Before There Were Angels (18 page)

Raf
aella was always planning to ratchet things up, to escalate her demands. She always had.

*  *  *

We woke up at three in the morning, two days after Stevie had left, to violent screaming. It was agonized and prolonged, a mixture of a shriek and a wail, with maybe some elements of the early stages of a hurricane thrown in, leaving plenty of scope for the later stages to follow.

Belle sat up in bed. “What?”

“I’m glad Stevie isn’t here. If he were, I would be freaking out.”

“I’m freaking out anyway. What do you think is
making that horrible noise?”

I opened the door to our be
droom and the level of screaming tripled to the point where it threatened to burst my eardrums and pop my eyes.

“Holy shit,” I shouted.

Belle was holding her hands over her ears.

I went along the landing to Stevie’s room and entered it apprehensively. There was nothing there
. I checked the spare room. Nothing there either.

Some huge crashes and bangs were coming from above my head in the attic. It sounded like Stevie’s things were being wrecked one-by-one. Why was
Rafaella always targeting the boys? I suppose the answer was obvious - that is where she could hurt us most.

I was about to pull down the attic ladder and climb up to stop the blitzkrieg taking place up there when Zack appeared in front of me. “Don’t go up there,” he said. “She is planning to kill you,” except that he didn’t actually say it, his lips didn’t move, it was more a voice in my head.

‘I have to,’ I thought. ‘I cannot let everything Stevie has be destroyed and Belle will be devastated if things Zack owned are smashed. They are almost like holy relics to both Belle and Stevie.’

‘
You can’t go up there,” emphasized a female voice and I found Jess DeGamo standing next to me too, trying to hold me back except that she could not make physical contact with me.

“I feel a total coward,” I told them.

“Better a coward than a dead hero,” came a third voice. I turned to find Martha DeGamo had joined us. I took a step back. “What on earth are you doing here?”

Martha laughed. “What are any of us doing here?
Trying to protect you.”

“I need this much protection?” I quipped.

“You need a great deal more protection than we can provide,” Martha cautioned me, “but we are doing our best, all of us - Zack, Jess, Genevieve and me.”

“I thought you killed Jess.”

Martha shook her head sadly. “Not consciously. Unwillingly. I believe that doesn’t count. Someone took over my mind, then used my body to kill Dan, Jess and the boys. It was all planned out to get you here.”

“To get us here?”

“Yes, to get you here. Rafaella knew that Belle could never resist a house with a mass killing, so there had to be a mass killing.”

“Are you saying that Belle indirectly killed you?”

“Nobody is blaming Belle,” Martha assured me, “nor you, but you could say the Belle is the cause of all this because it is Belle Rafaella wants to torture and kill, and Belle somehow attracts ghosts. You see us but Belle attracts them, even though she can’t see us. Your job is now to protect Belle.”

“How do I do that?”

“For a start, don’t go up that ladder. If you do, you won’t even be able to save yourself, never mind Belle. For the rest, you will have to figure that out for yourself. We will help you as much as we can but I must warn you that Rafaella is a phenomenon none of us understands, very, very determined and very, very vengeful and hurt.”

“Get back to Mom,” Zack u
rged me. “Go now. She is in danger. Ignore the noise Rafaella is making, that is a freak show, it’s a decoy trick. Rafaella is probably in there with Mom right now.”

I turned and charged i
nto the bedroom only to be blasted out of it again by some unseen force and knocked unconscious.

When I woke up, the house was silent except for George licking me.

“Thanks, George,” I said.
“Beer coming up in a minute.”

But when I staggered down to the kitchen, he showed no interest in his Fat Tire.

“Where’s Belle?” I asked him as a prelude to searching the house. George came with me and checked every corner, displaying a burst of energy I had never seen from him before.

When we had finished checking the whole house, including the attic that was an even bigger horror story than the kitchen had been when
Rafaella had been smashing plates and glasses on the floor, we could only come to one conclusion - Belle had disappeared, and probably not of her own volition.

At least she wasn’t lying there dead but it made me fear for Belle and Stevie more.
Rafaella was evidently intending this to be a long drawn-out affair, her version of boiling in hot oil for eternity until I repented my evil ways and returned to her. It was a battle of wills on an epic scale and she was the United States with stockpiles of weapons I couldn’t even imagine and I was Nicaragua or somewhere with nothing at all to fight with.

Somehow that analogy gave me hope. I had always been fascinated by history. Now I had to find out how to be a psychic guerrilla to match
Rafaella’s psychic vampire.

I was living for real
in a story of human good waged against paranormal evil. I used to scorn such simplistic garbage but now that garbage had been thrown all over me and I was up to my neck in it, I felt differently. It’s true what they say: there are no atheists in the foxholes.

I
think this is how anyone feels in wartime, how the Jews felt in Nazi Germany, how virtually everybody felt in Russia during the Stalin years, how someone who has been shipwrecked feels when they find themselves trying to keep afloat under a burning sun, dying of thirst and being circled by hungry sharks.

I decided to stick to the Nicaragua analogy. The rest of them were dragging me down when I needed to rise to a totally unjustified
level of deluded invulnerability, and be heroic.

Rafaella
would not defeat me; she would not defeat us.

But how would she not?

