Decatur (27 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
A Classroom Guest

Max taught his psychology 101 lecture in the big basement classroom in the old Arts and Sciences building; it was a cavern of a place with room for seventy-five freshmen and sophomore students that slouched in the blond wood-and-metal desks with the modern side tablets that pulled up so they could doodle while he talked and talked and talked at them. He tried everything he could to make his class interesting and in fact he was one of the most popular professors on campus that year. But most of the kids he taught thought psychology 101 was more or less a self-help class rather than a serious study, so whenever he handed back their quizzes there was a lot of grumbling. At the specific request of his friend, the head of the Science department, he completely avoided the topics that would have interested them the most: ESP, ancient mystic practices as philosophical and psychological tools, and of course any talk of shamans and the use of psychedelic plants by native peoples. On that Tuesday morning he was teaching the basics of statistics so as a class they could compile a simple psychological profile of their group. Needless to say, there was a lot of yawning. So when Marilyn came in with wet splotches on her black uniform and holding Rowley in her arms, her dark eyes huge with her silky hair in a messy cloud around her face, the entire class gasped and tuned in on high alert. The lumpy TA, Chad, got up and asked in an officious way who she was and told her that dogs weren’t allowed inside campus buildings. Max heard himself thunder to the class with a stern professorial voice he didn’t know he possessed, “Everyone stay seated.”

Max’s heart leapt into his mouth as he loped towards Marilyn at the back of the room which felt like a million miles away. His leather moccasins slapped on the grey- painted concrete and he heard the buzz of the students, with one fleshy redhead in a patched jean skirt ignoring his order and standing up like she might call for help. He waved her away impatiently and without another word to his class put his arms around both Marilyn and her dog and moved them out into the hallway, shutting the glass- paneled door on the stunned class.

“Marilyn,” Max breathed her name as he saw that the wet splotches were blood on the black rayon background of her uniform, “What happened? What’s wrong with Rowley?”

“Gar, Max. You were right when you warned me. It’s Father Troy’s project, Gar, who pursues me. And he hurt Rowley,” she said, her voice breaking on the dog’s name.

“Come on, let’s go to the department offices. I can take a look at him there. Huh, boy. You’re going to be okay,” Max reached out and very gently touched Rowley’s head. Rowley flinched and Max pulled back. “Why don’t you let me carry him, Marilyn, if you think he’ll let me, we’ll move faster that way.” The redhead was out in the hallway now calling “Professor, Professor, what about my project?” over and over in a plaintive way.

“Rowley, go to Max. It’s okay,” Marilyn said as she let Max take him out of her arms. Then she smiled at Max and brushed a lock of her hair away from her face as if to say she was going to be okay too.

Rowley felt his jaw and his head and that wasn’t good. He didn’t like being aware of his body parts this way, sore and rattled. His legs had collapsed on him sometime after they climbed out of the ledge tucked under the rail pass over the street. Marilyn had picked him up then and they had come to this building where they had been before. The man called Max was okay, he knew from their time in the empty high room with the roll down papers, and so he let him carry him up some stairs with Marilyn right at his elbow.
Maybe he could help him stop shaking. He needed to stop shaking.

The department offices were mostly deserted. Another grad student poked his head out of the student hub office and said, “Hey, can I talk to you about the independent study group project?” Max just shook his head and said, “Not now you can’t.” The grad student shrugged and disappeared. But the plump Combined Sciences Office receptionist, Mrs. Travers, was an animal lover herself with several cats and a German Shepherd so when she saw Max with a tawny-colored dog that was shaking head to foot in his arms she rose from her desk, straightening the ruffles on her polyester blouse in a quiver and said, “I’ll get a blanket and water bowl.” She glanced at Marilyn and disappeared down the hallway where the offices were laid out on either side with dark walnut doors.

Max opened his office and, sweeping books and papers to the floor, laid Rowley on his desk. “Can he walk?” he asked Marilyn.

Marilyn nodded, feeling sick to her stomach looking at her dog lying on his side shaking and panting on Max’s wooden college desk. The office was dowdy, plain white walls and a bulletin board, with none of the personality of his apartment. A temporary academic hideout.

