It started as a whisper, as good rumors tend to. What Miss Tarkington heard, or thought she heard, she relayed to her lady-friends at their weekly game of Mahjong, Miss Hawthorne among them. Miss Hawthorne told her husband, who told Miss Kooser, who told Mr. Hollander, who told the Father, some nights later, as the two of them sat in a pub drinking beer.
“You act as if the man hasn’t had his life destroyed,” Father Byrd said, speaking of Peter Tallis. “He’s allowed to be eccentric.”
“I’m only telling you what I know,” Mr. Hollander said.
“What you think you know.”
“I’ve never spoken to Peter outside of church.” He gestured to the low-ceiling, the wood-paneled walls, the brusque, ungainly men seated at the bar. “We tend to move in different circles. But he’s a good man.”
“You want me to make a house call?”
“I know silly rumors. I know how people speak of them. No one is smiling when they talk about this.”
Father Byrd went to the Tallis home the following day. It was out in the west end of town, situated on a small but rich plot of land, three stories high, long and narrow. Discordant notes from a piano floated out from an open window at odd intervals. He imagined that neighbors could hear loud noises from many houses down. It was late afternoon, sunny, mid-October.
Peter answered after the Father rang the doorbell a second time. His hair lay flat. His sharp face had been made bland, featureless. They were both small men, but Peter usually had a vitality to his movements that made him feel much bigger—now, though, his spirit seemed to have been consumed by his frame, and he was shrunken, like a man withering from starvation.
He looked at the Father as if he was a welcome stranger. A soft smile touched his lips.
“Hello, Peter.”
There were no lights on in the home, but the windows on the bottom floor were unadorned, and the sunlight that came in was strong. The whole would take on a blue-gray light whenever clouds passed over the sun. Stacks of paper—neat, ordered, labeled—covered the dining room table. The two men went into the kitchen and sat at that table instead. The coffee was burnt.
“Working again?” Father Byrd said.
“I never really stopped.”
“That’s good to hear. It’s been hard to tell, honestly. We haven’t seen you in some time.”
“I know.” Peter’s eyes shifted around. He bounced his one knee up and down, tapping some rhythm on it with his fingers. “It’s hard to go to church.”
Byrd frowned and nodded. “That’s true. Everything worthwhile is. The question becomes, how much pain are you willing to accept in order to return to life?”
“That’s a little unfair.”
“Is it? I never thought so.”
Peter put his hands up in a gesture of deference. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.” A smile touched his lips again, and he tilted his head as if listening. “Here. Hold on.”
He left the room and returned with one of the stacks of paper. “Can you read music?”
“Not well.”
“Look.” He tapped the stack and set it down. Sheet music. The pages were grouped and separated by tabs. Newer drafts at the top, older drafts at the bottom. The notation was meticulous.
After he’d finished reading, Peter pointed at the pages. “That’s the pain I’m willing to accept.”
And, as if summoned, a voice came rattling through static, reaching them from another room. “Dad?”
Peter tilted his head, his smile gone. He drew his pointed finger up to his lips.
Again. “Dad.” Tinny and coughed out.
“Excuse me,” Peter said. The Father could hear him going up the stairs. A door above was opened and then shut.
This makes the question a little easier, he thought.
He stood. A small cross hung over the sink. Its edges twinkled in the sun, the bronze Christ figure dull and chipped. Father Byrd looked for signs of corruption but could find none. No empty bottles or sour smells. Nothing out of place. The whole house had a deserted feel, and he left the room.
He had been at a party here some 10 years back, when Jay was an infant and Alma had still been around. Peter threw many parties then, ones that swelled with well-known people. They would come to Peter Tallis and lavish him and make him swell too. It was the only party of Peter’s that Father Byrd had attended. It was after the baptism. The people there had swallowed Byrd before Peter came around and pulled him out. He drew a bubble around them. There they were, two men of deep faith and swimming minds speaking in private amidst all that swelling about how much the church meant to them. How much the faith did for them. Peter had reached into a low green cabinet in a corner of the dining room, pulled out an old bottle, and poured them each a glass. Then he drew an index finger back to his mouth, nodded with a smile, and they drank.
