The Salvation Murders

By Garth Chandler

A former priest is driven to escape the guilt of his past and to find forgiveness by continually reproducing the sacrifice of Christ in a bizarre secret ritual. Can the detectives discover his grizzly secret before he commits his most heinous murder yet? He was brought up outside of normal society, where his father and religious guides nurtured his sense of morality, but they did not foresee what a fanatic would do in pursuit of the unattainable standards of their teachings.
The city hides a dark secret. He is seen as a holy man, and has an almost cult-like status, but the people who seek him out for moral and spiritual guidance do not know that in the next room, a victim may be dying a slow death, a sacrifice paying the wages of his sin to appease his vengeful god. Nobody has a clue that the abandoned graveyard hosts more bodies than gravestones. When the ultimate innocent goes missing, neither the clergy nor the investigating officers realise how little time they have left before this victim will pay the price.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Garth Chandler
• Release date: Sep 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9780994703026

Garth Chandler

Garth Chandler has been lurking around since 1970. He is South African, is married with a daughter, holds an Honours degree in psychology a Bachelors in IT Management. Interests include Theology, manufacturing board games and graphic novels. He is an internationally qualified martial arts instructor, but perversely enjoys wearing a white belt to give the casual observer a false sense of security.

Book preview

The scalpels had finally stopped.

They had been his constant sleeping companion for the last two weeks, nightmares of sharp steel slicing through skin. Last night had been wonderfully different. Instead, he had dreamed of cloud-covered farm fields, blessedly dull as old wallpaper, finally enjoying a restful, uneventful sleep, a fuel for a night of productive effort. In the hours since he had woken at two thirty, he’d been hunched over a small piece of wood, getting rid of the excess, chip by chip, trimming away all the extraneous material that was not part of the idol. It was now nearly dawn and it was finished.

Ezra held the carving out for examination under the circle of yellow light cast by the ratty old desk lamp. The grease of age glued the lamp to the worn desk, once an expensive mahogany masterpiece, now only a potential treasure to the Salvation Army. The dark brown of the woodcarving displayed well against the backdrop of Ezra's pale hand. Except for callouses just before the fingers, his palms were smooth and pure compared to the backs of his hands, which were beginning to show the crinkly onset of middle age. The wood was hard to work with - darker woods usually were.

As he carefully laid down the steel carving chisel, Ezra became aware of an ache in his back, the product of hunching for too long carving the idol’s minute details, and he straightened as he examined the wooden Christ even closer. He stretched his fingers to rid himself of the cramp of holding the chisel and ran the back of his free hand over his chin, feeling the starting prickles of his beard. He enjoyed the feeling, and rubbed his chin a little more vigorously. He sighed, nodded at the carving in satisfaction, and pushed the chair away from the table, carefully, because of its age and the dubious strength of its leg joins.

Standing, to the accompaniment of a few audible clicks from his spine and knees, Ezra placed the figure on the table, and dusted the errant shavings from his grey, Chinese discount-market, copy-brand Chinos. He wiped his finger on his sleeve, blew hard on his hand to make sure there was no dust sticking, and pulled at the neck of his olive green polo-neck. He never liked the strangling feeling of the things, but they suited him so well that he frequently sacrificed comfort for fashion, such that he could afford anyway. He frowned at the vague sense of pride, allowed the neck of the shirt to snap back, and wiggled his nose. He enjoyed the smell of freshly carved wood, but the room stank, and he could not really detect the wood over the reek. He felt the need for a shower, a change of clothes, and perhaps some sunshine. Breathing a heavy relaxed breath, Ezra pulled the figure closer to inspect it again, and cocked his head as he debated whether he should paint the agonised figure on the cross, lacquer it, or leave it as bare wood.