“Take his snout and feel if anything is moving or bleeding and very slowly try to open his jaws.” Max said, feeling one hundred percent in this moment with Marilyn. There was something beautiful in being together despite all the terribleness, knowing that she was away from Gar and had come to him for help.

Mrs. Travers bustled in with a bag of ice, a blanket, plastic bowl and a red rubber hot water bottle. “Here,” she said and gave Max the blanket first. “Put it under him,” she instructed in a no-nonsense manner. Max realized that he had underestimated the fussy little woman in the months he had been at Charlesworth. This lady had guts and a real practical side. He took the blanket and lifted Rowley, putting it under him.

Rowley felt Max moving him and was glad to feel something warm and soft come under him. He relaxed a bit. Marilyn’s fingers were probing him and she put them in his mouth feeling his teeth and pushing his jaws open. It hurt. But she stroked and whispered to him so it wasn’t so awful. He felt something cold on his head where the lump was forming, Max was holding it there, water began trickling down and he licked at it. It ran into his mouth and he felt like maybe it was going to be okay. Wherever they were, Gar wasn’t near, there was no smell of him here. A nice lady that smelled like chemicals and flowers mixed together in a way that wasn’t all bad was holding the red warm flabby thing against his back, it was soothing. The shakes were getting off him, and he felt like he was coming into his own body again.

“What happened to this dog?” asked Mrs. Travers looking intently at Marilyn.

“A man hurt him,” she answered simply, “I’m going to need to have a private conversation with the Professor here. It’s pretty important, ma’am. I know I’m just a waitress with a hurt dog and blood on her dress, so you can figure I need the help pretty bad. Would you help me?” Marilyn took a big breath. She didn’t ask strangers for help, she gave
them
help, pouring coffee, smiling, listening to their complaints with the world, and feeding them Amanda’s good food when they would listen to her recommendations about what to order. This was all new to her but she figured she better start trying different things if she was going to get out of this alive and intact.

“What do you need?” Mrs. Travers asked, smoothing her polyester slacks, trying not to stare at the dark red splotches on Marilyn’s uniform.

“Watch over Rowley. That’s my dog’s name. While we talk.” Marilyn looked at the plump woman, so indistinct in her plain Midwestern-ness that no one really much noticed her at all, she bet. But she could tell this ruffled bloused woman in navy blue elastic banded slacks had a good heart and would do her best to make Rowley comfortable while he was in her care.

“I can do that. Animals are better than most humans any day of the week. Be my pleasure,” Mrs. Travers said. The beautiful youngish woman had a nice enough way about her. And her dog was a sweetheart.

“We’ll be back soon, Mrs. Travers,” Max said and opened the office door.

Rowley felt sleep coming over him with his head cold and his back warm. He saw Marilyn leave the room from beneath his long lashes, his eyes nearly closed. It was okay. She would be back and he needed to rest. He had to get his full strength back. Because Gar would be coming for them. He knew that with every fiber of fang and blood instinct in his muscles and bones.

Out in the hallway in a torrent of whispered words Marilyn sketched in what had happened to Rowley and herself in the cemetery and the ruined tomb. Max listened carefully, not interrupting or asking questions, which Marilyn appreciated more than she could have said. She felt like she could confide in him, maybe not everything, but close: from her near deadly fascination with Gar to how she had ignored all the warning signs about him. She didn’t need lectures or an interrogation and Max was neither judgmental nor hyper, he just let her talk until the words ran out.

Max tried not to look as concerned as he felt and gave a low whistle. “We know Gar is pursuing you through your past lives, but why? We have to figure that out, Marilyn.” Max said. He felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck as he looked out onto the plain corridor of offices. None of the middling Charlesworth academics here would believe what he had uncovered with Marilyn in the Map Room, he thought, as the stairs to the third floor of the building loomed in front of them like a ladder to another world.

The Map Room was deserted as always. No wonder, with the maps out of date and no elevator to the third floor of the arts and science building. It was an empty echo of scholarly pursuits of the past but it was comforting and familiar to Max and Marilyn, because it was like a private sanctuary from Gar and the dark stain he was spreading to every thing he touched.

“He’s not human, Max,” Marilyn said when they had shut the door.

