Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 100, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 603 & 604, October 1992

This Church Is Open by Robert Campbell

Artemidorus had been a professor of comparative religion for more than thirty years and now held the chair in Humanities at a small college in New England. He was considered an authority on the origins of Satan. Not the Satan of popular horror films and novels, but the Satan of many and varied names who was central to the ancient religions, the basic magic and superstitions of which come to us nearly whole, from Paleolithic and Neolithic times. Several scholarly books were among his credits, one of which had some financial success when an imaginative publisher marketed the paperback version of it with a lurid cover showing some devil with horns and tail having his way with a swooning maiden.

He did not believe in devils except as the abstract embodiment of evil, just as he did not believe in saints except as the symbolic embodiment of good.

He was nominally a Christian but had left the raising of their children in the Episcopalian faith to his wife, his own church attendance being limited to obligatory weddings, christenings, and funerals, with the occasional midnight mass attended for the sake of tradition at Christmas.

For years he had given faith a sidelong glance and had he been questioned sharply about his trust in God, he would have said that he had none and scarcely any belief at all in more than the mere idea of God, some intention — before the forming of the universe — to be God.

His wife was dead these five years and the children grown, making lives elsewhere, one in California, one in Florida, and one in Texas.

He lived alone, but not lonely, in the house to which he’d taken his bride twenty-eight years before, when he was just a poverty-stricken associate and immortality was possible, surrounded by his books and a collection of vinyl records become collector’s pieces, twice made obsolete, once by tape cassettes and again by CDs.

He often thought that he himself had been twice made obsolete, once by the Time cover that asked the question, “Is God Dead?” and again when the born-again Christian Fundamentalists seemed about to convert all of America.

It was at that time that he’d narrowed his field of study and gathered his reputation for knowing the origins and nature of Satan better than any but a very few of his fellow scholars.

What they did not know — what no one but his acolytes, witches and warlocks recruited from students given to curiosity and rebellion and certain women of the college town given to hysteria and repressed sexuality knew — was that he had made himself a magus, the leader of an original cult of his own design and manufacture.

It had started harmlessly enough with walks and gatherings in the woods beside the campus, the telling of stories and the breathing of certain herbs, the occasional naked mass and innocent orgy, but as all leaders discover sooner or later, he’d found it necessary to spike the emotional cocktail he offered his congregation with darker stuff, black masses, the ritual kissing of his buttocks, more shameful perversions — willingly committed but needing the legitimacy of ritual, the sacrifice of dogs and cats, and finally the sacrifice of one of their number who threatened to betray them.

Having escaped discovery once — the murder going unsolved and himself undiscovered — he tested his power to rule and take the lives of others again... and again... and again... choosing the time and place with great care, making certain that the murders took place far from the college where he taught, his sense of omnipotence growing, disdainful of every belief and faith except his belief and faith in his own masquerade, no longer needing or wanting any ceremony or excuse when the desire to kill took hold.

Through the years, he’d developed a devilish skill at identifying his half-willing victims at practically a single glance, knowing almost without fail that young man or woman, that thin-lipped housewife or balding clerk, whose midnight fantasies would urge them to strike up a conversation with him and go willingly into some dark copse of trees beside a river, or glade within a wood, which would become their grave.

He’d been asked to Oxford to give the Merlin Sylvester Lecture at Christ’s College, the seminar named for that magus who prophesied to Edward the Confessor, the last Anglo-Saxon king of the English.

Rather than accept the offer of accommodations at the college, which he feared might afford him little privacy but, instead, an endless round of meals with well-meaning graduate students and dons anxious that he should not lack for any gesture of hospitality, he’d arranged for a per diem with which he might secure his own rooms at the hotel or bed and breakfast of his choice.

A man of frugal habits, he’d chosen a modest establishment two miles from the city center along the Bodley Road, at the bottom of a quiet lane, where a clean bed and private toilet, a pleasant lounge with a television, and what proved to be a better than merely decent breakfast cost him a third as much as a plain room in a city hotel would have done.

