Decatur (20 page)

“Sure. Keeps it light,” Marilyn replied as a jittery feeling came over her like a cold fog, what was he doing wrapped in a towel standing in her kitchen looking over her apartment like he was a potential roommate?

“Take it easy,” Gar said as if he could sense everything she felt, “Been a long day, how about a massage?” Without waiting for her reply he laid his hands on her shoulders. She was facing the mirror and their reflections: a dark-haired woman with red lips in waitress uniform seated in a kitchen chair, and a big man with a bare chest and wet slightly curling hair standing behind her massaging her shoulders.

Gar began working on her neck and shoulders, feeling her bones, and muscles underneath his hands. He placed two fingers in the hollow behind her head pressing and rubbing until she let her head fall back into his cupped hands. He began rotating her shoulders lightly, and massaging her upper arms, enjoying Marilyn’s satiny skin. “Relax, you are with me,” he whispered into her ear. The dog whined and Marilyn could see Gar’s jaw clench.

Gar wanted to kick the dog then because he had just felt his first touch of it, Marilyn’s essence, wrapped around and through her like a beautiful transparent woven skein. He wanted to plunge his hands into her and pull it out so he could consume the source’s soul in all its mystery and beauty.

“Hey, Rowley, let’s go in the bedroom, come on, I know you sleep on mama’s bed all day long anyway,” Marilyn said rising, lightly brushing Gar’s hands away. Maybe Rowley was jealous. It’s true she hadn’t had many men to the apartment; in fact, besides Father W and the married doctor with his vacation brochures there hadn’t been anyone since she had found Rowley in the alley.

Rowley got up and, keeping his distance from Gar, trotted after Marilyn down the hall past the bathroom where the shower had not rid the man of the foul smell. The door to Marilyn’s bedroom, maybe she was going to leave the man out in the kitchen hoping he would go away. Then she did something that made Rowley’s heart break: she shut him in without her. The dark oak door closed behind her and he was left alone while she was out in the kitchen with the man named Gar that wanted to kill him.

Marilyn came back down the hallway. Gar was leaning on the back of her chair, with a dreamy half-smile on his lips. “Sorry,” she said in a husky whisper.

“Where were we?” he said, the desire thrumming through his veins as she seated herself again. Should he take her now, here, he wondered, or play it out a little? After waiting so long he wanted it to be perfect. Maybe it would be better in the graveyard. The ruined mausoleum reminded him of how it happened between them in the very beginning. It was a luxury to even think about it with her here underneath his touch. He put his hands back on her shoulders and began rubbing feeling his way back to her essence. He had taken so many others on his journeys but they were mostly shriveled things, broken threads, frayed and unraveling or just so thinly woven to be unable to withstand any touch and dissolving into mist. The source had a soul that was like chain mail; strong and light, it covered and protected her from the inside out and had that wonderful smell of oranges, cedar, rosemary, and sea-salt. Only this essence would satisfy him.

Marilyn looked into the mirror, feeling keenly his nakedness underneath the towel; even though the back of the kitchen chair was between them, it was a puny barrier. His bare arms caressed her as he rubbed and kneaded her neck and back. She felt like she had never been touched before, the way he seemed to reach into her deepest recesses. As he worked on her she had a peculiar sensation like he was trying to lift something out of her. Startled she looked hard into the mirror and in an instant saw her form dissolving and a glowing silvery cloud of threads woven together appeared where her body had been. Then there was him, his hands were pulling on the strands and there was some dark empty place in and around him that he was pulling the silvery mass towards. She gasped, wanting to pull the silvery woven cloud away but held down with his large powerful hands. The mirror gave a shriek and a long jagged crack cut down the center as it shattered like a frozen pond where the ice was violently cracked by an axe. The mirror shards were flying everywhere as she ducked and screamed and Rowley began barking, barking like their lives depended on it, because he knew they did.

Gar stumbled back away from the flying glass of the mirror. Too much, he had tried to do too much too soon, he cursed himself as Marilyn’s black hair flung overhead as she hunched down and away from him. A shard of mirror had glanced her forearm and she was bleeding. It nearly made him sick. She had to be whole, not damaged, for him to take all he needed and be renewed by her. The damn dog was now barking his head off. The moment was ruined. He should have waited. The graveyard, the abandoned tomb, that’s where it was meant to be. “Stay there, I’ll get something. I think you’ve been cut,” he said running down to the bathroom and getting her box of Band-Aids from the little wooden medicine cabinet over the toilet. The dog wouldn’t shut up.

“I’m fine,” she said, “fine, Rowley, it’s okay. I’d let you out but there’s glass all over the floor. Mama’s okay! Don’t worry. Sssh, Rowley! Stop barking,” Marilyn said, thoroughly rattled as Gar came back with a washcloth and band-aids. Harry the Pill was banging on the ceiling now with the broom, the thump-thump coming up through the floor.