Chapter 22

F
irst of all, where was Belle? Could Rafaella have carried her away somewhere? How strong could astral travellers be? Did she get her as far as a car and kidnap her? Did Belle run screaming into the street and was she now waiting to come home when she saw that I had recovered consciousness? Had she decided to fly to Phoenix to join Stevie? Had she decided it was too dangerous to stay with me and was she looking for somewhere to live? Had she gone to stay with a friend somewhere or with her family?

When there is nothing but silence in a house, there are no answers, so I soon started phoning around. I rang up Robert to ask how Stevie was. He said he was fine and that we should expect him back in a few weeks because he wasn’t really set up to look after anyone as he had a new girlfriend who wanted them to have their own children.
I phoned Belle’s parents. They knew nothing. I phoned Belle’s old work number, somewhat to their surprise as they had not heard from Belle since she had left the company. I phoned all the friends of Belle I could trace and none of them had heard anything.

I decided that I had better leave it at least a day. Maybe the ghosts could tell me something.

*  *  *

Of course, it was Rafaella who broke the news to me. How could she have missed out on that delight? I woke up at eleven, having gone to bed at nine because I had nothing to do and was worried sick about Belle.

Rafaella
was sitting at the end of the bed, looking rather pleased with herself and in her most charming mood.

“Hello, Luke.”

“Hello, Rafaella.”

“Was it all worth it, Luke, living this fantasy life of yours with Belle? Are you pleased with yourself?”

“I love living with Belle, and Stevie,” I replied defiantly.

“But where are they now?”

“I don’t know where Belle is.”

“She has probably left you, Luke. No woman could bear to live with you for long. You don’t know how to live with another person. You are naturally a single man, Luke. You can’t think in terms of relationships. You are a loner. You cannot connect with people. You cannot co-operate.”

“We were all getting on fine until you turned up.”

“If that is what you choose to believe, Luke, I won’t pop your balloon. But if it were true, Belle would be with you now, wouldn’t she, rather than staying in a hotel room planning to look for a
new apartment without you in it.”

“That is ridiculous,
Rafaella, and you know it.”

“Is it? You think you are q
uite the catch, don’t you, Luke? You think that any woman would be pleased to have you. Wake up, Luke. Nobody wants you, and once your little mannerisms, and your smells, and your habits become apparent, that’s it, they will want to get away from you as fast as they can. You never go to the gym, you are overweight, you work too hard - what fun is it living with you? Belle planned to leave you several days ago, you know that, don’t you? That’s why she sent Stevie away so that she could get away from you cleanly. When she has found her new apartment, she will get Stevie back. Then you will be all on your own.”

“
Rafaella, you are full of shit. Now where is Belle?”

“I’ve told you where Belle is, Luke. If you want her back, you are going to have to scour the streets to find her. But even if you do, she doesn’t want you back, so I wouldn’t bother.”

“What is your part in this, Rafaella?”

“I have had no part in this, Luke. I am merely an observer. There was a time I wanted you back but you decided you wanted to stay here and I have accepted your decision. You are probably hoping that I will take you back, but dream on, Luke. No way. I am happy by myself. I can do what I like. I don’t have you dictating what I can do or not
do, what I can spend or not spend. I don’t have you sneering at my beliefs - I think even you can see the power of them now. Get a grip on reality, Luke. Nobody wants you and nobody will. You are on your own. Your little idyll is over. At least you will be free to work all hours. That should please you. No wife or girlfriend to interrupt you, to demand your time. You should be in hog heaven. Good night.”

She blew me a kiss and disappeared.

I didn’t believe for a moment that Belle was in a hotel somewhere or that she wanted to leave me. My life with Belle had indeed been idyllic until Rafaella decided to destroy it. Belle was no coward; it wasn’t all too much for her. Belle was trapped somewhere, dead or alive. I felt she was alive; I didn’t sense that she was dead, but what would I know? My intuitions were never that reliable, except in business.

I hoped one of the ghosts would appear to tell me what was going on but they didn’t seem to be very reliable either as they resolutely refused to show
themselves.

I decided I would go to see the police in the morning and take things from there.

*  *  *

I got down to the station for eight o’clock, only to be told that Officers Martinez and Nielsen were out somewhere and would probably not be back until ten or so.

At ten they were still not there, nor at eleven.

They arrived back at half past eleven sharing some joke. “Mr. Parsons,” Martinez greeted me, “what can we do for you?”

“I’m not sure you are going to believe this,” I replied.

“That wouldn’t surprise me,
” Martinez smiled. “Let’s go find an office and hear what you have to say.”

He found a spare office and motioned for me to sit.
“Coffee?”

“Yes, please.”

“How do you take it?”

“Black, no sugar.”

“Ricardo?”

“Yeah, I’ll have one.”

When Martinez left to get the coffee, Neilsen apologized that they had been delayed. They had been to the scene of a traffic accident where a car had fallen off a tow-truck and hit two other cars parked at the roadside. It had taken forever to contact the parked cars’ owners and to get the road cleared.

Mar
tinez came back in. “So, what’s been happening?”

“Belle has disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“Yes, the night before last.”

“Was that unexpected?”

“Very.”

“And Stevie?”

“He was already with his dad
. That’s where he is now.”

“What happened?”

“I hesitate to tell you.”

“I think you
’d better. You’re under enough suspicion as it is.”

I told them and
they both ended up with their heads in their hands.

“So you say that voices in your head told you that you had to get back to Belle to save her, but when you returned to the bedroom you were knoc
ked out, and when you came to, Belle was gone.”