Decatur (29 page)

Max was filled with dread for Isabella and Marilyn. The bargain seemed like the devil’s own, her freedom bound up with the horrors of these dead sisters, and something in Max cringed at the mixing of her own blood and secretions with that left in the stone basins. “What happened when you got to the temple, Isabella?”

“He was tender as he carried me down into the ruins of the Temple of Soul’s Tears, as I thought of it, lifting the coarse veil and letting my hair fall into a chestnut stream spilling over his arms and trailing to the ground. A white feather from some bird was caught in the brambles and he freed it, giving it to me, saying it was a plume of his love. Then, he set me down in a state of wonderment as I showed him the altar.”

Gherio knelt looking at the jagged lines on the floor with the huge iron ring, and then he buried his face in her thighs. She leaned down, her breasts soft around his head and her hand brushing the wetness from his cheeks.

“I pulled the cloudy amber vial I had prepared for him from my coarse sleeve as he read the incantation and then called out, “I hear your call for the hunt and will find my glory,” pacing around the remains of the curved half walls with the banded columns and breathing out in powerful breaths like a lion. He took the vial from me and placed it on the altar.”

“A cool wind came up from the rock and in a shaft of moonlight I saw the first ghost. A young girl in ancient dress materialized out of a ground mist. She pointed away from the temple, gesturing us to go. I’m not sure Gherio saw her but he pulled me back to back with him and unsheathed his sword, looking into the brambles that hid the ruin from view. I felt his warm flesh through the scratchy weave of my habit and longed to feel him naked and skin to skin. Even with a ghost pointing us away from the temple I was full of desire. He unstoppered the amphora, and that’s when I had my first premonition of the coming horror. I felt I saw some wisp of myself float into the air and I realized I shouldn’t have mixed my own living solutions with the dead. The shade in the brambles disappeared then with a moan. Gherio repeated the incantation carved on the altar with his sword in hand, “I hear the call and I will find my glory.
”
Then as a chill ran down my spine he called out to the hidden celebrants to come for their prize. Through the low fog gathered on the ruined stones I glimpsed another ghost, this one in a nun’s habit, and she had her finger to her lips as if to say, be silent. I put my hand on Gherio’s arm, warning him not to call anymore, but he shook me off and took a small swallow from the vial in a defiant way, throwing his head back. He shuddered from head to toe as the elixir took hold of him, mixing the tears of the soul with my own living essence and he roared with power and desire; reaching down and pulling on the rusty metal ring embedded in the stone floor, he recklessly called out again to the temple saying, “I am your hunter.” I wanted to snatch the words back for him but it was too late, they were out, hanging in the air like a curse and Gherio seemed not to care, like he was already possessed. His shoulders rippled as he pulled on the ring and then the lightening bolt carved stone gave way to a passage leading darkly down.”

“I wanted to look away but my eyes were frozen wide with fear as the mist seemed to thicken and come towards us through the brambles. Shades of girls stood together in a ring outside the temple, girls in convent robes and veils, girls in long tunics, girls in ancient dress, all the ghosts of those that had gone before me. They seemed hollow and when you looked at their eyes there was infinitely nothing and I was overcome by loneliness and a sense of emptiness. I felt I heard them weeping but it could have been the wind. Gherio only darted his head from side to side as if trying to see an enemy and stood up from where he crouched, brandishing his sword. He didn’t know.

Then a light appeared from the opening of the dark jagged lined square, coming up from below. Whatever we thought about our mortal lives seemed to hang by a thread as a glow came from the passage underneath the Temple of the Soul’s Tears. Gherio had succeeded in summoning a hidden celebrant, I thought, as my heart seized in my chest. I saw the hand first. It reached up, greenish black and shimmering with long nails and powerful fingers feeling along the edge of the stone floor. Two hands, and then a being in a rough hooded robe holding a flaming staff with the head of a goat appeared. With a mighty swing the staff caught Gherio’s outstretched sword and it fell to the temple floor. The sinewy hands reached up and pulled off the cowl to reveal the broken-nosed hermit from the rock house smiling in a twisted way and breathing heavily. He seemed made more of dark light than solid matter here in the temple. I realized then that my mother and I had been tricked and I had fulfilled my purpose. The monster had two of us now, a warrior for the hunt and a source for more soul’s tears.”

“ ‘Welcome,’ the hermit said, looking at each of us with a hunger that was fierce. ’You found your way. At last you bring my renewal’. I didn’t know if the creature was talking to me or to Gherio but it didn’t matter. He bowed to Gherio and said, ‘Your offer has been accepted. As a new celebrant I initiate you into the hidden mysteries. You will shortly join in the hunt. But first you must sacrifice your soul so I can be fed.’ The hermit’s arm reached out and held him fast, in an inhuman grip.”

“
My love turned to me then with a look of one falling from a great height as the horror came over both of us. He did not even struggle. He seemed to have lost his strength and he slid to the temple floor. I watched as the hermit bent over him and took his soul forever. He finished feeding and shook himself all over as the moon hid and black clouds massed over head. ‘I am reborn. Now get up with what you have left and join the hunt, or die.’”

“Gherio staggered to his feet then with a moan and suddenly his eyes were bloodshot and filled with tears, he put his hand on his chest and patted it, like he was looking for something and when he looked at me I saw he knew all that he had lost, that we had lost, so that, as he rose the moan grew into a roaring howl. He rolled his shoulders and shook his head like he was trying to come out of a nightmare. The hermit had the most sickening look of pleasure at this, as if he reveled in Gherio’s loss, the ruin and waste of our love. Then the creature touched his shoulder with his flaming staff and Gherio didn’t flinch, like the physical pain was meaningless.”

