The Sanctity of Sloth Read online

  Copyright 2018 Greta Boris

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial- No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License

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  No Derivative Works – You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work

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  Cover design by Michelle Fairbanks/Fresh Design

  Edited by Mary-Theresa Hussey

  Print ISBN 978-1-945419-30-0

  ePub ISBN 978-1-945419-31-7

  Library of Congress Control Number 2018941784

  Table of Contents

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  DEDICATION

  OTHER BOOKS BY GRETA BORIS

  FROM THE INFERNO

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FOURTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  COMING SOON

  CONNECT WITH THE AUTHOR

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  BOUNTY PROGRAM

  This book is dedicated to my husband, my small group—especially Debra and Peter for being our fearless leaders—and my friends at Corazon. Thank you for going, doing and caring even when it's uncomfortable. You're each an inspiration to me.

  OTHER BOOKS BY GRETA BORIS

  A Margin of Lust - Book One of The Seven Deadly Sins

  The Scent of Wrath - Book Two of The Seven Deadly Sins

  And horror stricken, I began to say,

  "Master, what sound can this be that I hear,

  And who the folk thus whelmed in misery?"

  And he replied, "In this condition drear

  Are held the souls of that inglorious crew

  Who lived unhonoured, but from guilt kept clear."

  From the Ante-Inferno of The Inferno

  The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri

  CHAPTER ONE

  TUESDAY, MARCH 13, 11:45 PM

  The medieval anchoress would often be laid on a funeral bier and given last rites before being carried to her anchorhold, the small cell in which she'd be entombed for the rest of her days. The ceremony represented her commitment to die to the world and live for Christ. Some anchorholds contained the anchoress's open grave as a memento mori, or reminder of death. No longer a participant in the affairs of men, she became an observer, viewing the world through a small window in her cell wall. The symbolic death of self—one's desires, biases and agendas—is the only path to true objectivity.

  From the first draft of She Watches - An Anchoress Perspective by Abigail Travers

  ***

  THE SNAP OF branches, a wet thud, and a strangled wheeze woke Abby. The sounds weren't loud, but she'd only been in a half-sleep. She slipped out of her bedroll, crossed the dirt floor to the squint her father had made for her and peered out.

  Her view was limited. To the right, she could see as far as the public restrooms, to the left, the spot where the path that led to the cemetery and Father Serra Chapel disappeared around a bend. There was a grassy area directly in front of her on the other side of that same path, beyond that was a barrier of shrubbery, and finally, the concrete wall that separated the San Juan Capistrano Mission grounds from the city outside. This had been her only vista for the past twenty-one days.

  As she stared into the night, she saw a pair of booted feet move through the bushes, followed by a pair of sneakers. "This is stupid," a hushed voice, young and male, said. His head and torso were invisible to Abby, hidden behind foliage.

  "Shut up. Do as you're told." The older man had a deep voice and an accent she couldn't place.

  There was more rustling of brush and the two men, the crescent of a body dangling between them, emerged from the bushes. Their faces were masked by shadows, but their builds were so similar she guessed they were father and son—the heavier man a preview of what the younger would become in time.

  They side-stepped to the open area. A whine of air, like the exhalation of a balloon, came from the form as they laid it on the grass. Without another word, the men turned to the wall they'd just climbed. Before they disappeared into the shrubbery again, the younger of the two looked over his shoulder. For a brief moment half his face was illuminated by the moonlight. His dark eyes and high cheekbones wore an expression Abby couldn't read. It might as easily have been annoyance as regret. Then the men were gone.

  The person, if it was a person—it could have been a large dog, she hadn't gotten a good look—lay unmoving where they'd left it. Her heart thudded in her chest. What should she do?

  Abby couldn't leave her cell. Not without help. Her father had wanted to give her an escape hatch, but she'd said no. The experience had to be as realistic as possible. If she could come and go whenever she wanted, it would defeat the whole purpose. But she'd never imagined something like this would happen.

  Guilt and anxiety itched like a hair shirt. What on earth had possessed her to take six weeks off work to lock herself in these four walls? She hadn’t anticipated this feeling of helplessness. She’d only thought about the peace solitude can bring and her publishing goals, of course. She pushed herself off the stones, walked five steps to the other end of her enclosure, pivoted, and took five steps back. Repeat. Repeat.

  It had to be a dog.

  People wouldn't toss another human being over a wall like a pile of trash. A dog was bad. No, it was terrible. But, a person...