As he eyed the figurine, he became aware of a thin sliver of light leaking through the east-facing window over the desk, finding the small gap between the wall and the thick green curtains. He frowned, clicked his tongue and roughly, almost angrily, drew the curtains properly shut. He shook his head, swept the chisels and unused paints and brushes into the top desk drawer in a smooth and practiced motion, and hesitated. On the desk was a bottle of sour mash whiskey, coated in a fine layer of dust. Ezra never touched the stuff, but he had bought this bottle to display here where he worked at his creations. This was firstly to remind himself never to succumb, and secondly to test his resolve. He knew there was little chance of opening it; in his life, he had only ever sampled a few sips of red wine. He knew though, deep in his soul, that temptation was better exposed and blatant than hidden, where it might take one by surprise. Take away the element of surprise from the enemy and the odds in your favour increase many fold, so he had read. He made sure this particular enemy was always visible by keeping it right there in plain sight. He snorted at the bottle, gripped the carved statue by the base and turned. He hesitated again, and shook his head as his gaze alighted on a vase of flowers balanced upon a chest of drawers to his right. He knew that if he were to move the chest and if the light were stronger, he would see its outline against the south wall as a lighter, protected rectangle on a surface darkened by time – not much time, but enough. The wall behind the chest, like the rest of the room, was covered in cream, cardboard-like soundproofing, filled with small, round holes; the material found in a recording or a broadcasting studio. The flowers were brown as the vase; desert dry and dead, a similar shade to the pine chest’s cheap, peeling varnish. On the surface around the vase, old stains from coffee cups overlapped the stains from splashed water, which gave testimony to long ago when bright flowers occupied the vase and water was topped up too carelessly. On the chest’s side were multiple scratches caused by the nearness of a wooden statue, carved in African style, of an old man dressed in a loincloth. Like much African art, the statue's face was characterised by grotesque proportions, huge flaring nostrils, and eyes more ornate than realistic, with close-cropped hair. The body was too small for the head, and the whole thing ran in straight unnatural lines to the small legs. In contrast to the desk, the statue was shiny and looked polished and new. It stood slightly lopsided, because one foot was atop a wire running to the old-fashioned telephone with an ancient circular dialling mechanism on the desk, pushed back out of the small circle of lamplight. Above the statue a wooden, carved wall-clock, painted so dark a shade of brown as to be indistinguishable from black, ticked away the seconds indifferently. An oversized, hypnotic pendulum swayed beneath it, ticking and tocking endlessly. A crate transport trolley, like the ones used by retail store staff to wheel large boxes around, was propped against an old-fashioned, brass-handled wooden trunk decorated with relief carvings of wagons and oxen. A wooden door, panelled and in need of some varnish, occupied the centre of the south wall, flanked by the statue and the trolley. Around the doorframe, some fuzzy material blocked any gaps to augment the soundproofing.

Ezra laid the crucifix carving on the chest, and opened the top drawer. He grimaced, briefly, as he always did when memories of his childhood intruded. The nails inside reminded him of the nails his father always kept to fix fences on the farm. Ezra held up a large specimen, about ten centimeters long, thick and strong. Those ones cost him a fortune, and the current stock was dwindling. Perhaps he should think about reusing them, though that seemed disrespectful. With a satisfied grunt, he selected a nail from a pile of much smaller ones, and a red claw hammer with a stout rubber grip. Holding the hammer and nail in his left hand, he lifted the crucifix with his right, pushed the drawer closed with his hip, and turned towards the Collection, nailed to the west wall opposite the desk.

Wooden crucifixes and empty crosses, ornate and plain, large and small, one even woven from grass left over from a Palm Sunday service at a remote rural church, hung from the wall in seeming disarray. On most of the crucifixes the Christ contorted in pain, though on a few he was at peace, either dead or practically unconscious. Each piece Ezra had carved himself, at the desk, usually at night. In the centre hung the large, polished pride of the Collection; his first one, perfect in every detail, cherished above all the other idols in the room, except possibly the African statue. A small application of red paint finished the wounds in the head, side, hands, feet and, if one were to lift the piece and examine it closely, even the stripes on the back. The face looked up to heaven, and Ezra felt he had captured exactly the way Christ had cried out to His heavenly Father, in anguish, quoting the psalm, despairing at his abandonment before death. The piece in his hand held no candle to the centrepiece, and Ezra chose a position closer to the south wall. The pieces closer to the masterpiece in the centre were all those he judged superior. Those to the peripheries, though still quite good, were less skilfully carved. Ezra hammered the nail into the wall, and positioned the gap he had carved in the rear of the cross for that purpose onto the nail. He smiled and nodded his satisfaction, wiped his brow and returned the hammer to the drawer before sitting again, hands behind his head, surveying the wall from the chair with his feet crossed.