“Soul hunters aren’t, at least from what I can tell. But like Gretch was saying, they haven’t been studied much. I think they begin as humans and then through some kind of ritualistic encounter with another soul hunting vampire, their journey begins.” Max pulled down the three maps, one of the United States, the one with Siam marked, and finally the one of Italy.

“Something happened with us. I think I may have had a part to play with him becoming who he is. It’s all tied up together. And that’s why he’s pursuing me. Like I told you, in the cemetery and tomb I kept flashing onto another time and place, medieval and full of death.

“Nice sounding spot,” Max said wryly, and then asked her to be seated and think about her breathing. Seamlessly he began the hypnotism ritual and after a few moments when the fear loosened its stranglehold, she began to breathe in circular breaths and then she went under like a sea-creature diving into the depths.

“Remember your life on Ischia where it all began between you and he who pursues you,” Max said once her breathing had slowed and she had closed her eyes. “Who were you then?” he asked in the deep slow voice that sounded like rain coming down to her now that she was far below the surface of the Map Room.

Max saw Marilyn’s eyes flutter and her face began to alter like the light does on a long afternoon. The little frown lines disappeared first, then the tiny crow’s feet were smoothed, her neck elongated to a regal height, and she held her right hand in a classic posture he had seen in paintings of noblewomen and men in the late Renaissance.

Marilyn was aware of the new internal monologue that sprang up when she went under at Max’s hypnotic command. The Map Room slipped away as she closed her eyes and a voice in her head that sounded girlish but strong began pushing aside her own as a vision of an achingly blue sea outside a stone tower window taunted her.

She was betrayed by her own, like countless before her. She never once wanted to join the order, to wear her hair bound tightly around her head with the ugly veil hanging over her. All she had ever wanted was to be the second happy daughter, at home in her garden where the blossoms of the orange trees sprang open like perfumed white stars. Not interred in a nunnery at the top of the massive rock called Castello Aragonese, attached like a witch’s hump to the Island.

Marilyn’s jaw had set in a firm uncompromising line and she had taken on a proud defiant posture: Max noted the changes that were stealing over her as she settled into her hypnotic trance. He was writing rapidly in his leather-bound notebook as the trees fluttered outside the lead-lined narrow windows. She wasn’t seeing what he was, and she wasn’t fully Marilyn. She had entered into the strange half-state of a past life regression, where she could experience in glimpses where her soul had journeyed before. Marilyn lifted her left hand and smelled her fingers; she looked like a young girl, her beauty incandescent; even in the dim of the Map Room she was glowing.

A man asked her to remember her life on Ischia. She put her fingers to her nose and inhaled to remind herself; oranges, sea-salt, cedar and rosemary, all in her garden, had scented her fingers and were woven into her innermost being. This other, newer life, it didn’t know about what had happened here. It should know.

“What can you tell me?” Max asked, keeping the question open and non- threatening. He had been preparing his whole life for this interview, he realized, only he never pictured it this way. He thought when he would experience the certainty of other realms he would be somewhere more exotic than Decatur, Illinois, sitting in a deserted room with out-dated maps. He never imagined he would have to use his expertise against an evil that most people would never glimpse. He had naively expected his guide to understanding the Divine would be some great yogi in flowing robes in the steppes of Tibet, or a white-haired craggy shaman in a New Mexican desert, not a thirtyish waitress with a high school degree and untrained telekinetic powers. No, it was much more visceral than anything he had imagined. There was an ongoing, pulsating battle between the darkness and the light, with real blood, real psychic danger. Decatur would forever be in his mind now a place of great mystery, danger, and beauty, and that was nothing short of amazing to Max on that grayish Tuesday morning when he should have been teaching Psych 101 but instead was looking for clues about a vampire.

Marilyn began to speak and her voice was high and clear, not the usual husky half-whispery voice she had, but the voice of the life before, “I am Isabella.” Marilyn heard the girlish yet determined tones of the other life, of Isabella, coming out of her own lips. Looking down, even with her eyes closed, she saw a coarse woven robe of brown covering her bare legs,
Isabella’s robe, but she didn’t like that robe, it was uncomfortable even in distant memory, like it had been forced upon her.