  She peered out of her tiny window at the black bundle on the grass. The moon was almost full, but the shape was blanketed in shadow, impossible to decipher. She didn't think it was breathing, couldn't detect any rise or fall. She'd heard that whine when the men laid it down, but didn't bodies emit gasses and noises after death? She was sure she'd read that somewhere.

  The longer she stared, the more it looked like a dog. Maybe it was a trick of her eyes, but after a while she thought she saw its tail trailing out into the moonlight.

  On the outside chance it was alive and might be comforted by her voice, she began to sing. She'd learned the o
ld hymn, “Nearer My God to Thee” from her Lutheran grandmother. "Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down. Darkness be over me, my rest a stone. Yet in my—"

  A wail, hollow and otherworldly, shattered the night.

  Horror tripped up Abby's spine like an electric shock. She flew to the squint. The black form, now on its side, bore an unmistakably female shape. "God. God. God." The prayer escaped her lips. The woman outside, her voice pained and pleading, uttered words in a strange language. "I don't understand you. I'm so sorry, I don't understand." Despair flooded Abby's veins.

  She ran to the one loose stone near the floor of her small cell and slid it from the wall. A soft breeze brushed her face. The opening was too small for her to squeeze through, but maybe she could enlarge it. She gripped the stone above the space and pulled with all her strength. It didn't budge. She planted her feet on either side of it, held on with both hands and put her legs and back into the effort. On the day she entered the anchorhold, her father had cemented this stone in place behind her. She knew she could fit through the opening if she could remove it.

  She struggled and strained for long minutes. Nothing shifted.

  She thought about digging her way out. The floor was dirt, but the dirt was packed down hard. It would take hours, more hours than she had before daylight. Besides, she had nothing to dig with.

  She wiped at the sweat rolling down her forehead and looked frantically around her enclosure for a tool. Maybe she had something she could use as a crowbar to pry the stone loose with . Her bed was only a roll of foam laid on the floor with a few blankets on top. No help. A stump of a candle, a book, and a pack of matches lay on the floor next to it.

  Her gaze flitted to the camp chair on the other wall. Its legs were aluminum—the only metal she'd brought with her. She tore off the canvas seat, placed one of the leg joints across her knee and leaned her body weight into it. She heard a satisfying pop, but all she'd managed to do was bend the leg at an odd angle.

  Still, it might work. She dragged the chair to the wall, and struck the cement with the misshapen leg. It bounced away with a hollow ping. She struck it again and again, but only managed to chip away a tiny piece of concrete. This would take all night and half the next day. The woman would be found long before Abby managed to escape.

  The woman.

  She ran to the squint—a narrow rectangle of a window too small for much more than air to pass through—to check on her.

  Labored pants filled her ears. Abby gripped her hair and squeezed her eyes shut. Think. Think. What could she do? She had no phone. It was the middle of the night, if she called out for help, no one would hear.

  She threw herself against the iron bars of the squint in frustration. It was a useless gesture. Even if she could remove them, she'd never fit through the opening. "Please, I can't come out. I'm trying, but I can't." She heard the tears in her own voice.

  Anguished moans were the only reply. The woman didn't understand Abby's words any more than Abby understood hers. Abby slid down the wall and sat on the cold dirt. She hugged herself with both arms and rocked as if she could comfort the stranger on the grass by proxy and began to pray.

  As minutes became hours, her prayers for human help became prayers for the ease of pain. As the moans became less frequent and more hushed, she prayed for the woman's acceptance into God's loving arms.

  Abby wanted to watch, to keep a vigil. It was the least she could do. The only thing she could do. But emotion had exhausted her, and she dozed.

  When she woke, black night had turned to gray morning. She stood, her body stiff and aching. She knew she should look out, check on the woman, but she was afraid she'd be dead.

  She dragged herself to the squint and peered through the bars. The form on the grass was young; a girl not a woman. She was younger than Abby's twenty-eight years, but her face had been aged by illness, or neglect, or both. Her eyes were red hollows. Despite the bloodless pallor of her skin, Abby could tell her complexion had once been olive.

  She was slight, thin to the point of emaciation. Knots of elbows and bony forearms protruded from the tattered sleeves of a threadbare blouse. The only thing of beauty Abby saw was what she'd assumed to be a dog's tail the night before. A ponytail of shining black hair spread out behind the young woman, hinting at what she'd looked like in health.

  There was no breath. No movement. And something in the way the body lay, told Abby it was empty. As if to prove the point, a squirrel scurried over and sniffed an outstretched hand. Moments later a scrub jay landed only feet away and searched the grass for its morning meal, unruffled by any human presence. The girl was gone. Abby sank to the floor of her cell and let grief wash over her.