Beneath the central crucifix stood a table, covered in red velvet-like material like the altar at the church. Like the altar, the colour of the cloth on this table regularly and ceremonially changed to reflect the colours required by ritual and according to the church calendar. Red, white, green and purple, swapped out several times annually marking the events celebrated by the church - the Pentecost, Easter and of course, Christ Mass, as well as in empathy with the more personal rituals he performed in private from time to time. He was never sure whether it should be red or purple for a time like the present. On the right of the altar a huge, old, leather-bound bible, with see-through, yellowing, thin pages, ornate lettering, a lovely antique paper smell and worn colour illustrations rested upon a polished brass book stand. Names and generations were inked onto the front page of the bible, reserved for genealogy as bibles of the past sometimes were, many faded and barely legible. Ezra currently had the bible open at a page marked by a fraying, blue ribbon bookmark glued into the spine. The text was the book of the prophet Isaiah, where chapter fifty-three started halfway down the second column on the left page. On either end of the table were two brass candlesticks, each supporting a large, white candle. These burned with a slight flicker, animating the faces of the carvings on the west wall behind them. Next to the bible lay a neatly folded set of man's clothes, blue jeans and a short-sleeved, cheap, plaid, button shirt, as well as a pair of dice in a small plastic cup. Ezra looked critically at the wall, stepped forward, straightened his new crucifix and turned abruptly towards the door. The brass lever handle opened easily at the mere pressure from his little finger, and the hinges were silent as the door swung smoothly. Ezra stepped through and shut it behind him, leaving the lamp burning and the candles gutting in the draught. He started to whistle an old, popular, easily recognisable hymn, his lifetime favourite - Holy Holy Holy. There was scarcely an hour where the tune did not repeat through his mind.

Chapter 2

The early morning sun shone brightly through the light, white curtains into the cheerful bathroom, a fresh contrast to the green-tinged dinginess of the room with the crucifixes. Ezra tossed his clothes into a lidless wicker wash-basket, and stepped into the bathtub, drawing the blue shower curtain around him. He was still whistling cheerfully, satisfied by a job well done. He scrubbed his nails fastidiously with a white-bristled plastic brush, whistling louder to hear himself above the shower. Ezra scrubbed his back, gripping the long handled brush, lathered with soap until it reminded him of a rabid animal. He tended to do this quite hard, because the scar tissue reduced his capacity to feel. Over the years, the whip had left more scars laced across his back than smooth skin. For this reason, Ezra never wore a swimsuit nor went about shirtless in public. For a while, he leaned quietly against the tiles, enjoying the cleansing water, imagining specs of dirt falling away from him, his face upturned on the edge of the water. The smell of soap and water was so wonderfully juxtaposed to the stink of death, the rot and gasses of the body, the chemicals and the fumes of fire and ash, or the wetness of the prepared grave. He could smell death always, at work or in his home, and allowed his water bills to run high, scalding himself in a soothing baptismal cleansing every morning and night as well as after every job. Eventually, he straightened, switched off the taps, ignoring the groaning of old pipes, and stepped onto the coarse mat, where he resumed his whistling as he towelled off vigorously. When done, he took a pair of neatly pressed black pants from a rail and slipped into them. He sat on the toilet bowl to pull on black socks and polished shoes, and then surveyed his reflection in the cabinet mirror above the basin while he slicked back his hair with the cheap but effective shellac sold at the Greek corner minimarket.

Still whistling and shirtless, he opened the cabinet, and plucked a comb from a cracked glass, after which he walked across the living room back to where so often spent the wee hours in labour, combing his hair back by touch. Before entering, he snapped his fingers and frowned when he realised the key to the room was still in the door inside the chamber. Still combing his hair and whistling, he closed the door silently behind him, pausing to pocket the key.

