probably to the moment, he realized later—the rectory phone rang just as the young father was preparing to hear confession.

           The caller was the stately Cardinal Angelli, a man of respect. A non-mafia don.

           “I have heard many good things about you, Padraig,” he had spoken with the enthusiasm of one who reveled in issuing proclamations and promotions.

           Thus began Father O’Shea’s rise from St. Wenceslas to Our Lady of the Grotto, a suburban parish where he became pastor after a mere nine months. Two years later, in February, weeks before the Covid-19 pandemic began, he shifted to St. Bridget’s. His calm, folksy homily delivery resonated with the faithful. You should be on TV, a parishioner said in the receiving line the Sunday before the governor shut the state down due to the mysterious flu-like virus.

           He saw opportunity with Covid-19. After just months at St. Bridget’s, he requested, and was granted, the opportunity to celebrate mass on television, on Channel 4.

           A network affiliate!

           Of course, a mere parish priest cannot represent the archdiocese on television without the requisite title. Thus, shortly before taking the stage at the cathedral, as it were, before the blazing light fixtures flanking statues of the saints that never moved, he was awarded his title.

           Monsignor.

           As the pandemic wore on and ultimately began to dissipate, Monsignor O’Shea became a household name in Chicago, with his combination of late-thirtysomething good looks, graying temples like a college professor that amplified his wit and pithy sayings that ultimately ended up on billboards on Interstates 90 and 94 promoting the broadcast, complete with his grinning mug.

           The key message was not: Come on back to church, ye flock that has been scattered.

           It was: Get a load of our celebrity preacher. A comical man of the cloth. The monsignor of mirth. “Hey, did you hear the one about the priest who stopped in a bar on the way home after mass…?”

           Monsignor O’Shea reveled in the attention, taking every stop by young fans on the street as an opportunity to promote the broadcast, and ultimately himself. And it worked. He received word that its popularity had grown to syndication, in New York and L.A. and Houston, the heart of Protestant celebrity TV preachers.

           See? We Catholics are just as cool. Come check us out.

           There were calls for Monsignor O’Shea’s elevation to cardinal.

           All good stuff. Really good.

           But always there was a tiny voice, deep within his bowels, that spoke of the payoff. A tiny voice of something physical, but not quite tangible.

           Nothing is free, monsignor. Nothing is merely given away. Nothing is simply furled to the wind and becomes one with the sky for all to see and believe.

           Like Doctor Faustus, payment is coming due.

           It peeved Monsignor O’Shea that something otherworldly—the entity, he called it—would try to undo the good the broadcast had done. For himself, of course, but for the good of the church as well. There had begun a slow tide of younger people finding their way to church Sunday mornings and participating in the sacraments, man buns and ponytails next to ash-gray permanents, voices raised together.

           That had to count for something, didn’t it?

           “I’m here because of the monsignor,” one young woman said in a network TV interview. “He’s so cool.”

           “Like a really fun uncle,” her boyfriend added.

           He was fun. He was what mattered. The fuddy-duddy archdiocese and straitlaced Rome couldn’t see that?

           The call came that morning. The concern from Cardinal Angelli had nothing to do with ratings. It was pride. Who’s driving the car, Padraig?

           “Pride cometh before a fall, monsignor,” the good cardinal had said. “We’d like you to step away from your television obligations and get, shall we say, ‘back to basics.’”

           At a shrine in rural downstate Illinois, the region they call Little Egypt.

           Unquenchable flame roared from Monsignor O’Shea’s gut to his lips and felt as if it would melt the plastic cowling on the ancient rotary phone in the rectory office, the one next to Mrs. Bivens, the kindly volunteer secretary. Another gray head, with wiry spectacles and a wine-colored sweater, orthopedic shoes.

           “You can’t do this to me!” he shouted into the handset. Mrs. Bivens sat up in her armchair with a start.

           But even in that state, he realized it wasn’t he who was spouting those words.

