Ritual Read online

  Charlie contemptuously brushed Mme Musette aside and began stalking back down the corridor. ‘Mr McLean!’ she called after him. ‘It won’t do you any good!’

  ‘I’ll let the sheriff be the judge of that,’ Charlie retorted. ‘And one more thing––if Martin is missing even one fingernail by the time I get back here, I’m personally going to take the law into my own hands and I’m going to kill you. You and your husband both––slowly!’

  He ran down the stairs, across the hallway, and out of the huge front doors. As promised, his car was waiting for him, with its hood dented and clumps of grass still clinging to its wheel-arches. He cantered down the stone steps and across the gravel, and as he did so a flock of ravens rose cawing from the spires of Le Reposoir, the first birds that he had heard since he trespassed here. They sounded harsh and triumphant, and they circled around and around above his head as if they were gloating over his defeat.

  He got into the car, slammed the door, and switched on the engine. As he did so, Mme Musette came down the front steps of the house after him. She stopped only a few feet away, and Charlie let down his window.

  ‘I’m going straight to the police,’ he warned her.

  ‘I know that,’ she replied. ‘It will do you no good.’

  ‘Maybe it will and maybe it won’t.’

  ‘Don’t you think every parent who finds out that their son or daughter has come to join the Célèstines feels the same way?’

  ‘Every parent?’ For some reason the thought that he might just be one worried father out of a thousand hadn’t occurred to him.

  ‘Of course. Parents always have their own ideas about how they wish their children to be brought up, both morally and spiritually. But they must understand that their children are not their property; that their children are entitled to pursue happiness in any way they wish. The Rev Moon and his followers were regarded with the same suspicion as the Célèstines. Many parents tried desperate measures to rescue their children from Moonie settlements, and to persuade them never to return. But most did; and those who didn’t were unhappy for the rest of their lives. Remember, Mr McLean, your son came to the Célèstines of his own free will. You will never get him back now. Physically, perhaps––although that is unlikely. But never, never, spiritually. You have lost him now, for ever.’

  Charlie stared at Mme Musette with a ferocity that he had never experienced in his whole life. Then he said, vehemently, ‘Fuck you,’ and drove off up the gravelled driveway with his tyres spinning and the rear end of his Oldsmobile snaking from side to side.

  11

  He found the Sheriff much more quickly than he had expected. There had been a traffic accident on the steeply sloping road to Allen’s Corners. An elderly farmer in a station wagon had tried to overtake a slow-moving delivery truck on a blind bend, and collided head-on with another car coming the opposite way. The road surface was mushy with blood and broken glass, and the damaged cars were being towed away like injured dinosaurs.

  The sheriff was standing by the side of the road with his hands on his hips as if he found the stupidity of his fellow men impossible to believe. He was short and sandy-haired, with a big curving belly in front and a big curving bottom behind. He wore designer sunglasses that didn’t suit him at all. Not far away, the deputy who Charlie had first met when he drove into Allen’s Corners was taking down an eye-witness statement from a highway worker who had been clearing out ditches only fifty yards away from the smash.

  Charlie parked his car on the grassy verge and climbed out. The sheriff turned to him as he approached, then leaned sideways a little so that he could see past him to his car.

  ‘This is an accident here, fellow,’ he told Charlie, in a voice made harsh by smoking and Connecticut winters. ‘You’re going to have to move that vehicle out of here.’

  ‘I was coming to your office,’ Charile told him. ‘I have a serious crime to report.’

  Somehow, out here by the roadside, Charlie thought that his words sounded weak and unreal. The sheriff gave a short, hammering cough, and eyed Charlie through his green-tinted lenses as if he wasn’t sure whether to shout at him or hit him.

  ‘What nature of serious crime?’ he inquired.

  ‘Kidnap, maybe worse,’ said Charlie.

  The sheriff asked, ‘Where? And when? And who got kidnapped?’

  ‘It happened last night. My fifteen-year-old son Martin was abducted from the Windsor Hotel at West Hartford.’

  ‘Outside of my jurisdiction,’ said the sheriff. ‘You should of reported it in West Hartford.’

  ‘But they brought him here.’

  ‘Who brought him here? You mean you know who did it?’

