Brides Of The Impaler (3 page)

She seemed to be wearing a long raincoat of some sort, with a hood. It was still dark. Fredrick rudely shined his light in her face, but she didn’t flinch. It was a youthful, attractive face with Slavic features. Her lips barely moved when she replied in a refined accent, “My name is Mrs. Pallus—”

“You’re the woman from the commission? This site is unsafe. Were you here when the earthquake hit?”

“You are an interloper,” was the only answer she gave. “Take care that your mistakes do not prove your destiny.”

Fredrick stared back at her.

“There is much destiny here,” she said. Her large dark eyes seemed amused at his dismay. Then: “Listen, and look—”

Fredrick
did
hear something; it was unmistakable: the sound of shovels biting into earth.

The casks! Someone’s digging them out!
He trotted past Mrs. Pallus and turned at the corner of the rectory to see the dimly lit scene. Several figures, indeed, were digging around the iron casks.

“You got an excavation team out here that fast?” Fredrick was nonplussed. “How could you possibly know what…”

When he looked back, the woman was gone just as the first streaks of morning light began to tint the horizon.
She
was gone, yes, but her voice seemed to sift through the air like remnant smoke.

“Consider yourself one of a privileged lot…”

“Where are you!” he shouted, but the protestation was drowned by a sudden rumbling much more violent than before. He noticed the figures at the dig glancing warily over their shoulders as they hastened to dig. Several casks had already been dislodged, while one figure took to prying off their lids. He seemed to inspect the contents with disappointment. All the while the trembling increased.

“You idiots!” Fredrick yelled as bricks and chunks of mortar fell all around him. “Run! We’re having another earthquake!”

But only one of the figures even gave Fredrick a glance. Then the rest of the rectory wall collapsed—

On Fredrick.

One great slab crushed his leg at once. He was half-buried beneath rubble as the earth shook harder around him. The pain stupefied him, and he began to fade in and out of consciousness. But even as the tremor ensued, the mysterious figures continued with their frantic excavation.

“For God’s sake, help me!” Fredrick screamed.

The figures seemed satisfied with one of the casks—not a coffin, just a cask. Two of them put it on a hand truck and wheeled it away.

“Help…”

A third figure approached as the tremors faded along with Fredrick’s sentience. Morning light leaked over the ramparts. The man knelt, touching for a pulse. Fredrick managed to discern that the man was a priest.

In Latin, the priest read Fredrick the last rites, and then walked away.

New York City, Now

Cristina Nichols stalled at the ritzy bar’s sign—DEMARNAC’S—and caught herself staring. Three lines composed the sign’s border, the outer line black, then green, then red.

Black, green, red
, she thought in a drone.

Just like the dream…

She snapped out of the fugue, then rushed into the bar.

She was nearly fretting when the revolving door emptied her into the hostess area.
This city is just…wild
…She’d left the clamor of West 67th Street as if fleeing muggers. Now she saw her own reflection in the mirrors behind the front bar and felt dismayed by her appearance. Outside, the vacuum drag from all those cars, trucks, and roaring buses had completely disheveled her butterscotch-blonde hair, making her look as though she’d just gotten out of bed.

What a mess
…

New York Power Lunchers filled the brass and wood-stained eatery, their chatty din almost as nerve-racking as the car noise outside.
This is NOT my element
, she knew. Several uppity patrons seemed to smirk at her slapdash attire: faded jeans a bit too large, old white sneakers, and a baggy T-shirt bearing an incomprehensible print by Mark Rothko. The print was utterly black. She tried to fix her hair, sputtering.
Snobs in the big city—my favorite people
.

Britt Leibert, her sister, waved from a booth. Cristina edged past crowded tables and servers bearing trays of chocolate martinis and twenty-dollar appetizers.

“Little sister?” Britt complained. “You look like you just got off a Greyhound bus.”

“I probably smell like it, too. I cut through the alley to get here.” Cristina plopped down and feebly pushed more hair out of her face. “I’m really trying hard to like it here but sometimes it’s just so crowded, and all that
traffic
. The city’s like a labyrinth of cement and glass. The buildings look a mile high.”

Britt shook her head, exasperated. She sipped something chichi that looked like wine in a highball glass. Both women were attractive but thirty-year-old Britt was the one with the refined features; she was the perfect cosmopolite with her wavy brunette hair, jewelry, and salon-pampered nails. Cristina was taller and more bosomed but she always felt ragtag whenever they were together, like an oblivious dorm girl at some liberal arts college. Britt had lived in Manhattan with her fiancé, Jess, for five years now, while Cristina’s beau—co-owner of the same law firm—had commuted for just as long from the suburbs of Stamford, Connecticut, barely twenty miles away. Cristina knew this was a big step for her.

“You’ve only lived here a week,” Britt dismissed. “A month from now, you’ll love this city, and it really is better for your career.”

“My career’s fine.” Cristina leveled her eyes. “Don’t repeat this, but I made more money than Paul last quarter.”

Britt’s brow fluttered, as if surprised. “All the more reason for you to live in the country’s artistic nerve center. Successful artists don’t live in Connecticut, darling. They live here. And we’ll get to see each other
all the time
now. It’ll be great!”