           It was the entity.

           They had become one flesh, one body.

           And the entity wanted more.

           It wanted all. Everything.

           Not just a physical body, but the entire body of the church itself.

           I will become Pope, it spoke in a rising tone, not for the first time. I will lead all of Christendom to the footstool of my lord.

           You must simply heed my direction. Even now.

           Monsignor O’Shea returned to his apartment and closed the door quietly behind him, carefully avoiding the tiny cloth-covered end table with a Bible and bowl of holy water. He stepped to the mirror that protruded from the top of the bureau. A holy card wedged into the upper righthand corner wiggled and shifted before it fell behind the bureau.

           The face staring back at him wasn’t him. It was unearthly.

           Naked from the waist up, it possessed stout green-gray skin with golden nodules strategically placed across the torso. Sans eyes or hair, the stretched, pockmarked face was essentially a mouth filled with varied-length teeth that dazzled white, a snaked tongue slithering out.

           This is you now, the entity stated in ferocity, in finality.

           Your priestly days have been scattered like mustard seeds into the four winds.

           I am you.

           I will conquer this world through you.

           And the next.

           There was a knock at the door, a soft tapping, almost subtle in its simplicity.

           The entity staring back at monsignor in the mirror closed its fattening lips.

           “Get rid of that old bitch,” it spoke from the seeming ninth level of Dante’s hell.

           Monsignor looked down at the end table and faintly noted the presence of the heirloom revolver, the one that had belonged to his father, the Chicago policeman, dead now some thirty years. Heart attack after a running gun battle through a west side neighborhood with some teenage punks.

           Monsignor had kept the revolver in a locked box under his bed.

           Somehow, it had made its appearance.

           “Monsignor? Are you there?” came Mrs. Bivens’ elderly voice.

           “Get…rid…of her!” the entity hissed. “Kill her if you have to!” The revolver stopped spinning.

           There was silence now, like the Book of Revelation’s half hour, then Mrs. Bivens’ voice.

           “Monsignor,” she said in an icy, heart-stopping command voice, akin to a teacher addressing a room of recalcitrant children, muffled a bit by the door. “You have a visitor.”

           Even considering the howl of the hurricane winds within the apartment, there came the sound of a key entering a lock, and then the door flying open.

           Darkening the doorway in shadow was a robust figure, not overweight, but portly. A male, hunched just a bit, indicating someone aged. His right arm protruded from the meaty torso, the forefinger and middle finger of his right hand stood together as one in piety.

           Cardinal Angelli didn’t have to announce himself. Monsignor O’Shea knew who he was.

           So did the entity, which screamed in blind terror, the eyeless mouth in the mirror dissipating and rearranging in pixels into the image of its human vessel.

            The words in monsignor’s head proclaimed salvation by the hands of an earthly power, heaven-sanctioned, greater than him. Death to you, entity. Be gone into arid places, never to return. Return my body to me.

           He stared at Cardinal Angelli. Here comes the cavalry.

           But there was no Latin chanting coming from the doorway, or language of any sort that a priest would expect in an exorcism.

           Instead, the revolver shuddered on the table and inexplicably flew across the room into the cardinal’s right hand, that hand of piety.

           Four reports from the gun sounded over the din, striking monsignor four times—twice in the shoulder, once in the thigh and the last in his stomach, which jolted him backwards into the closet’s sliding door, already off its track.

           “Aaaaugh!” the entity screamed, either in abject fear or a desperate bid for dominance, but Cardinal Angelli stood fast. He took two steps forward.

           “W-why?” Monsignor O’Shea blathered before the entity screamed again, a sound that indicated it was entering its death throes, or rather, its preparation for departure from his physical realm.

           “The few ruin it for the many,” the good cardinal replied wistfully as he took aim one last time, before all monsignor saw was darkness, eternal darkness.

           As he faded into nothingness, he heard, “We sacrifice one to save all.”