Decatur (13 page)

“Marilyn, you went back again,” Max said, indicating his open notebook.

“Back?” she said carefully, feeling like she was walking around a crater on the moon and didn’t want to fall in. “To Siam?” she ventured finally when Max didn’t reply. He just kept looking at her with those tobacco-colored eyes; his face creased with little worry lines.

“No, to another place but the interesting thing is, Marilyn -- you were experiencing your life again as Sister Ellen in Hancock Shaker Village from what I could tell, but like your monk self in Attyahuya, you had an encounter with a man who you began to be deeply frightened would rob you of your soul. Do you remember now anything I’m speaking of?

Marilyn felt a heaviness in every vein, every pore, even her bones seemed to be made of concrete. Her finger tips had layers of memories pressed into them and one -- how an old window sill felt, beautifully made with the grain of the wood like a lacquered river -- leaned in on her hard. “Yeah,” is what she managed to say.

“I want my colleague Dr. Wendell to examine you and everything we’ve learned. I’m going to put it straight to you now, what you’re describing is a paranormal. Not like you, Marilyn, you’re more like a channeler, an extra sensitive human instrument, but your pursuer is something else entirely, he belongs to a class of creatures that feed on human spirits. If this is true, Marilyn, if that’s what he is, then we really need to get to the bottom of this, and quickly before he finds you again. Do you understand?

Marilyn stood up suddenly as the lights began flashing in her brain. She hadn’t felt the blood rush and explosion in her temples that signaled a massive migraine since she had passed through puberty, but it was unmistakable now. In a dizzying flash she saw the frozen face of a wide-eyed grey bearded man staring up at her underneath a sheet of ice cracked and spreading out like a spider web.
Elder John!
she thought as the migraine swept down on her like all the dark migraines of her youth rolled into one and she staggered and fell into Max’s arms.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Clawing up to the Surface

Father Weston sat next to Monsignor Lowell in the geriatric ward of St. Mary’s. The ward was a quiet place with machines breathing and sucking and dripping fluids. Despite the blue walls and the modern bronze statue of the Madonna in an alcove by the nurses’ station it was a place of misery, a station of a cross, near the end but not yet, the occupants here were dragging their crosses alone no matter how many family members sat woefully by their sides. After a stay here the only place usually left to go was the grave, or worse yet St. Joe’s nursing home. Father Weston hoped for Aloysius that it would be the grave.

“Monsignor, I don’t think you can hear me but I want you to know I’ve already performed the sacrament of extreme unction, so you’re free to go at any time.” Father smiled at his own sad little joke as he held the limp translucent hand of the priest who had been nothing but kind to him in the seven years they had worked together at St. Patrick’s. Normally he hated this kind of duty but with the Monsignor it seemed the least he could do. “I wish you would hear my confession once more, Monsignor,” Father Weston said in a near whisper as he looked out the window along one side of the room. The storm clouds had scoured the sky a rough uneasy grey that mirrored the way he felt inside.

Monsignor Lowell lay at the bottom of a well, or at least a pond, and the world was far above him. People came and went and they shouted down at him, the doctors had yelled and yelled it seemed, in the first frantic moments when he arrived by the ambulance, but he couldn’t get them to hear his answers back. Once or twice he thought they did but their eyes showed no comprehension of anything he managed to say. He had decided that he was covered over in ice and that they couldn’t hear him through the barrier. Now his young friend, Father Weston, was trying to talk to him. At least he wasn’t shouting. There was no need for shouting anymore, Monsignor Lowell knew.
Confession,
the word floated down from above and landed like a leaf skidding across the ice that held him trapped here. He tried to nod to encourage young Frank but his neck was immobile in the ice.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” Father Weston knelt suddenly by the Monsignor’s bedside and began the confession prayer, wanting the priest to absolve him from all his sins, sins of the flesh each and every one, Frank knew. “You know the woman Marilyn? I broke my vows with her not just once but on three separate occasions and many times in my mind,” said Father Weston hoarsely. He had never told anyone of his affair with Marilyn or the fact that after it had more or less ended he continued to see her and care about her as one would a very dear friend.