It had the added advantage of giving him a morning and evening constitutional during each of the five days of his stay, and hours of unobserved privacy which no one would ever question or intrude upon.

Each day, going into town, he noted a small wooden church, set well back from the road, its entry apparently secured with a lattice gate of wood painted green, a piece of paper fixed to it which, he idly surmised, must be the announcement of Sunday worship. There was nothing distinguished about it. In a country where great antiquity was commonplace and in a city where significant architecture was everywhere to be seen, he felt no compulsion to explore its interior or surrounds, but found every reason to simply hurry by on his way to the paths along the canal and river, the bustling streets of the commercial city, or the quiet greenswards and broad playing fields of the colleges assembled.

Yet each time, after the first time, that he walked past the little church, morning or evening, he found himself wondering what exactly was written on the sign.

One evening, during a lull in the television programming, he asked the owner of the bed and breakfast if he ever attended the church along the Bodley Road and did he know its denomination. His host, a Mr. Fluelis, seemed to find it difficult to identify the building to which he referred, in the end calling upon his wife to refresh his memory, which she was unable to do, laughingly admitting that she had no interest in churches along the Bodley Road, scarcely ever walking there herself since they’d acquired their first automobile ten years before.

It was of no consequence. Things seen every day of one’s life often made no impression. It was like asking directions of someone in the neighborhood in which they lived; they could easily lead you to your destination on foot, but to describe the turns and street names was often beyond their ability.

The lecture was a great success, his delivery wry and funny, his material crisp and full of meat, his theme just challenging enough to warrant some debate over a glass in a local pub right after.

So it was well after dark when he was ready to go back to his rented bed.

He might have taken a taxi; it was an inexpensive journey. Or he might have taken a bus; there were more than enough going along the Bodley Road even at that hour. But there was a full moon, the bite in the air was invigorating, and he was warmed by the three glasses of port he’d drunk. The prospect of a long walk home appealed to him.

He’d not gone a hundred yards along the Bodley Road when he became acutely aware that he was being followed by one of his companions in the pub, a young man, delicate and feminine of face and figure, who’d had little to say and equally little to drink, but had merely stared at him as he’d informally expanded upon his lecture with anecdotes about Satan and Satanism which would not have been appropriate in a lecture hall setting.

At the railroad station, he hesitated, turned aside and then faced the student, remarking upon the fact that they seemed to be walking in the same direction and asking if the student was taking the last train to some neighboring town.

The young man replied that he had been overstimulated by the lecture and the ensuing conversation in the public house, and was walking to restore a measure of calm before returning to his rooms at Christ’s Church College.

Artemidorus suggested that he walk with him and gave the student his promise that they would not talk of stimulating matters, intellectual or otherwise. It was enough to set the hook, and of course they did talk of the old religions and of faith expressed through carnality, of Druidic ritual and witchcraft, and of la vecchia religione, that primitive religion that had survived through the ages in Catholic Europe.

When they passed the bridge that arched over the canal, Artemidorus suggested they walk along the path for a distance before returning, at which time they would part ways, he going on the mile to his room in the bed and breakfast and the student returning to Oxford and his bed in the school dormitory.

Fifty yards along the canal, with the moon lying like a silver coin on a sea of molten lead, at a place where a footbridge sheltered a thick stand of water reeds and climbing vines, Artemidorus first kissed, then undressed, and finally murdered the young student, never having even asked his name.

After concealing the clothes and body in the vegetation, he washed his hands and returned to the Bodley Road, coming up from the towpath in sight of the church.

Somehow, it no longer looked so commonplace and undistinguished. Even though it was clearly modern, no more than fifty or sixty years old, the thought came to him that the fabric of the building might well incorporate a stone altar-screen or a window, a tomb or even an entire wall, from some early church that had once stood upon the spot. With the intention of walking around the perimeter, inspecting the windows and foundation as best he could, he walked down the path of the latticework gate with the sign upon it.

Instead of the schedule of masses, it bore the words, “This Church Is Open. Please Secure the Gate and Door Behind You When You Enter or Leave.”