The Father knelt down and opened the cabinet. It was stocked. The bottles were dusty. He raised himself and shut the cabinet and went into the foyer to wait for Peter. He could see into the living room off to the right with its large wooden furniture, the white-mantled fireplace with its cords of firewood stacked in a wrought-iron tub next to it. There was a black baby-grand Steinway. On it was a baby monitor.
Father Byrd went to it, held it, rubbing his gnarled thumb over the on/off nub. He could hear static and faint whispers—low voices, something like pleading or whining, he wasn’t sure. He placed his finger on the knob to turn up the volume, but stopped, hesitated, thought better of it. He set it down and returned to the foyer. After another couple of minutes, Peter came down, apologizing for his absence.
“How is Jay?”
Peter paused. Something in the Father’s voice seemed to catch him off guard. He considered, and then he smiled. “Jay’s why you’re here.”
“Of course. I hear he’s sick.”
Peter nodded.
“I understand you pulled him from school.”
“He was in and out of the hospital. Then he was in for a week straight. One of his school friends brings over his homework. We’re doing lessons when we can.”
“Does Alma know?”
“If you can find her, you can tell her.”
The foyer growing darker, the bars of sunlight on the floor shrinking. A half-moon as pale as chalk dust was stamped into the blue sky. They stood in silence until the Father slipped into his coat and threw his scarf around his neck.
“Do they know what it is?”
“They’re not sure. They’re still running tests.”
Peter opened the door and Father Byrd went outside, down the steps, and turned back at the bottom. “I thought it prudent to check on the boy. And you. Considering what I heard.”
“People like to listen,” Peter said. “But they don’t hear what I hear. Goodnight, Father.”
The priest got into his car and drove off. Peter stood in the doorway watching his neighborhood, listening.
*
That night, Father Byrd was back at the pub. He was greeted at the door with cheers. Some of the men gripped his shoulder, said things like, “How you doing, Father,” or “Bless me father, for I have sinned,” and some of the women hugged him, smiling with laughter.
He waded through the crowd—townie folks and old church heads—and moved towards the back of the place. There in a corner he saw Tom Hollander and a group of his chatty mates gathered around a table. Men and women, all of them pushing up against retirement age. Some of them had gone to school with the Father.
“There he is,” Tom said, and pulled Byrd into their circle. “I’d a feeling you’d catch the gutter bug tonight.”
“Now why’s that?”
Sadie Kooser stared at the Father over her beer. “We heard you went to the Tallis household tonight. Went to see the brilliant Peter.”
“This town doesn’t know how to keep it’s damn mouth shut.”
Colin Hawthorne drew a shot of Jameson to his mouth and slurped it down. “Ain’t that the truth.”
“Well, what happened?” Sadie said.
“That’s between him and the Big Man,” Tom said. “Don’t be hassling him to break his oath.”
“Then why the hell do you think he came here, Tommy? To bless the wine?”
“Actually,” Father Bird said, “I wanted to hear from all of you.”
They looked at him as a group, wary of this sudden role reversal. A waitress came over, and Byrd bought everyone another round, ordered a High Life for himself. By the time the waitress had snaked back with the drinks, they were already knee-deep in the stories and hearsay.
“I don’t know, I don’t spend too much time on that side of town.” Sadie’s arms were folded across her chest. The one corner of her mouth was curled in a tight smile. “Some of the bimbos that come into the hairdresser come from there though. And they always talk. They live to gossip. Their money can’t buy them happiness, so they suck happiness from the lives of others and tell me about it.”
“I hear it too,” Colin said. “When the boys come back to the office, they’ll tell me about it. Sometimes, anyway. Not the screams too much. But they hear Peter. After they’re done mowing someone’s lawn or tilling their garden, they’ll hear it spilling down the block.”
“What do they say?”
Colin shrugged. “Music. Piano mostly. Every now and then they’ll hear his voice singing nonsense behind the piano, like he’s trying to fill in the space where the orchestra will go. Something like that.”