  ‘M. and Mme Musette, at Le Reposoir, back on the Quassapaug Road. I saw him there not more than ten minutes ago.’

  The sheriff said, ‘Hold on, now. You’ve seen him since this alleged kidnap took place?’

  ‘That’s correct. I tried to get him away, but I couldn’t.’

  The Sheriff looked thoughtful. Then he called to his deputy, ‘Clive! You want to wrap this up? I have to talk to this gentleman here for a while.’

  Clive came over with his thumbs in his belt. ‘How do you do,’ he greeted Charlie. Then he said to the sheriff, ‘This is the gentleman who parked in Mr Haxalt’s space the other day.’

  The sheriff said, ‘Sounds like you’re the kind of man who likes to live dangerously.’

  ‘Where can we talk?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘You’d better follow me back to my office. You and I have got some discussing to do.’

  The sheriff eased his bulky bottom into his car, and drove off, with Charlie following close behind. His office was cater-corner from the church, overlooking the sloping green at Allen’s Corners. He parked in a space marked ‘Sheriff’ and Charlie parked beside him in a space marked ‘Coroner’.

  ‘You sure do like to live dangerously,’ the sheriff remarked, indicating the slot in which Charlie had parked. ‘Our county coroner has a rare temper.’

  ‘I’m not in the mood for worrying about people’s private parking spaces,’ said Charlie.

  The sheriff grasped his shoulder. ‘I know you’re not. Just trying to lighten the atmosphere a little. Come on in. Maybe you’d care for some coffee.’

  Charlie sat in the sheriff’s office under a tired-looking flag and a crest with the Connecticut state motto, Qui Transtulit Sustinet. There was also a comprehensive selection of colour photographs of the current sheriff shaking hands with almost everybody from Ronald Reagan to Jimmy Breslin. The sheriff sent his work-worn, bespectacled secretary to bring them two Styrofoam cups of what turned out to be remarkably good coffee. Then he kicked the door closed, and settled himself down behind his desk.

  ‘You’d better give me some of the salient facts,’ he said. ‘Your boy’s age, description, what he was wearing, all that kind of thing. You’d better tell me how it happened, too.’

  ‘But I know where he is,’ Charlie insisted.

  The sheriff pulled a tight face. ‘Sure you know where he is. The difficulty is, if he’s staying with those people voluntarily, we’re not in any kind of a position to go crashing in there with all guns blazing to rescue him.’

  ‘He’s a minor. Don’t tell me that you can’t get a warrant to go in and get him. Listen––I can prove that his life is in danger. Do you know anything about those people at all? Do you know what they’re doing in that place?’

  ‘Well, sir, as a matter of fact I do.’

  ‘You know about the rituals?’

  The sheriff nodded, squashing his double chins like an accordion bellows.

  ‘And you’ve been content to sit here and let them get on with it? For Christ’s sake, sheriff, they’re cannibals! They’re worse than cannibals! They’re actually persuading young people to hack themselves to pieces and eat their own bodies!’

  ‘Yes,’ said the sheriff.

  ‘Yes?’ Charlie exploded. ‘Is that all you can say? Yes? I’m talking abou
t my only son, sheriff. My boy is lying on a bed in that place stark naked and preparing himself to do God alone knows what. He’s probably going to cut off his own fingers and eat them. Or worse.’

  The sheriff sipped his coffee and then set it back on his desk. ‘Whatever I’m going to say to you now, Mr McLean, you’re going to feel that it falls far short of the kind of response you’ve been expecting from the law on this matter. But there are what you might call ramifications.’

  ‘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 Célèstine 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 Célèstines 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 nobody believed it and the Célèstines 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 Célèstines had to carry on this cannibalism business in total, one hundred per 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 Célèstine 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 Célèstines had first-class lawyers, and since nobody 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 Célèstines with mental health legislation.’

  ‘Oh sure. There was a test case put before the Louisiana Supreme Court on 11 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 the world are mutilated every year––circumcised, that is––for religious reasons that are far less profound that those embraced by the Célèstines. The case for committal to a mental institution 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 Célèstine 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 Célèstine 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 Célèstines 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 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 God 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 Célèstine 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 Célèstines.

  ‘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 never forget to my dying day the way they said that. They were so fucking 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 Célèstines 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 physic
al, 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 Célèstines 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?’