A little thrill went through him. He felt as though an opportunity for a small adventure had been thrust upon him very unexpectedly. He’d thought he’d just have a stroll around the exterior of a commonplace little church building but, instead, here he was, given the opportunity to explore its modest secrets and mysteries on toward midnight in the full of the moon after having committed a terrible act.

The latch gave easily to his hand. It swung open without a sound. He closed it behind him as he’d been admonished to do and went into the archway, where the moonlight was prohibited by the overhanging eaves. The iron-hinged oak door gave to his hand as easily as had the gate. He stepped inside, closed it behind him, turned for the first full view of the interior and was nearly overcome with wonder at the extraordinary grandeur that presented itself to him.

This was no common wooden church fifty or sixty years old. The outer structure was no more than a skin, a concealment of and protection for the ancient temple of stone within.

He could not date it precisely, there were a dozen architectural epochs jumbled there, centuries lying cheek to jowl, a sixteenth-century wall burrowing into a wall from the tenth, a stained-glass Gothic window, filled with the light of the moon, illuminating a Norman memorial stone set into the floor. The pews were carved with a hand that had been alive during the historical Arthur’s time. The christening font was so ancient that he believed it might well be pre-Christian. It was a treasure filled with pieces worthy of the greatest museums in the world.

It was all quite dumbfounding.

But nothing was so overwhelming as the painting on the wall behind the altar. The power and magnificence of it burst upon him like a revelation, the moonlight suddenly striking through a clerestory set high beneath the roof, bringing it to blazing life, as though the thousand writhing figures in the painted hell below and the ascending souls on their way to heaven above moved before his gaze.

He had seen most of the world’s great altarpieces in his scholarly travels, even the one by Michaelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, which was said by many to be the greatest of them all. But none, he would swear, matched the one before him now.

He glanced at the lucky few on their way to heaven and union with Christ, but his eyes were inexorably drawn to the tortured men and women burning in the lake of fire. Never had he seen such graphic descriptions of human torment and despair. Never had he felt such horror.

All at once, it was as though he could hear the cries and laments of the damned, so vivid was the impression made upon him, and then he became aware that someone besides himself had come into the church and admitted the sounds of the sighing trees and what traffic there might be along the Bodley Road.

Artemidorus turned to face whoever it might be.

A very tall man wearing a black suit and dickey, a ribbon of white collar gleaming at his neck, pale face, pale, pale hands, black hair, and pointed beard, stood there smiling at him. “Good morning,” he said.

“Is it morning?”

“Well, it’s past one o’clock.”

“I’ve been here more than an hour?”

“Time plays tricks in here, I’ve been told.”

“Are you a Roman priest?”

The cleric — if that was what he was — didn’t answer, but merely made a gesture with his hand that might have been a blessing or might have been merely dismissive, telling Artemidorus that what he might be was of no matter.

The great altarpiece drew Artemidorus back and he turned away from the man in black, astonished anew at the brilliant verisimilitude of the work. He felt that, were he to reach out his hand, his fingers would be singed by the flame.

“A remarkable representation of the fate that awaits all sinners, is it not?” the cleric said.

“I’ve never seen the like.”

“Do you believe in hell?”

Artemidorus turned around again, the altarpiece at his back, and smiled in his gentle, dismissive way. “I believe in the power of the superstition that presents such a notion to the human race.”

“But not in the actuality of it?”

“Well, of course I don’t believe in hellfire and brimstone,” Artemidorus said.

There was a great rush of hot wind. Artemidorus turned around another time.

The painting seemed to burst apart and collapse upon itself in a blaze of flame and fire. The damned souls twisted and turned in their agony, reaching out their hands, trying to grasp Artemidorus by the sleeve. There was a path that opened that descended into darkness.

The pale vicar smiled. “Oh, you will,” he said. “I assure you that you will.”

Outside, the sign on the green lattice gate read, “This Church Is Closed. Mass on Sunday at 8:00, 9:00, and 10:00.”