Monsignor Lowell saw that Father Weston was kneeling out of his peripheral vision but he couldn’t move to face him, he was bound underneath away from where contact could be made above. But when the word
Marilyn
landed on top of the ice, it didn’t skid across like
Confession
, no, it cracked the surface in a smack and suddenly Father W’s voice was the slightest bit less muffled. A precious streak of life leaked into the crack and it was like air to Monsignor Lowell, maybe it was air, it felt like heaven. Marilyn, the girl with the ancient eyes, whatever Father Weston had done with her he hadn’t harmed her, of this Monsignor Lowell was sure, at least not in any material way.

“I wish I had told you before this, Monsignor. I shouldn’t have waited to have this conversation about her with you, because now I think she might need my help. You had an exorcism experience with her and her mother that I wish you could tell me more about so I could understand. I think it might be important.” Father Weston noticed a slight twitch in the Monsignor’s face, or was it his imagination?

Monsignor Lowell could hear better through the crack that had opened up and the words fell through it and landed in his heart. Marilyn, the source, the man Gar, these thoughts struggled out of his head and heart and tried to get to his tongue but they seemed to lose their way and fall back before they made it to his lips. He would have to try again, he put his lips as close as they could get to the crack in the ice barrier sealing him in and Father W out. The man Gar, he wanted to get to Marilyn and he was, he was, he was the one who should be exorcised. Monsignor Lowell wanted to lift his arms and claw out through the crack now. “Gar,” he shouted through the crack. “Save her from Gar.”

Father Weston crossed himself and got up from where he was kneeling on the cold tile floor. The ventilator breathed, the heart monitor bleeped, the IV dripped, and Monsignor Lowell was immobile and silent
. A foolish Don Quixotic type of thing to do, to kneel in front of a massive stroke victim and hope for some kind of mutual redemption.
To dream the impossible dream, thought Father Weston, nearly weeping at the waste of it all.

“Rest now, Monsignor, and go home to the God that loves you.” Father Weston said as the Monsignor was screaming back up at him through the crack in the ice, “Gar!”

Father Weston leaned down and looked closely at the Monsignor, there was a film of sweat on his wrinkled brow and the right sides of his lips were moving. Father Weston put his head close to Monsignor Lowell’s face. The old priest was struggling mightily to say something, Father W realized. “Rag,” the word flopped out of the right side of the Monsignor’s mouth in such a raspy whisper that Father W couldn’t be sure he heard right. “Rag?” he repeated. Monsignor Lowell’s faded blue eyes looked back into his with despair.

“Gar,” he screamed again but the crack began to narrow and heal itself back together as a perfect isolating icy whole and then Monsignor Lowell couldn’t manage to get the word to his mouth again and Father Weston was just as far away as he had been when he came in the door earlier. In a split second the ice barrier was unmarred and the Monsignor knew the uselessness of trying to speak through it. He was sealed up as if in a crypt and realizing that there was nothing now left to fear, he closed his eyes and let go, watching himself fall through the inky darkness to where a faint light glowed, going home to the God that loved him and leaving the rest finally behind.

Father Weston was almost out the door when the heart monitor began to sound an alarm. He turned back and suddenly shut the door, not wanting the sound to travel down to the nurses’ station. He stood with his back against the door and began to say the “Our Father” as loud as he could to drown out the alarm sound, dreading the white uniformed rush to preserve a life that was already gone. The line on the heart monitor was jagged and then began a precipitous decline like someone falling down, down, down and away.
Away, sweet Monsignor,
Father W prayed in his head as he sang out the “Our Father” to cover up the monitor’s alarm.
God speed you to the angels
. He didn’t stop until the monitor had gone flat and he was sure Aloysius Lowell had escaped his earthly bonds.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Graveyard Ramble