“Shut up!” Gar said in a deep thundery voice. The source was bleeding, he pulled her forearm up to his lips, licking the blood away, feeling the rich ooze of it in his mouth. The dog wouldn’t stop and the old man neighbor now was shouting back from downstairs, “You shut up! I’ll come up there and shut you up good!”

“Gar, don’t,” Marilyn said pulling away as his tongue licked her wound. “I think you should go now. I, I gotta clean this up.”

It took all his self control not to rage against the interruptions but the thought of doing this without them in the graveyard helped him, no yapping dog, no old man neighbor, just him and her, the way it was meant to be at last and perfect. “Yeah, guess you’re right,” he said in a soft disappointed voice. “I just wanted to stay here forever with you. I’ll go get dressed.” He turned and went back down the hall to the bathroom to put back on his trousers.

Marilyn had the broom out and was shushing Rowley, safely shut up in her bedroom away from the glass that could cut his paws. Harry the Pill continued to thump on the ceiling but Rowley was calming down as she swept the mirror shards into the dustpan.

Gar stood at the door, his white tee back on, the rope belt around his narrow waist. “Marilyn, this world is too coarse for you and me. We’ll find some place, I promise you, we’ll find a place where we can be. Until tomorrow, my lady,” he said and went out the door without even kissing her. He had waited this long, he could wait a little more. There was still time, that’s all that mattered, with the source he would be born again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
A Step Behind

Father Weston met the distraught Charlie Cleary at Clarkson’s funeral home, where Monsignor Lowell was being prepared for the visitation starting tomorrow afternoon prior to the funeral mass on Wednesday. Tom Clarkson, a long sallow faced man with strands of pale brown hair sticking to his balding pate, had laid out brochures for coffins in a glossy fan on the marble- topped table.

“Where’s Rhonda?” Father Weston asked, remembering the three Clearys sitting in his parish office not two weeks earlier. Dead carnies, the Monsignor, and now Suzanne Cleary, the parish was becoming a ghoul house. He shivered at the inescapable thought:
all dead since Gar arrived
.

“Neighbors.” Charlie looked at Father Weston, the dark eyed priest with the aquiline nose, the one he wanted to say poor Suzy’s mass, not the other hippie priest. “They tell me it’s going to have to be a closed coffin,” he whispered to the priest, “She went right through the windshield.” Cleary’s stomach heaved out over his leather belt as he shook with sobs. “Father, can you hear my confession? I have something I need to ask forgiveness for or I don’t think I’ll be able to carry on,” he said, plucking at a brochure showing a pink marble-ized coffin with a quilted satin pink interior.

“Of course,” said Father W, resisting the urge to look at his watch. It had to be going on three. Max’s and Gretch Wendell’s theories were now feverishly circling in Father Weston’s brain, overriding thoughts of the Monsignor and Suzanne Cleary. Pushing them out of his mind for the moment he indicated Charlie should kneel on the thick oriental carpet. He felt for the overweight husband and father, this small businessman who now had a giant-sized hole blown into his life, but he had to get to Max Rosenbaum and talk things over. How did Gar know Marilyn? The priest had truly felt threatened last night when Gar had waited up playing house guardian, enough to make an exorcism kit and even now in the daylight he couldn’t shake the feeling that things were just going to get worse.

“Here?” Charlie Cleary had never said confession looking the priest in the face.

“It’ll serve.” He took the kit he had made from out of the traveling sacrament case and shook some holy water around the parlor, holding the silver crucifix up and murmuring in Latin, if only to examine it once more. He knew the doubts that all priests faced but this was unnerving, he felt ill-equipped to deal with the forces that were threatening to destroy the fabric of his life at St. Patrick’s, forces he wasn’t sure he even believed in. It would be so much simpler if it was all in his head, put there by a Jewish alternative psychology professor. But that was the Bishop talking, because discounting Max would be disingenuous on his part; the professor and Marilyn were Father W’s friends, and things weren’t simple by a long shot. The Catholic religion might not believe in past-life regressions, but it had once thought the sun revolved around the earth, too. Inhaling deeply to calm his mind and forcing himself to concentrate on hearing the grieving husband’s confession, he and Charlie went through the preliminaries, the dry cleaner with his eyes closed and on his knees facing the priest, the priest in a heavy walnut chair.

“Father, I feel so awful,” Charlie Cleary said in a shaky voice, “Ever since the incident at the spring carnival with Rhonda, Suzanne and I have been at one another’s throats.”

Father Weston looked at the miserable man: he seemed so lost, kneeling there in the funeral parlor. Confession was his least favorite of the sacraments. “Why was that? Why were you arguing? Most marriages have rough patches.”

