Seraphim (30 page)

Chris concentrated. “Okay, it’s some kind of...wait...some kind of telekinetic energy.”

The eye just stared at him.

“Okay, wait, it’s...she can transfer...oh shit, she can transport the essence of character, in whole or in part.” He held up a victory fist. “She can move minds. Dude! She can relocate souls!”

“Ssshhh, keep your voice down,” said the lips. “That’d be my guess. Except she can’t hit the broad side of a barn from two feet out, as you can plainly see. She needs your help.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Before we get into that, I have something to say. You think that was pretty cute what you just did over there, feigning an epileptic attack, squirming around on the carpet like that, scaring those people? Well, I got news for ya—knock it off, asshole! That shit’s getting old! Fortunately, by releasing me it worked in your favor this time. Ever hear about the boy who cried wolf? Yeah? Well, that’s you, wolf-boy. Your dreaded Tourettes is gonna flare up again, but no one’s gonna believe you when you’re telling them in your own peculiar way that the sky is falling.”

“Now you’re talking Chicken Little, dude. And Sonny Bono slammed into a tree, not a window.”

“That’s another thing—your smartass mouth. Put a sock in it.”

“Yeah, okay, whatever,” Chris groused. “So, you want me to realign, calibrate, and adjust?”

The eye rolled. “No, Mr. GoodWrench, what I want you to do is play Santa Claus and put a present under her tree. Tonight.”

“Dude, do you know how risky that is?”

“Of course I do. I’m you, remember?”

“Ah man, anyone but her!”

“Listen to me, wolf-boy. I’m not asking you—I’m telling you. Get Juanita plugged in before she hurts somebody. And it wouldn’t kill you to straighten up and start showing a little more respect. In case you forgot, everybody’s here because they’re supposed to be. Hey, after tonight, we’re gonna need all the friends we can get, right?”

Chris nodded. “Okay, I’ll take care of Juanita.”

“Gnarly,” it said. “Oh, and another thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t tell her or anyone else about our little conversation here. It could come back to haunt you in Wonderland.”

“Yeah, I know,” Chris said.

“I know you know.”

Backing away, Chris said, “Will you be, uh...are you going to have to stay there, like, indefinitely?”

“After you get Juanita squared away, I’ll be able to split.
And we’ll be one again
.”

“Great, okay, well...Can I, like, get you anything?’

“Could you turn on the TV?”

“Yeah, sure. What channel?”

“The evening news,” said the lips. “And hey, could you maybe turn it this way a bit? Take out just enough angle so that Katie Couric doesn’t look like Karen Carpenter?”

Feeling like he’d just left the dentist’s chair, Chris started back down the stairs. He opened his hand and stared at his earrings. “Dear diary...” he mumbled. He was not looking at all forward to entering Juanita’s psyche. Oh, he liked the challenge of building dreamscapes, but Juanita already had it out for him, no love lost there. And if her subconscious were to somehow see behind his disguise...He shuddered. The chances of ending up a corpse in someone’s mind just went from pretty good to damned likely, now that it was Juanita Santiago’s.

7.

They’d gathered around the dining room table, quietly discussing their bizarre new tenant.

“Let me get this straight,” Duncan said to Chris. “When Juanita hit you with her rosary, she knocked a piece of your psyche out hard enough to smash it,
mold
it into that window?”

“Close enough for government work,” he said. “Can I have my Walkman back now?”

“No,” Duncan said. “So, what makes Juanita so special?”

“Like, even you could have done it,” he said. “Just the right mixture of anger, a religious token and a lot of faith, and bingo—Tiffany does parody.”

“You’re so full of crap,” Patricia said.

“Ditto,” said Rachel.

“Come clean—” Duncan stopped, glanced at the attentive face in the window, then turned back to Chris, his voice lower but no less menacing. “Come clean or I swear I’ll beat the holy snot out of you!”

“Hey, cut me a break,” he said to everyone. “I’m just as mystified about it as you guys. Well, almost.”

As if just reminded by dense smoke that there was a pie in the oven, Kathy jumped up and said to Patricia, “Would you like to see a trick?”

“I thought I already did.”

“Not this one you haven’t,” she promised.

“Kathy,” Rachel cautioned, “if it’s what I think it is, I don’t think your mom and grammy are quite ready for that yet.”