Marilyn didn’t know what time it was as she awoke, finally free from the prison of pain that had kept her locked down since Max half dragged her up her own stairs after taking her home from the map room. But there was light leaking through the blackout shades she used in her bedroom and it didn’t make her want to vomit, so she knew the migraine had passed. Gingerly she rolled over to look at the alarm clock buried under a pillow, one o’clock it read. Rowley whined, sticking his snout into the opening of the bedroom door and Marilyn pushed off the covers and got to her feet. She was still in the linen outfit of the night before but it was like a used handkerchief, crumpled and smelling of sweat. Pushing her hair out of her eyes she stumbled to the apartment door with Rowley’s leash. He had to go out and the good boy had waited until she came to, so it was pretty well an emergency now
.
When she got to the bottom of the porch steps with Rowley out ahead of her on the lawn, peeing so long it was like the extended dance version of a hit song, she remembered that the man named Gar was coming by to see her in an hour’s time. Harry the Pill downstairs was peering out his front living room window at her and Rowley, shaking his finger at her. “Come on, Rowley, if you poop in the front yard he’ll lose it for sure. We’ll go for a walk. Promise.” Rowley came back up to the porch and cocked his head. Marilyn was better, he had peed, and a walk was in the offing. Things were looking up.

Gar had a hard time leaving the parish house that afternoon. The news of Monsignor Lowell’s passing had been announced at every mass, and black ribbons had been tied to the church doors. The flag had been lowered to half-mast in the school yard and the entire parish seemed in a funk. Except for Gar, who was trying to keep his head down and stay out of the way. Father Troy had really annoyed him by asking him where he was going as he was rolling his bike out of the parish house garage. “Out,” Gar said brusquely as Father Troy lingered in a lonesome way at the garage doors.

“I know it’s upsetting, Gar, but he lived a good life. Father W’s right, it’s a blessing. Why don’t you stay home and we could work in the garden together.” Father Troy had a nagging feeling that Gar had been avoiding him the last few days. “On the other hand maybe a bike around town would get your mind off things.” Father Troy made himself smile at Gar. He didn’t want to seem clinging like some girl. He was a priest, he reminded himself, and Gar was free to do as he pleased - within reason, he amended the statement mentally.
The rectory wasn’t a boarding house; still, fresh air did everyone good.
He felt torn as the conflicting mental arguments started to fire in his brain. He wasn’t about to the let the parish house be used.
Take it easy, why do you care so much
, thought after thought piled up like kindling. Let him go, he finally counseled himself, he’ll be back soon enough.

Gar wasn’t listening or even looking at Father Troy. It was better that way for both of them, he thought, as he settled onto the seat of the bike. It was a beautiful day, the afternoon stretched lush and long before him and he peddled away without even a look back or wave goodbye.

Marilyn was waiting for him on the steps of her front porch just as he knew she’d be. She wasn’t wearing her uniform today and he wasn’t sure if he liked that. The street clothes made her look more like other people when he knew that wasn’t true. Her dog was tucked under her legs but he bounded up with a friendly air. Good, thought Gar, he liked animals as long as they liked him.

“You should get a bike. We could ride all over that way,” Gar said without even a hello but he leaned down and gave her a swift shy kiss on the cheek and just as quickly backed away. He shuddered with pleasure as he heard Marilyn’s intake breath of surprise and saw her hand flutter up to the place where he had kissed her. He locked Father Troy’s bike up to the weeping birch in the front yard, wrapping the chain around its slim papery bark trunk and leaning it against the tree. The weeping birch had been in the front yard since Marilyn was a girl and it was her most favorite tree, especially in spring when the leaves had a green that was so tender it broke your heart. Now as the bike chain was wrapped around its’ trunk, the weeping birch felt in the cruel metal links the danger for the woman who had always loved it and moved its fairy whips of branches in subtle warning. Marilyn shivered as the branches waved, brushing her, and making her want to warn Gar to be careful and not scratch the delicate white paper bark with fine black streaks like ink but restrained herself. He moved with so much grace and assurance that she felt torn not wanting to seem anxious and insecure even as her anxiety mounted.

“So, where are you taking me?” Gar asked with a grin when the bike was secure. The branches stopped moving, and his smile filled the silence. Marilyn shook her head impatient with her own nervousness,
she was really out of practice
.