He wrinkled his nose. The smell in the room was stale and oppressive; the stink of his unventilated work trapped by the closed windows and door, not ever allowed to offend or alert the neighbours. Not that they’d notice against the backdrop smells of this low-income area, which played the host to too many irregularly emptied and mostly illegally stored municipal garbage bins.

He finally tucked the comb into his pocket, and looked to the north wall.

The man nailed to the cross, unsurprisingly, appeared to be unconscious, or at least so close it made little difference. He cleared his throat loudly. The pathetic figure jerked, and the eyes almost focused. The man lifted his tear-stained face, gazing at a space somewhere just in front of Ezra, blinking a too-long blink. Eyes crusted with the blood running from the wounds of a cruel crown woven from a vicious branch of Christ-thorn and jammed hard onto his head glazed again. He groaned and tried to shift his weight. A tarpaulin, grey when clean, but now splattered red, crusted with blood and gore, covered about half of the floor from the north wall and outwards for about a metre from either side of the gruesome cross. A whip of seven soft leather tails, knotted with bits of glass, bones of unidentifiable origin and sharp wires, stained dull red, hung from a rusty nail, driven into the wall to the man’s right. The nail was nearly but not quite as large as one of the very expensive ones stored in the top drawer. Attached to the top of the cross was a rope of sturdy yellow climber's nylon, which ran up to the ceiling, to the first of a series of two well-maintained steel pulleys. The second pulley was near the middle of the room, and from there the rope stretched down to a u-shaped metal brace, riveted to the bare cement floor through a slice in the tarpaulin. Next to the brace, lying on the floor, with only its bloodied tip on the tarpaulin, lay a spear. This item was heavy, and, like the statue next to the chest of drawers, obviously of African origin, with a wooden handle, bound in grass at the extreme edge, and a flat, large head, roughly chipped, but clearly effective and just as clearly well used. The point was stained dark from blood. Above the cross was a tattered piece of paper, upon which was scrawled in felt-tip pen a name, - Ricky. This was the name of the man hanging on the stout-beamed abomination dominating the north wall. Ricky was in his mid-twenties, of medium build, jet-black hair beneath the clots of blood, and brown, desperate eyes. He wore a white, red-flecked loincloth. Laboured breath, drawn agonisingly around a tape and golf-ball gag, not through his mucus-closed nose, invaded the stillness, along with the ticking and tocking of the clock above the statue. Nails through Ricky’s wrists and feet were barely visible, covered in congealed gore and more blood. These were large nails from the dwindling expensive stock.

Ezra clicked his tongue and shook his head, drawing his lips into a thin line. I'm sorry. I should have done this a while ago, but I was up all night working on my newest piece. He gestured at the wall more or less where the latest addition to the collection of crucifixes hung. On close inspection, if one were looking for it, its likeness with Ricky, from the style of the hair to the barely perceptible tattoo of a snake on the upper arm, was apparent. I lost track of time. Ezra shrugged. Again.

He extracted the comb from his pocket where he had absent-mindedly sheathed it, tossed it onto the chest of drawers, and approached the cross. His approach started with an attitude of nonchalance but this changed more to one of almost over-dramatic reverence with every step.

He reached up, standing on his toes, and stroked the man's face. Ricky moved his head slightly, as though trying to pull away, his eyes squeezed shut.

It is nearly over now, intoned Ezra, softly, the pain. Once the legs are broken, you will not be able to support yourself. Breathing will become too difficult. You will find release. Don't worry; I will perform some last rights. Ezra was always very conscious about appearing mocking or callous – he appreciated and empathised with the suffering. He imagined a less moral executioner might enjoy the pain he inflicted, and mock the victim. He never spoke unfeelingly, but frequently debated with himself whether he should. After all, Christ had endured mockery when going to the cross of Calvary. He did not see the point of that for an imperfect offering like Ricky. He had done it once, with a teen-aged sacrifice who had cried so much he doubted she could have heard him, though it had so filled him with guilt and self-loathing he had never done it again. It was not a callous matter.