“It’s all right,” Duncan said. “I think they can handle it.” He was sure Walt Disney himself could levitate from this very table and piss Dumbo’s profile on the ceiling without so much as raising an eyebrow. He looked at Patricia. “You can handle it, right?”

She nodded, smiling. “Yeah, I guess I’m feeling pretty numb.”

“Follow me,” Kathy insisted, “before it’s too late.”

Everyone gathered in the adjacent living room.

Kathy tugged on a curtain cord, but nothing happened.

“Help her with the drapes, Duncan,” Rachel said.

Without a hitch, Duncan parted the green and gold curtains to reveal a large (and, not surprisingly, clean) ordinary window. He pointed to the glass. “Hey, Juanita.
This
is how they’re supposed to look.”

Eyes glaring, Juanita twirled her rosary around her forefinger. It might have been some kind of obscene gesture she’d picked up from a roguish nun. It was hard to say.

Patricia stood there, arms folded. “Let me guess,” she said to Kathy. “You’re going to make a rabbit appear on my dead lawn.”

Kathy rolled her eyes. “Just watch, silly.”

After she told her grammy to have a seat on the sofa, she placed her hands on the glass.

An image instantly appeared. For Duncan, having watched it happen on a passenger window of a 747 and now on a twelve-by-fifteen feet piece of glass was a stunning lesson in contrast.

This scene was identical to the first, as if Kathy had plugged both times into the same stationary surveillance camera, one staring down upon a simple, tidy living room.

Staring at the image, Patricia swooned, though so slightly it was nearly imperceptible.

“Steady,” Duncan said, almost grabbing her around the waist. But just before his hands moved, it occurred to him that Rachel might not find the gesture all that valiant.

Joan was off the couch now, walking stiltedly toward the group, her wide eyes fixed to the window. Duncan concluded that her awkward efforts were more from shock than arthritis. Concerned nonetheless, he said to Patricia, “Does she have a walker?”

“She’s all right,” Patricia said stoically.

Then something moved. A person entered the field of view. A white man, middle-aged, with a crop of black hair graying at the temples.

There had not been a man in Kathy’s airplane show. Or anyone, for that matter
. Well
, Duncan thought,
that’s what we get for flying coach.

The man was wearing a black shirt, black pants, and a white Roman collar. He was a priest. Or, just liked to dress like one.

“Dude,” Chris observed.

The priest sat down in a recliner, then reached down behind the hidden side of the chair and brought out what appeared to be a wing. It was completely white and about the length of his own arm. He sat the object on his lap, reached down once more, and this time pulled up a clear plastic box filled with buttons, spools of thread, needles, scissors...A sewing kit.

As the man removed the top tray of the box, a pile of white feathers became visible beneath.

He was sitting catty-corner to them, allowing the right side of his face to be discernible. In no time at all, he had threaded a needle and was sewing feathers onto the tip of the nearly completed wing.

As the priest sewed, he displayed an alacrity, a deftness that convinced Duncan that he was not watching a neophyte. On the wall to the man’s left hung a contemporary clock with big white Roman numerals. It was pendulum-driven, and had begun chiming the hour. Duncan guessed that: A) the clock was exactly three hours slow; B) the program Kathy was airing was prerecorded; or C) the clock was tolling in Pacific time.

Duncan stared at the clock.
Yet, the ear, it fully knows…By the twanging and the clanging…How the danger ebbs and flows...
At that moment, he felt more appreciation for Poe than he did his own mother, may she rest in peace.

“The paramedic!” Rachel gasped.

Everyone stared at her as if she’d just passed wind.

“Inside the ambulance,” she explained. “The paramedic said he saw a man holding wings. The wings of a swan!”

“Maybe this dude’s a taxidermist,” Chris offered. “When he’s not dolling out communion, I mean.”

Giving him the evil eye, Juanita said, “Ssshhhh!”

Taxidermy. Duncan thought that was a good guess. But the very power that was manifesting itself before them would not, he believed, be wasting its energy showing a priest who stuffed dead animals on the side.

“He’s not a taxi-whatever you called it,” Kathy said, her hand almost translucent now, flat and steady against the glass.

Patricia said to her, “You know who that person is?”

“Uh-huh. That’s the man who killed me.”