“To Fairview Cemetery, Rowley and I go there every Sunday that we can. It’s kind of overgrown now but at one time, I guess from some of the monuments, it was the place to go,” Marilyn said with a wry little smile, smoothing her jeans and looking away from the tree.

“I love a good graveyard,” Gar said as she got to her feet and leashed Rowley who couldn’t wait to get to the jumbled paths strewn with crabapple tree petals and upright stones in row after row. The cemetery smelled of flowers, sun-bleached old carved rocks, and deep rich earth where things were rotting and worms were digging. It was a heady place.

Marilyn couldn’t stop feeling anxious even though it was a perfectly normal thing for two grown humans to go on a walk together with a dog, even if they were walking in a graveyard.

Fairview Cemetery was the oldest cemetery in Decatur and considered haunted. A band of Iroquois had been killed there and in the early 1900’s the Sangamon River had flooded the place, washing hundreds of graves away. Locals occasionally swore that they saw green lights, supposedly the souls of the murdered Iroquois and those washed away, winking when there was fog or, for those brave enough to come in after dark.

Marilyn took Rowley off the leash as soon as they were inside the Victorian iron gates that had been leaned on by the prairie winds for nearly a century. White headstones with sun-sanded writing dissolving over the years snaked through the overgrown grass and dandelions. Granite statues of angels popped up every so often in family plots named Wilson, Miller, Taylor, and Mason. Little stubby stones marked the graves of infants and children, lovingly decorated with stone lilies and cherubs. The paths were full of pink and white crabapple petals that snowed down from gnarled trees just starting to green over their blooms. There was a small natural lake ringed with weeping willows that was the favorite lazing spot of Marilyn and Rowley.

“Let’s go this way,” Marilyn said, pointing down to the lake. They were standing on a crumbling terrace of graves while Rowley pawed the ground and stuck his nose in the dirt.

Gar leaned against a big oak and felt the grooved bark digging into his skin, the tree’s life force was there flowing up the trunk and it gave him the slightest rush. “Let’s not hurry today, okay? I feel like I’ve come such a long way to be with you.”

“Okay,” Marilyn said as an eerie feeling came over her. She looked up at the sky, noticing how the clouds were moving; the whole earth was moving all the time, moving through time and space and in concert with other planets and stars. Gar wasn’t like other people and being with him had an intensity that made Marilyn both nervous and excited so that even the most normal things like taking a walk or looking up into the sky took on deeper meanings.

“Let’s not do what you usually do, let’s do what only we can do,” Gar said, as if he was reading her mind, his voice husky and rich. “We are in this time together for a reason, Marilyn. Let’s find our reason.” He smiled at her then and pushed himself off from the tree, pivoting with athletic grace, his arm arcing up and pointing away from the lake. “There,” he said.

Up on a hill with a dark tunnel of overgrown hedge leading to it stood a grand mausoleum in a medieval style with its arched windows broken and stone steps crumbling. Two ruined angels stood guard outside, their wings broken off. “Now that’s something,” Gar said, considering the tomb with a knowing look. He began to head up the path towards the hill and the ghostly crypt. Rowley stopped and cocked his head, looking up at Marilyn, because they never went there. The hedge tunnel to reach it was creepy and full of mud and they were wary of the graffiti and beer cans that always littered the tomb.

Marilyn hesitated, looking down at her red sandals. “It’s muddy,” she said.

“I’ll carry you, milady,” Gar replied smiling, “It would be an honor.” His heart was thudding so hard he was afraid she’d hear it. The setting was filling him with such overwhelming longing to touch her, to take her there in the mausoleum, reminiscent of when it all began. The source was leading him there, he felt sure of it. She wanted it too, that’s why she came here to a graveyard. She knew what she owed him.

“Oh, no,” Marilyn said, feeling embarrassed and flustered.

Rowley looked the man over more carefully now. Something was off, he was smiling but he didn’t smell like he was happy, there was some other smell coming off him, faint and foul. Rowley backed up against Marilyn’s legs suddenly.