“Some of my ladies hear the screams,” Sadie said. She was nodding now, looking off into a far corner of the bar. “It’ll break out in the middle of the night. It’s not crystal clear—I guess it could be two cats going at it or maybe a fox—but they seem certain.”
“How do they know?”
Sadie looked back at him then. “They hear the piano too.”
When they were finished, Byrd sat back and rested his chin in palm. They kept themselves silent as the bar carried on, letting him think as well as he could.
Then Tom said: “Well?”
“I don’t know. He gave me nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“There’s a lot to that,” Sadie said. “Don’t you think he’s hiding? Don’t you think there’s some truth to it?”
“Probably. Yes. I don’t know.”
“Don’t you have any ideas? Isn’t there something you could do?”
Nothing came to them. Voices swelled up and people swirled around them, and all Father Byrd could think of was Peter Tallis staring, drawing a finger up to his smiling mouth, as if he was keeping a secret.
*
Three weeks later, on a drizzly November morning, Father Byrd got a call. It was Peter. “I need you,” he said.
Byrd came to their home and met with the boy. Later that evening, it was still raining. Wreaths of hot breath circled their heads as they stood shivering under umbrellas so Peter could have a cigarette. He had taken up smoking again.
“Why now? Why not before?” the Father said.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s been weeks, Peter. Months. People know about this. They know that something’s wrong.”
“They don’t know like I know. You saw him, you saw his face.”
“This isn’t my area of expertise.”
“You must know someone.”
“These decisions are not made lightly.”
Three days later, Father Byrd took Peter to meet with Bishop Eckhart. He said the same things as the Father. He used the same words. “These decisions are not made lightly.” He would not hear it. Peter begged and was asked to leave.
When they were alone, the Bishop turned to Father Byrd. “What do you think?”
“You know my thoughts. The boy needs proper care.”
Eckhart leaned back in his chair, sighing. A massive gold crucifix hung on the wall behind him.
“Do you believe it?” Byrd said.
The Bishop leaned forward. “It’s not about belief. What do you think is best?”
“For who?”
The Bishop shrugged. “For the boy, for the father.” He looked up at the ceiling and gestured his hands to the walls around them. “The Church.”
Father Byrd leaned forward and rested his fingers on the edge of the Bishop’s desk. “Proper care, Your Excellency.”
The Bishop frowned, nodded, looked up at Byrd. “I don’t want to touch this.”
When the Father called Peter that same night, Peter screamed at him. He told Byrd that he was gutless. “I am here every day. You don’t have to deal with this. You don’t have to know this.”
“Peter, it’s more complicated—”
“What about the rumors? People must hear something coming from my house. What do they say?”
He asked it again and again, and as he did, Father Byrd could hear something in the background, some loud baying noise that sounded filtered and cold and violent. “Do you hear this?” Peter said. “Do you hear what I am going through?”
The Father felt sick. He set the phone on his desk and put his head in his hands. Peter continued to scream.
“Take him to a hospital,” the Father said at last.
“You’re worthless.” He hung up.
Father Byrd stayed in his office, listening to the ticking of the rectory, the cold drizzle on the windowpanes and the siding, until he got up and went to the Tallis home. It was silent now. Dark except for low lamplight, and Peter let him inside. They sat at the dining room table, where the countless stacks of notation paper had been. They had been replaced with a single, neat stack, maybe half as thick as a notebook, printed in ink. There was still no title.
“Is it complete?” Father Byrd said. He was exhausted, unfocused. He felt the need to connect with this man somehow.
“Yes. Two movements.”
“When will it debut?”
“I’m still negotiating the terms.”
Then they turned their conversation back to Jay and came to an agreement. Byrd left as the noises began to start up again, promising that he would make the call.
*
Some days later, Bishop Eckhart was sitting alone in his office, doing paperwork, responding to emails. Outside, it was sunny and cold. He thought things had come to pass, and he ticked away the morning hours with coffee and the endless trivial tasks.
And then the phone rang. The voice that answered Eckhart was old and stern, and it reminded him of the Priests who had had taught him at the seminary. His name was Father Balbulus. The Bishop was aware of him. Balbulus insisted on a meeting and Eckhart relented and that same night, Balbulus was in the Bishop’s office.
