Blood of Cain

87

I arrived at St. Colman’s Cathedral at 3:00 in the afternoon, glad it was a Saturday. Limited office staff, if any. The front doors were slightly ajar. I opened them and entered the old church. The sanctuary was cavernous, massive marble columns supporting ornate and carved marble arches, the afternoon sunlight igniting the stained-glass windows, casting rainbow colors over the marble floor and wooden pews.

The sanctuary appeared vacant. I walked toward the altar, my hard soles echoing off the marble. The air was cool and smelled of incense and candles. I could see the confessional booth in a far corner, hand carved, polished wood. There was a small red light burning above the closed door to the right. The door on the left was closed as well. I sat in a pew closest to the confessional and waited. I could hear the subdued voice of a woman speaking, weeping, and followed by a man talking in a monosyllabic, rehearsed response.

A few seconds later, the door to the right opened. A woman dressed in black exited the booth. She knelt in front of the altar, looked up at a carved statue of Christ and made the sign of the cross. She bowed her head, whispered a silent prayer, got up and left. She never saw me sitting alone in the pew.

The light above the right-side door turned green. I entered the booth. It was lit with one small wattage blub. I looked at the lattice that separated the left side of the booth from the right. Entering into full combat mode, my senses were heightened. I could hear him breathing. I could smell his aftershave lotion. He was less than three feet from me. I said, “I’m here in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” I pressed the audio record button on my cell phone.

He said nothing for almost fifteen seconds. And then he spoke. “Do you wish to confess your mortal sins?”

“I do.”

“Proceed.”

I quietly opened the door to my side of the booth, then reached for his door — jerked it open. He was an old man, sitting in a high-back wooden chair, one elbow resting on the arm of the chair, the other hand in the folds of his white robe. His eyes had the color of a butane torch, intense, piercing, silver hair combed back. I said, “I’ll confess, but not before you do.”

He looked up at me. “Who are you, son?”

“I’m Sean O’Brien, and I’m sure as hell not your son.”

“Are you a member of the congregation? Do I know you?”

“No, but I know of you. You raped my mother more than forty years ago.”

He pushed back in the chair, stunned, unable to maintain eye contact with me. His eyes moved from his lap to the floor, as if his contact lens had fallen out. Finally, he looked up at me. “What do you want?”

“Are you not even curious as to who my mother was? Or did you rape so many women and girls you’ve lost count?”

He said nothing. His eyes now smoldering, staring straight at me. Then he said, “How dare you come into our Lord’s house and make these accusations. Who do you think you are? Get out!”

“I’ll tell you who I am … I’m Katherine Flanagan’s son. Her second son. You, you son-of-a-bitch, impregnated her when you raped her. Don’t look so surprised. Where’s Dillon?”

“I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“Didn’t you learn that lying is a sin? Get up!”

He pulled his right hand out of the thick robe, and he gripped a .357 pistol. His hand like a claw, skin the color of bone. He said, “There’s been a rash of crime in Ireland recently. One priest was robbed here in the confessional. So, of course, police will believe you, too, were here to rob the church — a most egregious sin.” He wet his lips and smiled a crooked grin. “I do remember your mother. How do you forget a woman who enjoyed it as much as she did? Rape … hardly. She was one of my regulars. And guess what? Dillon might not be the only son I produced with her.” His eyes grew wide, cruel and hard as the marble floor.

I said, “Put the gun down. You’ve caused enough pain.”

He cocked his head, his eyes filled with loathing. “Pain? I only follow God’s will. That’s what I did when your father found out I’d sired the first son in the Flanagan family, Dillon. I followed God’s holy directive.”

“You’re sick.”

“And you don’t understand, but your brother does.”

“Where is he?”

“You’ll never be the man he is. Nor was your father. So when he brought his sinful weakness to me, threatened me … threatened God’s word, I destroyed him. And now I’ll do the same with you; the difference is, I’ll shoot you in the front of the head.”

I saw the white flash.