“Oh, yes,” countered Gar and swept her up in his arms like she was light as a feather. He carried her like a child in his arms, running now up the path towards the hill, feeling the wonder of her essence through her clothes. This is what he was made for. Marilyn was stunned by how quickly he could run holding her, and she felt a rush of sexual desire that made her want to stop him and pull him down on the grass and have him take her right there.

The hedge tunnel was thickly overgrown, a dark entrance with a muddy path that led up the hill to the ruin. Rowley didn’t like the looks of it, didn’t want Marilyn in this man’s arms, so he rushed ahead and began barking a warning at her. He threw his head back and really let go, a snarly staccato of canine intensity.

“What’s wrong? Rowley! Put me down. Something’s wrong.” Marilyn pushed away from Gar and felt no give in his arms for a split second as she realized she was completely in his power alone here in the graveyard. “I said, put me down, Gar.” Marilyn repeated, her black eyes suddenly impenetrable and hard. She inhaled sharply, instinctively gathering her inner forces, a powerful cone of energy forming instantly, even though rarely tapped in her core when Gar laughed easily and set her down next to the dog.
Okay. He got the message.
She knelt and held Rowley’s head in her hands, looking into his tawny eyes, rubbing the diamond on his chest. “What’s the matter? Did you see something? A fox, maybe? He must have seen something,” Marilyn said even while she wondered,
was Rowley warning her of something?
“I don’t think he likes it, Gar. Let’s go to the lake.”

Marilyn looked up at Gar in her white peasant blouse with a white petal that had fallen resting on her left breast and he clenched his insides together like they were writhing snakes that he had to control. He wanted her so badly, every inch of her and more, but he had to do it right. He had felt the energy that had come off her pores just then and it reminded him of the other times when she had used her powers of sight and the ability to conjure protection to escape.

The Shaker sisters came out the women’s entrance of the dwelling building one after the other in the frosty afternoon light, their grey skirts and white bonnets blending into the monochromatic New England winter landscape. They opened their mouths, their lips ever so slightly pink and they were singing, in a round, one after another coming through the wide hickory door.

When we assemble here to worship God,
To sing his praises and to hear his word
We will walk softly.

With purity of heart; and with clean hands,
Our souls are free, we're free from Satan's bands
We will walk softly.

He had been watching for her carefully at the barn, his axe in the cart, waiting for her to appear, she would be the next one to come and then he would have her. No more waiting. But all the Shaker sisters’ faces were pale, their hair grey, brown, salt and pepper all swept back under the bonnets, the skirts wide, with simple white collars, they all looked alike. Their voices overlapping the lyrics and notes were like bells chiming. Spirit singing it was called and now he knew why as their voices rang out in the cold air. He felt himself falling into a trance with the music. She had to be the next, or had he missed her because the sisters then went back in the house in a march and cycled out again, still singing in a round. He felt a powerful force from them, holding him by the barn, his arms dangling uselessly by his side as the snow began to fall. Their voices kept on singing, she must be there. He strained his eyes, the gloom oncoming, and couldn’t tell, where was his Sister Ellen, where was his source?

While we are passing thro’ the sacred door,
Into the fold where Christ has gone before,
We will walk softly.

We'll worship and bow down we will rejoice
And when we hear the shepherd's gentle voice
We will walk softly.

When the last notes died out and the Shaker sisters all retired into the dwelling house, the ox snorting in the cold, stamping its legs reminding him that all it wanted was the barn, now that night had come on and the snow was falling thickly. He came back into himself from the spell the women had woven. Had she been there? While he unharnessed the beasts, their breath silvery moist clouds over the straw in the barn it slowly dawned on him that Sister Ellen had vanished, escaped while her sisters spirit sang, the snow now covering any tracks. He felt the aria of his long life rising to the beamed rafters where the swallows nested, his own wrenching song, he loved and he lost again and again as the harsh journey continued until he would take her at last. And he would take her at last.

Gar shook his head, throwing off the memory. “Okay, you lead,” he said, turning around, closing his eyes for a moment so she couldn’t see the anger and loss sparking out from the gold flecks in his irises.