“I know,” Cristina agreed. In her life of semi-seclusion, Britt was her only confidante. “I am happy about that. The
thing about my job—and Paul commuting—is I never had anyone to talk to.”

Britt waved her hand. “Well we’ll be regular Manhattan chatterboxes from now on. But, seriously, when you live in New York City, you have to
dress
New York City. That stuff you’ve got on now?” She scrinched her nose. “It ain’t gonna cut it.”

“I do look a little bummy.”

“You look like you slept in a cement mixer, Cristina. Look. This weekend I’ll take you clothes shopping. We’ll have a ball!” Britt hesitated for some arcane reason, then leaned over her drink. “Did you really make more than Paul last quarter?”

“Yeah. The new line was a big success and my contract for the next one was huge. I don’t really care about that, though—the money, I mean.”

“After a couple months in this town? You will. And that’s really impressive, too, you know? Paul’s a managing partner of a big-time law firm and you’re out-earning him, which means you’re out-earning Jess, too, because they’re
both
managing partners. That’s serious moolah, Cristina. And you’re only twenty-nine.”

The compliment seemed jaded. Another thing Cristina didn’t like about New York City mentality was the whole rat-race for money.
That’s what it’s all about here. Who’s making
what, who drives what, who gets reservations at such and
such restaurant and who doesn’t
. Cristina just wanted to ply her craft and be happy with Paul.

As appetizers were being placed, Cristina’s gaze drifted back and forth to the window. Throngs of well-dressed businesspeople hurried this way and that; buses roared. Cristina felt a chill.

“Don’t you want a drink?” Britt asked.

“No, thanks. I hate drinking during the day.”

“Then at least have some stuffed squid—” Britt pointed to a plate on which sat a pile of tiny deep-fried squid
mantles stuffed with some crabmeat concoction. Cristina just smiled and shook her head.

“It’s going to take you a while to get in the Big Apple’s groove,” Britt laughed. She kept finnicking with the corner of an eye. “Damn. My eyelash is all screwed up. I’ll be right back.” She rose, pointing to another plate. “If you don’t want any squid, try a cuttlefish fritter,” she said, then sauntered to the ladies’ room.

Cristina watched after her.
Yeah, she sure fits in all right
, she noted of her sister’s poise and attire. Tan leather pants by Dolce & Gabbana, Tod’s heels, and a gorgeous silk Ombre wrap-blouse, the color of a margarita.
The thing is I
DON’T fit in, and am perfectly happy with that
. Cristina’s last line of macabre figurines—Cadaverettes—had been a roaring success on the collector’s market, and the next line promised to be even bigger. It was strange, though, how different she and Britt were, considering the sameness of their upbringings. They called themselves sisters but weren’t really; they’d been raised in the same foster house, and were subject to the same influences during their formative and adolescent years. Yet, Britt was a psychologist for social services and Cristina was—

A creepy-
doll designer
. It was almost funny, but she did understand that the darkness of their mutual childhoods was probably the guiding force in the careers they later pursued, however different.

Without much forethought, she began to doodle on a napkin, sketching a frolicky caricature of a nun. The nun held a bowl of some sort, and possessed a great comic-bookish grin highlighted by long, thin vampiric fangs.

“So which one is that?” Britt asked, noticing the sketch. She sat back down, inspecting her nails.

“It’s called the Noxious Nun,” Cristina related. “It’s the first figure in the next line. The line is called the
Evil
Church Creepies
collection. First, the nun, then there’ll be a priest, a deaconess, an altar boy, a choir girl, parishioners,
of course, and Sunday school teachers. The last figure will be the Putrefactive Pope.”

Britt daintily crunched on a fried squid. “That’s some imagination you have.”

“So you’ve told me. I know, I’m a cliché. Gloomy Insecure Artist.”

“You’re not
that
insecure,” Britt laughed, chopsticking a slice of seared hamachi. “And don’t worry. No psychology today, I promise.”

Cristina was grateful, at least usually. Given Britt’s profession as a therapist—and their horrendous upbringing—it was too easy for her to psychoanalyze Cristina. But at least Britt was fair enough to psychoanalyze herself at the same time.

“But something
is
bothering you. I could see it when you walked in.”

Cristina seemed surprised. “Really?”

“And don’t tell me it’s the shock of moving to New York.”

Cristina reflected. “I guess you’re right.” She severed eye contact. “I thought I saw Goldfarb the other day. And he even looked older, like he would now.”

“Where? Here?”

“I was walking near the Julliard School, and there he was—Andre Goldfarb.”

Britt’s eyes turned stern. “You know that’s impossible, right?”

“Oh, yes, yes—don’t worry, I’m not seeing things.”

“Our dear old foster daddy and his wife won’t even be up for parole for another ten years. I monitor that very carefully.”

Cristina nodded, and even felt pretty good about her ability to raise the issue. “It was just weird. He’d be in his mid-fifties now, and this guy I saw was a dead ringer.”

“There’s eight million people here, Cristina. Every now and then you’re going to see someone who looks just like
someone else. Last week I saw a woman who looked just like
me
.”