“Have you seen the boy?” Eckhart said.
Balbulus shook his head. “Not without your permission.” He was an old and gangly priest, thin and tall and busted up. He carried a cane and a wide-brim hat. His nose swelled out from under his eyes like the ragged burl of a tree.
“You don’t need permission to pay a visit.”
“I don’t do visits,” Balbulus said, and the Bishop understood. Balbulus was a man for whom inaction was a sin. There would be no visits. There would only be the ritual.
“What if you get there and you find something different? A tortured artist and his sick kid. What then?”
“This is not a pressure campaign, Your Excellency. I have the information I need. I won’t be there for the boy’s dad, I’ll be there for the boy.” Then he leaned in, his hands atop his cane, his nose and mouth curled into something like a snarl. “Know this though: if you’re consideration is anything but a matter of faith, you have already failed him.”
Eckhart leaned back. Balbulus had an angled way about his posture—his elbows atop his knees, his shoulders drawn up in a square, his head centered and slanted downward. The Bishop imagined it had taken a concerted effort by others to keep this man from power.
“You’ve spoken to Father Byrd then,” Eckhart said.
“He assures me the boy’s been tested. ‘Put through the ringer.’ Those were his words.”
“Do you know who Peter Tallis is? Are you aware of his name? Do you know what this could mean for us if something bad were to happen to that child?”
“I don’t recall you caring when the diocese was creating victims of its own. But I suppose the Church has always let the Devil have its way with children.”
“You can’t even begin to know, you old fool. If you’re concerned about the boy then be concerned about the father. His name, what he’s done for us, the people he knows—this is not some moral dance routine, Balbulus, this is about Peter Tallis. I tell you, a devil lives in his soul but it’s not Satan.”
“Do you have a better explanation?”
“His madness.”
“What came first?”
“You’re being reckless.”
“And you’re acting without faith. We are not doctors. We are not men of science.”
And, in some measure, the Bishop recognized this fact and was unable to shake it. “One chance,” he said later. “Byrd will be there on my behalf, not yours. Tomorrow. You’ll come here at 9am and the two of you will go over.”
Balbulus stood, nodded, and when the Bishop didn’t rise, he put on his hat and left.
*
Eckhart called Byrd and told him to call Peter. It was nearly an hour before the Father got a hold of him, and when he did, Peter’s voice was short—bitter like dry wine. “No planning? Just roll in twelve hours from now and do it? How am I supposed to prepare?”
“We have a certain way. Look, I’ll be there, you don’t have to worry.”
“I’m not worried. What’s the priest’s name?” Eckhart told him and Peter sounded it out, syllable by syllable. There was a brief silence. “Ok.”
They spoke a little longer and then they were both quiet, and when Father Byrd was about to say goodbye, Peter stuttered.
“What was that?”
“Support. Could there be an audience? I mean, could I have my support there? People there for me?”
Father Byrd didn’t know what to say. He wanted to imagine Peter clinging to others out of love and need as his son slipped further and further away. But something in his voice made that difficult. Something in the words he chose.
“You can have support, Peter. But no one will be in that bedroom but Father Balbulus and I.”
Peter let out a long shuddering breath. “I can work with that,” he said. “That can work.”
They said their goodbyes and hung up.
Byrd sat in his small office and considered the turn that things had taken. He considered the words that Peter had used, the one in particular. Audience.
A priest who was no longer with the parish had once referred to Peter as an ‘artist type’ before Byrd had gotten to know him well. He thought about the neat stack of notation paper sitting on the table in Peter’s house, waiting to be played. He thought about audiences, what they were, and what they meant. At length, he thought about Jay, who seemed so distant from this whole process, so shut out, even as it all circled around him. A central player who lacked any voice.
Did he even know?
Father Byrd shut his eyes and whispered to himself in a halting rhythm. If someone had been listening, the only line that would have risen loud enough for them to hear would have been this: “And His kingdom will have no end.”
*
Sweat gathered at the tops of their foreheads and trickled down the sides of their faces. They could hear discordant, inharmonic notes from a piano leak from the open windows. Balbulus approached the door, and Byrd followed.