Charlie picked up the thread again, “The carnies - Suzanne had become obsessed with them after the murders. She wanted to talk about it all the time. She focused on that Vietnam vet you have staying at the parish house, because she saw him helping them. Against my wishes she called the tip line, for the murders. I thought we should let sleeping dogs lie. I only found out when she told me she had seen him at the ice cream parlor with another parishioner and she made some kind of implications that I just don’t believe, Father Weston, I know you. Anyway, we got into a terrible fight. It was my fault for calling her names, and now my Suzy’s dead. She was supposed to be working the counter this morning while I did the deliveries. It wasn’t like her, closing up shop like that and taking off. I think maybe I drove her away. What if she ran into that telephone pole because of us?”

Father Weston had to rely on all his years of training to conclude the sacrament. He gave Charlie three Hail Mary’s and told him that he wasn’t to feel guilty about arguing with his wife over the parish guest and the carnies and that he had nothing to do with her death. It was God’s will. Then he patted the man on his shoulder and gave him a helping hand to rise to his feet. Meanwhile, inside, he was reeling. Suzanne Cleary had been the one who had called the FBI about Gar and, according to what Bishop Quincy had said this morning, which seemed light years away, she had called twice, the latest call being before the traffic accident. He felt like spiders were crawling over his skin; Gar, he thought, what had Gar done to get Suzanne Cleary dead?

As he was helping Charlie pick out a mid-priced casket and fending off the Tom Clarkson sales pitch to go for something grander since it was to be closed, Father Weston found himself poring over the details of the accident in his head even as he looked at the brochures. A bike rider came out of nowhere, the trucker had said. Or had he? Father W wanted to get back to the parish house and see if Father Troy’s bicycle was missing, remembering with a sinking realization that his fellow priest had lent it to Gar. But he should bring Max up to speed and then get to the Surrey and warn Marilyn. He felt panicked and exhausted at the same time. Clenching his jaw as he walked to his car, he decided he would try to see Max first. He felt like he needed reinforcements.

It was late afternoon when he turned into the parking lot of Max’s apartment; he had tried phoning him at his college office but no one answered. Impatient now, Father W decided he would just try stopping by. Out of habit he pulled the car all the way in the back by the trash bins and let himself into Max’s building. Banging on Max’s door marked with a brass number six he heard the professor call out, “Who is it?” in an anxious way.

“It’s Weston, Max, open up. I tried to reach you this morning. We’ve got troubles,” said the priest.

Father W paced the apartment, recounting the events since he had had dinner with Marilyn and Max just last night. How Gar had waited up, and knew Marilyn
from
before
. Father Troy’s attachment to Gar and how he lent him his bicycle, the details of Suzanne Cleary’s death and then he just clean broke priestly tradition violating the confidentiality of the confessional, telling Max what Charlie Cleary had told him about his wife’s calls to the tip line. It was just too important to get caught up in Church rules. He ended with bringing out the kit he had made wrapped in the black silk evening scarf and laid it out on Max’s antique trunk that served as the coffee table. “Look at this; I don’t think it’s going to be enough, Max.” The silver cross, prayer book and shaker of holy water looked wan and ineffectual even to him. He crossed himself, closing his eyes.
Do not abandon us, angels
, he prayed silently. He remembered dimly from seminary school the necessity of belief in the forces of good when faced with evil. He reached back further into every lecture, discussion, and assigned reading looking for clues as to what he might use in a full-on encounter with the demonic. There wasn’t much. The seminary just wasn’t the ideal prep school for fighting the forces of evil as it turned out, but he was hard pressed to think of what might be.

Max shrugged into his battered suede sport coat and picked up the keys to his apartment from the counter while he tried to keep his own panic at bay. Max didn’t like the conclusion that Gar had killed Suzanne Cleary in a seeming accident any better than Father W; anyone trying to get in the way between Marilyn, or whatever body her soul occupied, and Gar died. “We have an hour before she gets off, let’s circle back to the parish house and look in on Father Troy. I don’t think surprising Marilyn at work with this news is our best tactic,” Max said with more determination and clarity of purpose than he really felt.

Father W nodded, wrapping the kit back together and putting it into his traveling sacrament case. “I’ll drive,” he said.

Mrs. Napoli was wrapping the top of her baked rigatoni in foil when they came in. She didn’t look up or she would have seen their strained faces. She was concentrating on getting the foil lid on tight, it made the pasta bake more evenly. “Have Gar put this in when you’re ready to eat, at 350 degrees, Father, for thirty minutes. There’s salad already made in the fridge,” she said, trying to keep it light. The second death in the parish left her feeling deeply unsettled so she had stayed a little late to make one of the house favorites in hopes it would cheer them all up.

“I don’t think Gar’s going to be staying with us anymore, Mrs. Napoli. It’s not working out,” said Father Weston, not bothering to introduce Max to the housekeeper, what would he say, this is our expert on soul-hunting vampires?