For a long moment the only sounds in the room were the tags on Pillsbury’s collar clinking together as she scratched herself. The dog was obviously unaware that hushed interims always followed such bombshells, and that strict silence was to be observed until finally broken by a gasp or vulgar utterance. That, or she’d simply decided to hell with it, that etiquette was for poodles.

Kathy’s revelation stunned Patricia far worse than had the window display. Mouth open, she fought for words.

“This is the man who abducted you from the boardwalk?” Patricia said. “A
priest?
”

“No, something else got me from there,” Kathy said. “
He’s
the one who dropped me off the cliff.”

Confused, Patricia said, “Then...then...then who in the hell kidnapped you from the—did you just say this man dropped you off a cliff?”

“Yes, ma’am. He wanted me to fly.”

Urgently, Rachel stepped in. “Do you know where this man lives? City, state?”

“No. But I know what he’s doing.”

“With the wing, you mean?” Duncan said.

She nodded. “It’s just like the kind he sewed into my back.”

Patricia shifted from stunned to horrified.
“He sewed wings into your back?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then who’s he making this one for?” Duncan said. “Any idea?”

Shrugging, she said, “Probably another little girl. He already killed one before me, because I was his second.”

“Did he tell you anything else?” Duncan said. “Who he is? Where he lives?”

“I already told you, I don’t know any of that. All I know is that there was supposed to be more.”

Joan finally spoke. “More murders, dear?”

“Uh-huh. More angels.”

Patricia walked over to Kathy, then—hesitantly—reached down and lifted her shirt.

On her tip-toes, staring over Patricia’s shoulder, Joan gasped at Kathy’s exposed back. “Oh, no, my poor darling, oh, no, no.”

Duncan knelt beside her, then delicately drew his finger down one of her scars. “Jesus, Amy, what happened to you?” he whispered.

Kathy turned her head. Smiling, she said, “You cracked out of turn.”

Duncan didn’t know what she was talking about. Then it hit him. “Sorry, Kathy. And where did you pick up a phrase like that?”

“I was a con man in a previous life.”

“Oh,” he said, not sure if she was pulling his leg. Not sure at all.

Now leaning over Duncan, Rachel cried, “When did you get those? You never had those scars before!”

“I’ve always had them,” she explained. “You just couldn’t see them because Amy was in the way.”

“Get away from there!” Juanita shouted suddenly.

During the excitement, Chris had walked over to the edge of the window opposite Kathy and breached the image with his right forefinger. He stirred the corner of the glass like a cup of coffee.

“Señor Duncan!” Juanita cried. “I tell you, he is crazy!”

“Fucking Loony Tunes,” Patricia seconded, still staring at Kathy’s back.

Oblivious to everyone, Chris continued with his finger, then pushed his hand all the way through. Startled, he paused for a moment, then slowly proceeded toward the priest’s left shoulder. He touched it, and the man jumped.

Chris yanked his hand out before the man had a chance to see it. “Totally awesome!”

“Chris, you dumbass” Duncan growled. “Keep your hands in your pockets.”

The priest looked in the direction of his invisible molester. With a devilish grin, he said, “I guess that means I’m it.”

“Shit!” Rachel cried. She retreated to her husband’s side, as if expecting the man to jump through and put his sewing kit to more diabolical use.

“Chris!” Patricia yelled in a soft voice. “Grow the fuck up!”

“Geez, don’t panic,” Chris grumbled. “We can see him, but he can’t see or hear us.”

“But he can
feel
us,” Juanita reminded him.

“Only if somebody crosses over,” Kathy said.

Very curious now, Patricia said to Kathy, “You mean, if someone wanted to, they could fully enter that house? Just by going through the window?”

“Yep,” she said. “But I wouldn’t advise it.”

Chris, looking ready to dive right through, said, “Screw it! I say we all go through and kick his backsliding ass!”

“Just stay put, Chris,” Duncan ordered.

“But he’s a serial killer, dude! And God knows what else!”

“Are you absolutely positive that this is the man?” Patricia said. “I mean, he’s a priest, for God’s sake!”

“Trust me,” Kathy said, “you don’t forget someone like him.”

Then Duncan saw in Patricia’s eyes something that almost made him yank Kathy’s hand from the glass.

Still kneeling, Patricia turned and stared at the man, his image now just inches away from her own face. He was still grinning over his shoulder in their direction, his eyes jeering them on, just begging someone to touch him again.