Peter greeted them blinking and grimacing. He was dressed in all black, his thick hair combed and styled. It was the most put-together Byrd had seen the man in quite some time.
A moment passed, and then he smiled. Drew a finger to his lips and then pointed it at the older priest. “Balbulus,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Hello, Peter,” Byrd said.
“Just as I pictured. Yes, ok, come in.”
They went in and Peter shut the door. The house was shrouded in darkness. Balbulus asked him about the lights.
“He always cuts them off. They threw sparks the one time. I can’t have that.” He smiled then and bent his head. Nodded to himself and looked up at the two priests. “I’m so glad you’re here,” he said. “You don’t know how happy I am to see you both. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for.”
“How’s Jay?” Byrd said.
Peter dropped his smile, as if caught off-guard. “He’s good.”
“Good?”
“No, not good.” Peter shut his eyes and shook his head. “Not good. I’m sorry. We’ve been through a lot.” He opened his eyes and regarded the two men very clinically. “He is what he is. What do you expect at this point?”
A cold silence hung between them. Peter’s words felt hollow and strange, but they all knew why they were here. Peter took them upstairs and they stood around the door. “Should we wait for something to happen?” Peter said.
“No,” Balbulus said. He twisted the knob and walked into the bedroom.
The window shades were drawn, but ripples of gray light seeped out from the edges and the room was cast in deep, gloomy shadow. Birds sang outside. A motor hummed, revved, and puttered off, fading. The boy could be seen as a vague form sitting upright in bed. He was cradled in a husband, its arms threatening to pull him in, to swallow him. The silhouette of his head was bulbous and tottering, his neck as thin and wilted as the stalk of an orchid. Balbulus could smell blood and vomit and shit. He found a chair by a desk, pulled it next to the bed, and sat.
The other men stood in the doorway, their silhouettes wavering like mirages, and Balbulus considered shutting the door and keeping them away. But he didn’t move. After a considerable amount of time, the boy tilted his head, and the Father became aware that they were looking at one another.
“Hello,” Balbulus said.
The boy said nothing and would continue to say nothing for the duration of the ritual. So Balbulus spoke into the darkness. He said things about God’s love and the workings of it, how it wormed its way into the hearts and minds of men until it filled their souls, if only they would let it. This was not Jay’s fault, he said. Not his fault and not his fate. He would not to be the one swallowed by the darkness. Balbulus spread his arms and spoke to the ceiling as if pleading, as if begging, his voice wavering and then rising, filling the room. Commanding the Holy Spirit to deliver the boy from silence and terror, winding and careening and whipped about, and just as quickly drawn back, like twine around a spool.
“In Jesus’s name,” he said.
The boy didn’t move.
The Father reached into his pocket, pulled out a rosary, and placed it on the bedcover. Slowly, it unfurled, and slipped, and fell to the ground. “Tell me your name,” he said.
They remained in silence for half an hour, Jay staring at the Father as if in want, but without the words to convey it, and then Balbulus stood and exited the room. Peter shut the door.
“We begin immediately,” Balbulus said.
Peter’s breathing became a series of deep inhale-exhales. He gave a brief series of nods after every exhale. He began to pace and cracked his knuckles. “Thank you, Fathers.” Then he went down the steps and left them alone in the hall.
*
They went in with candles and crucifixes and vials of holy water. Father Byrd stood before the bed with his eyes wide, answering every word from Balbulus with the ordained response, following the rites of the ritual as laid down in the book. Reading verses and blessings and commandments in hope that God, somehow, might be present somewhere in that room.
At one point, drenched in sweat and shivering, breath billowing from him like car exhaust, he was drawn out of his trance by the voice of Father Balbulus. “Match,” he said. “Strike the match.”
Byrd reached into his frock, pulled out a matchbook, and struck one. At his feet was a thick white candle in a large brass trapping with a ring to hold it by. He lit the candle and closed the top and held the flame over the boy.
“That we may see the Devil in his true form. Come forth and show yourself. Give us your name that the Lord your God may call you out from this holy servant and cast you down to the pit. For the Lord rules over devils as He does over angels and men, and the Lord shall rule with fire!”