Ezra marched purposefully back to the chest where he opened the drawer, withdrew the red hammer, and turned on Ricky again, gripping it tightly in his fist. Ricky's eyes widened and focused again. He shook his head, and mewled around his gag in futile, terrified protest.

Ezra steeled himself, trying not to imagine the agony, and smashed at Ricky's knees and legs in an energetic flurry. He wanted to do this quickly, not to draw it out. This was usually the worst part for the sacrifice. Ricky writhed, helplessly crying around the golf-ball, before slumping back into the semi-consciousness that had been much of his lot over the last two days. Ezra stepped back to survey his work, panting with the exertion. Ricky slumped lower without the support of his broken legs and knees. Bits of bone stuck out through the broken skin over his shattered kneecaps. The fresh red splatter ran down the walls and pooled on the floor with the rest.

Ezra wiped his mouth with his thumb, as though removing blood or food, before wiping the hammer on Ricky’s loincloth. This gesture he used to replace the mockery, as he deemed it disrespectful, and it also served a practical purpose. He slowly retreated to the chest of drawers and replaced the hammer. He then opened the second drawer from which he extracted a black shirt. He pulled the shirt on and with practiced deftness, he buttoned the two buttons under his chin. After a short pause, he reached back into the drawer for the white collar. He turned back to the senseless figure before placing the collar around his neck and smoothing the night-black shirt, transformed by the clothing into the unmistakable role of the Holy Father.

Ezra and pointed to his collar. I can perform the ceremony for the dead, I am ordained. He bowed his head and closed his eyes, remaining in this prayerful attitude for a full fifteen minutes. The only sounds were the sobbing, which quieted as Ricky’s senses deserted him, and the clock. Then, without looking again at Ricky, whose breathing was becoming unmistakably more laboured, he strode back through the door, again whistling his favourite hymn - Holy Holy Holy. Once outside he locked and checked the door carefully, blocking the horror within from his thoughts.

Ricky mercifully never regained consciousness. Sometime during the overcast day, he drew his last breath. It had been threatening rain for a week. The rainy season was late this year, attributed to the swells of cold air off the South American west coast. The dingy lamp struggled against the shadow-light created by the curtains and the windowless backs of the tenements just a squeezed alley beyond. The candles, lit when Ricky ascended to his cross, were extinguished to mark his passing. They were large, expensive candles, and lasted for a long time, though they occasionally required replacement during the full time of the sacrificial ceremony. The objects, from the bible to the clothes, he placed carefully on the chest. He then proceeded to change the cloth on the altar from red to black, from the selection in the oxen-ornamented trunk. Ezra, dressed now in blue worker’s overalls, lowered the cross to the tarpaulin, helped by Ricky’s hanging weight. The pulley system barely squeaked as the strain on the rope finally lessened. Like the door, the pulleys were kept well lubricated. The cross stopped, held from the floor by Ricky. Ezra loosened the rope from the top of the cross, and fastened it to a stout metal hoop at the edge of the crossbeam not far from where it splintered around the nail through Ezra's right wrist. Hoisting again, Ezra maneuvered and turned the cross so that Ricky's body lay on top of it. One of the bones protruding from Ricky’s shattered knees scuffed the tarpaulin as he was turned, leaving a fresh red streak. Crouching next to the foot of the cross, Ezra used the red claw hammer to work the nail from Ricky's feet with some difficulty. After that, he moved to the outstretched beams to loosen the arms, disregarding the crunch of fragile bones in the cadaver's fingers. The expensive nails were still quite straight, and Ezra decided he would clean them later for re-use. With the corpse finally no longer attached, Ezra rolled it out the way, and reattached the rope to the top of the cross, which he winched up until it was flush to the wall, leaving the body. It was clear that the back of the cross, which now faced the chamber, was also frequently used as the front. It also appeared splintered by big nails, and stained with death.

A small puddle of blood lay drying under the spear, which Ezra had at some point stabbed through Ricky’s side, narrowly missing the kidney.