“Oh now, Father W, it’s not the food now, is it? I was going to speak to you, if I could just get the household allowance increased by twenty dollars, I swear I can make it work. I think you’ll like this, though, plenty of sausage in the sauce.” Mrs. Napoli looked up then and saw how both the priest and his tall thin guest were looking deeply worried. “Who’s with you now, Father Weston? Because you know the FBI called here again.” The unsettled feeling in her stomach increased looking at the two men. When she had told Father Troy that the FBI agents were coming back tomorrow morning, he had stormed out of the house, saying he was going to look for Gar.

“I’m a professor and I have an interest in this case,” Max said smoothly.

“What case?” Mrs. Napoli asked, her knobby hands pulling at her apron.

“When was the last time you saw Gar?” asked Max, looking at her not unkindly.

Mrs. Napoli glanced at Father Weston who nodded sternly. “Answer please,” he said.

“I gave Gar the dry-cleaning this morning around eight thirty and asked him to drop it off at Cleary’s,” she said, the words slowing down. Something wasn’t right. “You just never know, do you? He rode off on Father Troy’s bike with the laundry bag in the basket.”

“So he was riding the bike to Cleary’s,” Max said it not like a question but a statement, and looked over at Father Weston.

“Yes. Such a terrible accident, my heart goes out to the family, but I don’t see how this has anything to do with Gar,” said Mrs. Napoli who wanted to shut her eyes, shut them out. Gar had made living with her son’s death in that terrible war more tolerable. Helping him readjust to civilian life gave her a purpose more than ironing, cooking and cleaning. Instead she pulled herself up to all of her five-foot-four height and smoothed her marigold printed apron. “I’ll be going now. Nice to meet you professor,” she said. She didn’t have to stand for some professor questioning her here in the rectory of St. Patrick’s.

“And he hasn’t been back since? Where’s Father Troy?” Max persisted.

“Looking for him. He’s looking for Gar,” Mrs. Napoli said in a shaking voice, picking up her vinyl pocket book with the pressed flowers in the clear casing from the kitchen counter.

Father Weston put his hand up in placating way, “I know it’s been an upsetting time, what with the monsignor’s death and now another funeral coming our way. You have to understand, I’m doing what’s best for the parish, Mrs. Napoli. You go home now and rest. I’ll want you back early in the morning to tell the FBI just what you’ve told us. It’s all going to be fine. God’s looking out for us,” he said, wondering what the FBI would make of Max’s theories. They wouldn’t believe them, he knew that much. Just twenty-four hours ago he didn’t believe them. But maybe they wouldn’t have to convince them. Maybe Gar could be arrested, incarcerated for the carnies’ murders and Suzanne Cleary. Because he couldn’t imagine telling anyone in law enforcement what he had begun to believe was true. Gar was not a homeless Vietnam veteran, Father Troy had just put that on him as he had invited him into their community, just as the Buddhist monks and Shakers had found what they needed in him before them. Gar was a soul-hunting vampire on the hunt for Marilyn.

Mrs. Napoli pressed her thinning lips together; God before anything and the Catholic faith was the one true faith she repeated silently to herself. She had been taught fealty to the church since grade school, so she would obey the priest because the Church was where her loyalty lay, that and blood. Still, something wasn’t right in the parish house, too much upset. Maybe it was time for Gar to move on, hard as that was. She swallowed the choking feeling in her throat and said, “See you in the morning, then, Father.” She left with her dignity intact because she knew who she was, the parish housekeeper and not Gar’s mother, she reminded herself.

Father Weston put the casserole in the fridge; he didn’t know when anyone would be eating here tonight. They checked Gar’s attic room: it was pin neat, with the single bed made and the duffle bag and clothes he had from Mrs. Napoli’s dead son still there. They decided to head down to the Surrey and eat dinner and wait for Marilyn to get off her shift, in case Gar had the same idea.

“Do you think Father Troy found him?” asked Max when they got in the Olds.

“I hope not,” answered Father W, turning the ignition key.

Railroad crossings were as common as street lights in Decatur so when the red crossing lights began to flash and Father Weston cautiously slowed the car to a stop, Max groaned. The crossing signal bell made its peculiar and unmelodious ding-ding-ding alarm and the striped guard rail began to lower slowly over the railroad crossing. They were stuck now. They were only a few blocks away from the Surrey but it was getting on towards seven. Hadn’t the priest said God was looking out for them? It didn’t seem like it to Max as the traffic began to pile up on both sides of the crossing. In all his experience with shamans, automatic writing, psychic occurrences, he had never come this close to what he could only describe as the invisible world, the world that existed between this world and the spirits. It felt like they were going into a battle zone where humans were badly outclassed by paranormals.