“Really?”

Britt toned down to a whisper. “Yeah, and it really pissed me off—because her boobs were three times bigger than mine.”

Cristina was amused by her sister’s vanity. Actually, her body looked magnificent, like a runway model’s. But she always complained about her petite breasts.

A moment stretched by, then Cristina had to ask: “You never told Jess the whole story, did you?”

“About the Goldfarbs?” She seemed shocked. “No way—just bits and pieces. I didn’t tell him about the porn thing or the drugs.”

“I told Paul everything,” Cristina admitted.

“And so you should have. Paul’s a lot more real-world than Jess—Jess couldn’t have handled it. I’ll probably
never
tell him everything, and not because I’m uncomfortable about what happened. He simply wouldn’t know how to deal with it.”

Cristina doodled augmentations over her sketch. “I guess the amazing thing is that
we
both could.”

“You’re right, and that’s all that matters,” Britt augmented. “We had gross, shitty childhoods but we overcame it all. We’re fine. Lots of girls don’t turn out so well. You wouldn’t believe what’s happened to a lot of the women who come through my office. Stuff that makes our experiences look like patty-cake.” Britt speared another piece of squid. “But you’re still not telling me what’s wrong, and it’s got nothing to do with Goldfarb or his scumbag wife.”

“I’m just tired,” Cristina said, rubbing her eyes. “I haven’t slept well in the last month. Oh, I know it’s part worrying about the new line of figures, and it’s part shock from moving from Stamford to the middle of the Upper West Side.”

Britt cast her an angled glance. “Any other
parts?
”

“Yeah, one, I guess.” Now she reglanced at the Noxious Nun doodle. “Since Paul first showed me the house over a month ago, I have this recurring nightmare.”

“About what?”

“About this.” Cristina held up the doodle, then shrugged. “It’s just a…bizarre dream.”

“Well, you’re an artist, and you’re obviously using some image from the dream in your work. Catharsis, right? Isn’t that what artists do?”

“I guess. At least that’s what my shrink said.”

“So. You dream about that kooky nun-sketch. That’s it?”

Cristina briefly closed her eyes…and saw the flowing swirls. “The dream’s set before a swirling background of black, green, and red. A naked woman is holding a crude clay bowl, like a halved coconut. And the bowl has three gemstones on it—one black, one green, one red.”

Britt chuckled a sigh. “A naked girl holding a bowl. That’s a
nightmare?
”

Cristina shared the chuckle. “Don’t even go there, sister. No Freud today. See, in the dream, the woman’s wearing a wimple.”

“A what?”

“A wimple. It’s that thing nuns wear on their heads. Like a white sock with an oval cut out for the face, and a black hatlike thing over it.”

“All right. I’m following you now. Nude nun, in a
wimple
, holding a coconut.”

“A bowl, really. Like a clay bowl or something. But here’s the nightmare part. In the dream, she shows me the bowl, and it’s got blood in it. Ad then the weird lines of color in the background get more intense, and then—”

Britt seemed bored. “Yeah?”

“Then the nun grins—and she’s got fangs.”

“And that’s why you’re losing sleep? Jeez, Cristina. You ought to have one of my tidal-wave nightmares. I
wish
I had dreams about nude women.”

“With
fangs?
”

“Maybe I’d have fangs, too.” Now Britt ate a crab puff. “You know what you’re problem is, sister? You’re just a worrywart. You’re a successful artist, with a successful fiancé who wants you to move into his new house with him. These are very positive things but, yeah, they represent change, and the prospect of change can be stressful. It’s this stress that’s triggering the nutty nightmare, along with your natural-born…worrywartdom.” Britt almost seemed berating now. “You’re not traumatized, you’re not suffering from some delayed reactive disorder, and you’re not having flashbacks from the drugs the Goldfarbs used on us. Neither of us are having any of that crap.”

Cristina squeezed her sister’s hand and smiled. She always felt better after talking to her, even when she didn’t incite the conversation. “You’re a gem, you know that?”

“Actually, I’m a vain label-whore and an absolute
bitch
when I see someone like that prissy woman over there with a Gianni dress that looks better than mine,” Britt said, and then scowled past Cristina’s shoulder.

Cristina took a quick glance and shook her head. “You’re a gem
and
a nut.”

“Yeah, and thank God I’m engaged to a New York City attorney who’s head over heels for me. I couldn’t afford to shop at Salvation Army on what social services pays me.”

“But that’s proof of your character, isn’t it?”

Britt gaped. “What, that I’m engaged to a rich lawyer?”

“Well, yeah. On what he makes, you wouldn’t have to work at all, and neither would a lot of women. But you do. You work your butt off for low pay helping the abused and the victimized when you could be sitting in a lounge chair all day sipping Dom Perignon and fanning yourself in a Bill Blass bikini.”

“Since you put it
that
way…yes! You’re absolutely right!” Britt pushed some plates over to Cristina. “Now would you
please
eat some of this? If you don’t, I’ll eat it all
myself, then I’ll get fat, Jess’ll get sick of me and kick me out for a skinny girl—probably that one over there in the Gianni dress—and then I
will
have to shop at Salvation Army.”