All The Bells on Earth Read Free Page A

from inside his coat—a length of pink rubber hose with a bulbous tip wrapped in cloth tape.
    The intruder cracked it down on the corner of the table, leaving a dent. Father Mahoney winced backward, pressing himself into the chair as the man walked slowly around the desk, his head bobbing. The man leaned over until the mask nearly brushed the priest’s ear. “Fatty,” he whispered, his voice pitched weirdly high. He pushed the taped piece of hose into Father Mahoney’s cheek and made little clucking sounds. Then he began to giggle, picking up a marking pen off the table and striding to the wall, where he jerked a painting of Job off its nail and let it drop to the floor. With the marker he wrote a filthy word on the white plaster.
    He stopped giggling, turning around as if in alarm. He stood there swaying, his breath rasping within the mask. Abruptly he picked up the cup of coffee from the desktop and drank it through the mouth hole of the mask, half the coffee dribbling out from beneath the rubber chin and down his coat.
    He pitched the coffee cup into the wall and slammed the blackjack across the cigar box full of shells, breaking apart the wooden panels of the box and knocking the whole thing to the floor, the shells scattering across the linoleum. He picked up one of the cowries and looked closely at it, making little smacking noises with his lips, as if he wanted to taste it. Carefully, he set it at the corner of the table, and then smashed it flat with a single, quick blow, dusting the fragments onto the floor before smashing the second one the same way. Then, one by one, he hammered the scallops and jewel-box shells into fragments, working methodically, as if smashing the shells was the one great purpose of his visit. He trod through the scattered pieces of seashell on the floor, stomping around on them, crushing them to powder beneath his feet. There was something clearly insane about it, a drooling madness, and yet he moved with a singleness of purpose, as if the seashells were an enemy that had to be utterly destroyed.
    “What do you want?” Father Mahoney asked finally. His voice shook. The man stood among the trampled shells, hunched over, his breath wheezing in his throat. “We haven’t got much money,” the priest said, “not in the church. The offering …”
    The man pulled a short piece of nylon cord from his coat, made a loop in the end of it, grabbed Mahoney’s wrist, and settled the loop over it, drawing it tight, yanking his other hand around and tying them both to the chair. Then he took a cloth bag from his pants pocket and pulled it over Mahoney’s head. The bag stank, as if something dead had been stored in it, and Mahoney closed his eyes, the idea of praying only now coming to him through the haze of fear and bewilderment.
    For uncounted seconds he listened to the man walking back and forth in the room, as if he were pacing, uttering an odd chanting noise that was almost idiotic, the meaningless demonic gibbering of a man who had given up all claim to humanity. There was the sound of the blackjack thudding against something wooden, then a loud grunt followed by the crash of heavy furniture toppling—the carved cabinet that held the Host and sacramental wine. Bottles broke against the floor, and Mahoney could smell the spilled wine.
    Abruptly he found himself thinking that, thank God, the Host wasn’t blessed, but then it struck him that the idea was almost foolish; he was thinking almost like the man in the goat mask—that God, somehow, could be damaged by this kind of pathetic vandalism.
    Almost immediately there was another thump and the clank of something metallic falling to the floor. The chalice? It was gold; no doubt he’d steal it. There was a racket of sound: the hand-bells falling, the clanking roll of the censer, then the scrape of hangers on wooden rods—the vestments being yanked out of the wardrobe. A fold of cloth settled over his head—probably an altar boy’s gown.