The brass trapping swayed and the flame flickered and the shadows it threw off the boy were black. Father Byrd could not allow himself to think, but it became unavoidable. Jay is ten years old, he thought. And we can see his bones.
His tongue was gray and swollen and it rested on his teeth, which were splitting from the gums and angled out like dead tree stumps.
But it was the way he tilted his face in the candlelight. The way he twisted his head and looked into the Father’s eyes and lifted a single finger to his mouth and began to smile.
Byrd shouted then and the brass trapping fell to the bed in a crash and the candle was snuffed out and he turned away and vomited onto the floor. Balbulus continued to speak. “God the Father commands that you leave His holy servant.”
Sense of time had evaporated. There was no gray light seeping out through the edges of the drawn shades. Father Byrd put his forehead on the floor and prayed for himself. His thoughts began to shut out Balbulus’ words until a single refrain repeated in his head over and over: And His kingdom shall have no end.
And beneath it, something else. Something rhythmic. With his eyes shut and his mind absent of all but his meditation, all of the separate sounds of the world came to him in parts. Balbulus’ voice, the creaking and cracking of Jay’s bones as he turned and writhed. This too: low voices, many low voices, some of them whispers and murmurs, some of them reveling and exultant, all of it set to the thunderous chords and delicate notes of music from a piano.
Father Byrd lifted his head. He stood, wiped his mouth, and walked to the bedroom door. Put his ear against it. Voices.
He turned to Balbulus, who could not be shaken from his mission. He was splashing holy water on Jay, who twisted in slow burning pain, his bones breaking as he contorted, his eyes rolling back to their whites, groans of deep suffering pouring out from him. But Byrd was not watching this. He had noticed something. On the nightstand, tucked behind the unused lamp, was a baby monitor.
That’s when Father Byrd opened the door.
The hall was crowded with people in fine clothing, with open mouths, drinks in hand, who stared at him like an exhibit as he passed through. There was a line of them down the steps. The music became louder as Balbulus’ voice became softer, and then louder again as he reached the bottom of the steps. Filtered now, amplified, almost like a recording.
The foyer was filled with the audience. They parted as he moved in their midst, his frock stained with vomit and blood and hardened splashes of candle wax.
Upstairs, Father Balbulus was aware of nothing except for the proximity of some reckoning. He was not sure whose. The boy was lost to life now, his neck dangling and oscillating like a broken weathervane no matter his position, his back arched and twisted. His nose had split open and he was flowering in a living decay. But Father Balbulus believed his spirit could still be saved.
The old priest was unaware that the door was open. He was unaware that people had begun to fill the room and watch as the boy flailed and convulsed, flayed by holy water that sliced the thin parchment of his bloodless skin. Balbulus’s voice had become ragged, and he was spitting blood from his ruptured bronchial tubes as he screamed at the child. “Depart from me, ye accursed, for the fire and flames prepared for the devil and his angels. Depart from me in the name of Christ Jesus.”
Downstairs, the speakers swelled with the force of Balbulus’ voice and the screams of Jay. Father Byrd went into the living room. People watched in frozen rapture.
Peter Tallis was sitting at the piano, music flowing from his fingertips, as the sounds of his son’s exorcism played over a baby monitor.
The monitor was hooked into a speaker atop the piano, which was, in turn, hooked into other speakers that carried the sounds throughout the house. Peter played for several more bars before he noticed the dark figure looming over him.
The music stopped, started again, stuttered. He stared at Father Byrd with red-veined eyes, his mouth curled like the waiting talons of some bird of prey. “You’re messing things up.”
Byrd ripped him from the piano, threw him to the ground, and began to beat him senseless. The crowd watched as, upstairs, the other crowd watched too. Watched Father Balbulus collapse to the floor as Jay Tallis gave his final convulsions, accompanied by no music, his spirit departing to somewhere above, free from devils and angels alike.
Evan Rodenhausen currently lives in Philadelphia, where he works in immigration law and advocacy. A graduate student at Arcadia University, he is currently studying the role of language in the development of human psychology. Follow him on Twitter @EvanRodenhausen