The gunshot echoed throughout the sanctuary. The bullet tore through my upper arm. I slammed the door closed. Then used my legs and back to turn the small confessional on its side. He opened the door, disoriented, like a rat flooded out of his nest. I kicked the gun from his hand. It slid across the marble. He ran to it. Picked it up and fired three shots at me, running in the opposite direction, toward a door in the far corner marked: stairs. He opened the door and vanished. He’d fired four times. Two rounds left.

I followed, holding my wounded shoulder with one hand. The door led to some marble steps, the stone worn down near the center of each step after more than 150 years of foot traffic. I quietly slipped my shoes off and followed Father Thomas Garvey. I climbed a dozen flights of narrow steps, stopping every few seconds to listen. I could hear him above me, climbing, running, panting.

The steps escalated in a spiral circle, like climbing steps in a lighthouse — leading me all the way up the center of the largest spire. As I ascended, came closer, I could hear his labored breathing above me. Within twenty feet, I came to a bell tower. Dozens of bells were mounted on massive wooden beams. Rope and strikers hung from each bell. A strong wind blew through the large arched openings in the belfry. I could see the town and the harbor below the cathedral.

Then I saw the white robe, behind one of the largest bells. I reached in my pocket and found a quarter. I tossed it at a pumpkin-sized bell on the opposite side of the tower. It rang out. Father Garvey shot in that direction, the bullet ricocheting off the bells.

One shot left.

I moved quickly, the noise from the bells dulling the sound of my approach. I kept the old wooden posts and the largest bells in my line of sight. I saw his shadow move across a far wall. I crept up slowly, holding my breath, my blood dripping onto the wood floor. I found a penny and tossed it over at the bells against the far wall. He turned and used both hands to raise the pistol. I charged, slamming him hard up against the stone wall. I grabbed his wrist and wrestled the gun from his hand. Then I backhanded him to the floor.

He fell on his back, mouth bleeding, front teeth lose, one knocked out. He grinned and said, “You don’t have the balls to kill me! You piece of human shit! I screwed that whore you call your mama.”

I pointed the pistol at his head. I saw my mother’s face the day she told me what happened. Saw the tears spill down her wrinkled cheeks, saw the dignity in her eyes clouded with pain more than forty years later. I saw the pain in Courtney’s face the day she told me her story. I played back the TV news images of the murdered girl whose body was pulled from the swamps, a white sheet draped over the coroner’s gurney, blood on the sheet where her face once was. I pictured Kim in the hospital, the gas flames roaring on her stovetop.

“I’m going to ask you one last time. Where’s Dillon?”

“Go to hell.”

I set the gun down on the top of a smaller bell. He grinned and said, “You’re just like that weak-kneed Christian daddy you had.”

I removed my belt. Then I pulled him off the floor, backhanding him again across his mouth. Blood ran down the white robe. I wrapped my belt around his neck and said, “You’re right about one thing. I’m not going to kill you, at least not quickly. I’m going to hang you out of this bell tower for the entire town to see you for the rapist, murderer, and pedophile you really are.” I pulled by mobile phone out of my pocket, the red record light on. I stopped the recording and played back the part where he admitted raping my mother and killing my father. I said, “Now, father figure, that’s one hell of a confession. You’ll go down as not the greatest Catholic priest in Ireland, but one of the most prolific and heinous sex offenders to hide behind that collar.” I ripped the collar from his neck, shoving him against the largest bell. “Where’s Dillon?”

“A place you’ll never find him. Maybe the distant Aideen.”

“What?”

He looked at my wound, blood seeping into my shirt. “You need balm for the wound and your soul, lad, for your feelings of grief. Dillon found it, but you, I think not. You wretched soul … you enter my confessional, my private chamber opening my door, but there’s darkness there, nothing more. Are you surprised?”

He grinned and cocked his head. Then he bolted and ran ten feet, leaping through one of the wide arched openings, falling in utter silence. I heard him hit with a dull thud. I leaned over the side of the window, almost at the top of the tower. He had fallen across a wrought iron gate, landed on his back. Three long black spikes protruding through his chest, his eyes open, Father Thomas Garvey staring at the heavens.