  CHAPTER TWO

  WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 8:00 AM

  SEVERAL HOURS LATER, Abby heard footsteps on the concrete path. It was too early for the Mission to be open, so it must be an employee or volunteer. She didn't have a clock in her cell but gauged the time by the passage of the sun. It was amazing how quickly the rhythms of life became second nature. Most people were oblivious to the nuances of the planet's rotation, the seasons, the habits of the animals around them.

  They noticed the obvious things: day, night, cold and heat, but they didn't notice the difference between eight o'clock's shadows and nine o’clock's. They couldn't feel the slight change in barometric pressure on the night before a storm. They didn't look for danger when birds stopped singing.

  Abby had been no different. Like everyone else, she'd gone into panic mode whenever she misplaced her cell phone. She'd relied on the weather app to tell her things she could have learned by walking out the front door. Her phone was one of the hardest things for her to leave behind, but she was glad she had. She'd discovered this ability to read the environment her second day in the anchorhold, and it had grown since.

  She braced herself for the reaction of the person coming down the path. She could tell by the heavy tread it was a man. Her natural inclination was to warn him, but she squelched it. What was done was done. The girl was dead, and revealing herself wouldn't change anything. No one knew Abby was tucked away behind the wall of swallows’ nests. No one but her father. She might give this poor man a heart attack if she called through the squint. Finding a body was bad enough, no sense making it worse.

  The man came into her line of vision at the same time the dead girl came into his. He was a garden volunteer. She'd seen him several times over the past four weeks. He looked to be in his thirties, blond hair pulled into a lazy bun at the back of his head, beard and mustache. His name was Steven. She'd heard other volunteers and employees interact with him, and was sorry he was the one to find the girl. Abby liked his kind way and his humor. She was sure the girl's agonized expression would stay with him for the rest of his life. It wasn't an image easily forgotten.

  Abby smelled the tang of fertilizer from the bag he carried, heard his sharp intake of breath, saw his face grow almost as pale as the body's. He set the bag down, and took a tentative step toward the corpse. "Are you... are you okay?"

  Of course, he got no answer. She didn't think he really expected to. The higher the sun rose in the sky, the more dead the girl looked.

  "Hey. Do you need help?" He moved closer and stood for several moments with one hand on his head, the other on his hip. He pivoted and looked up the path the way he'd come as if expecting help to manifest. He turned to the body again, and squatted on his haunches. He put a finger on its shoulder and gave it a gentle nudge.

  It rocked stiffly and thudded back in place. Rigor must have started. He leaped away, and rubbed his hand on his jeans. He pulled a cell phone from his pocket, and began punching numbers as he ran up the concrete path and out of sight.

  When the shadow of the Great Stone Church ruins had shifted fifteen degrees—about a half hour later—Abby's quiet world was invaded. A battalion of uniformed and plainclothes officials arrived on the scene. Four police officers, a Mission security guard, two paramedics, Grant Hawthorne—the Miss
ion Director—and a female detective, all hovered around the perimeter of the crime scene tape they'd just installed. Abby pressed herself against the wall of her cell, restricting the view from her squint. She could see the detective, a petite, athletic looking black woman, who stood only yards away, but not much more.

  "Detective Sylla, what do we know about this?" Grant moved into view. The half of his face Abby could see looked distraught.

  "Not much. The crime scene techs are on their way." Her voice was clipped. Her accent British.

  "Who is she?" Grant asked the question at the front of Abby's mind. She felt a connection to the girl. She was, after all, the last person to talk to her. Or, try to talk to her. She wanted to know her name.

  "That we don't know. She doesn't have any I.D. on her. Unless somebody claims her. . ."

  "How did she die?"

  "There's no sign of violence." Sylla shrugged. "We'll have to wait on the M.E. for the cause."

  "Could it have been suicide?"

  "She was alive when she got here," Sylla said. "You can see that by the disturbance in the dirt." She gestured toward the body. "But I don't think she climbed that wall herself. Not in that condition."

  "So what are you saying? You think it was murder? I thought you said there weren't any signs of violence." Grant's voice shook.

  "She could have been starved, or poisoned, or just ill and left to die. We won't know until after the autopsy."

  "Why would someone leave her here? At the Mission?"

  "I could ask you the same question. She look familiar? Volunteer? Relative of an employee?"

  "No. I've never seen her before."

  Neither said anything for several minutes. Abby dropped to the floor, her back against the wall. Was it murder if the girl was alive when she was left on the grass?

  "The mayor is concerned—" he said.

  Detective Sylla interrupted, "You can tell the mayor, it's a crime to dump a body on public property whether you murder it first or not."