“‘Yes, now you’re one of us. Now we will share the soul’s tears.’ the hermit said. Gherio dropped his head into his hands and slowly dragged his hands down his features like he was wiping his former life from his face and he knelt shuddering before the hidden celebrant. He took another sip of the elixir and hands shaking he handed it to the hermit. I felt an infinite sadness wash over me, realizing that Gherio was no longer fully human but something else. I was afraid, more afraid than I had ever been even in the burial crypt. I had been told to bring the purest solution but I had mixed it with my own essences. The hermit took the amphora from Gherio, licking those demon lips in an obscene way, and swallowing the liquid, shuddered with pleasure. An odd expression came over the creature’s face after finishing, like something he hadn’t expected affected the taste.”

“‘The souls’ tears have been watered by the living flesh.’ The hermit then pointed his bony finger at me, ‘Hers, the Instrument that brought us together. Now it will draw you and have you and we are both bound to it until the planets align again, until the pure solution is found.’ The hermit turned to stare at me and again spoke in the voice that sounded like rocks being smashed by the waves, ‘Soulless in a life for some three hundred years you will hunt, yes, but you will be cursed with a insatiable hunger until you take her essence as your own and free us from this curse, so renewed you can continue your climb or suffer the fate of those who fail the infernity. Only then can you fulfill your destiny and become one such as I.’”

“Gherio looked at me then and I saw growing in him an inhuman desire and I realized I was immortal danger. I knew I had to flee. Concentrating my energies on the ghosts and the trees, a fog bled into the air between us and it was just enough. I ran then and the ghosts of the virgins before me crowded around them for precious seconds. I began to tear through the brambles; dropping our white plume, stumbling over rocks and cut by thorns, my robe up around my legs as I moved through the night. I found a space in a stone wall barely big enough to hold me, and I hid there until daylight, praying all the time to the dead Sister Sophia from the burial chamber to protect me. The newly made monster that was once Gherio I knew was searching for me and it came to me he would never stop searching till he found me.”

“When the dawn came, it was perhaps the most beautiful dawn I ever remembered, golden and pink, with the searing blue of the sea endlessly matching the sky. I climbed out of my stone hiding place. The cliffs beckoned me and I felt all my youth like a blossom with dew still on it as I began to run. I ran towards the golden rising ball of the sun and reveled in my body and soul as it lifted off from that wicked rock, like I was taking flight with the stones and the sea far below me. I heard my mother singing and remembered the taste of fresh bread dipped in our olive oil and for an instant the way Gherio’s hand felt pressed against mine when we first met: there wasn’t time for anything else. I felt something snap as I hit the water and I gave myself over to the sweet fishes in the sea, glad at last to be finally free.”

Marilyn slumped over and moaned. It was time, she couldn’t take any more, Max knew. He was exhausted himself, his own feelings a mixture of wonder and terror at Isabella’s tale. This was indeed why Gar was in the hunt for Marilyn’s soul. “I want you to wake from this trance now, Marilyn. Marilyn is going to wake up from this hypnotic sleep on the count of three, and when you awake you will remember everything that you said and felt and thought while you were under. It is imperative that you remember every detail of this session. Now, I am going to count to three and you will wake refreshed and resolved to do what is necessary. One, you are safe with me, Two, we will solve this together, Three, the Divine is within you. Now wake.”

Marilyn slowly opened her eyes and focused on Max standing in front of her. A shiver ran down her spine when he asked her if she knew where she was now and where she had been. She nodded and said in the husky whispery voice Max knew so well, “Max, we need to finish this, before there’s more.”

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
The Visitation

Gar had to get inside; cars were slowing and people were gawking at him, running clumsily with blood seeping down his face. The blood had stopped gushing from the wound but his t-shirt was soaked. Marilyn had disappeared along with the dog that was going to be ripped apart the next time they met. He was furious but he had to get out of sight before there was the police and more mess. Time to get back to Harry’s, he thought, and began ducking behind yards and bushes, staying off the street as he wove his way back to the shabby duplex on North Street.

When he got to the front door the anger at losing Marilyn was overpowering so instead of letting himself in - he hadn’t locked it that morning - he passed the dead neighbor’s apartment and took the stairs to Marilyn’s at a run, even with his ankle swollen and aching. He broke the door down just because he could and let himself in to her funky little place with her collections of antique bottles and toys. The rubber monkey holding the banana on the coffee table looked at him with his cartoon monkey eyes as Gar ripped off his shirt and threw it in the sink. He sniffed deeply, taking in her scent, and it wound him up even more. He dipped his finger in the wound made from the dog bite and wrote in his own blood on the space where the broken mirror had been
, I’m coming for you.
Then he turned the kitchen faucet on cold and watched as his blood came out of the t-shirt and whirled down the drain with the water. The bandage over Harry’s knife wound had just a small spot of blood on it, so he carefully pulled off the surgical tape: it was almost healed. He washed his face over and over, not minding the sting. He shook ice from the metal tray in her freezer and wrapped it in a kitchen towel and sat pressing it into his ankle. The bleeding from the cuts to his face had slowed considerably but he could feel the loose flap of skin on the right side of his upper lip. He kicked the towel and the ice away and got up, going to her bathroom to look in the mirror there, as the hallway one was now gone. With his arms resting on the bathroom sink he looked at the damage to his face in the mirror. The long slice in his cheek would heal in a few days, it looked like an ugly red line now but it wasn’t bad. It was the flap on his upper lip that concerned him. It needed stitches or it wouldn’t heal right; even with his self-curative powers, he could see that now. The idea of going through his life scarred didn’t appeal to Gar. He would be re-born and live but he wasn’t going to be scarred doing it. He depended on his easy smile to get in and out of too many places and he couldn’t bear the thought of Marilyn reacting to him scarred. There had to be a sewing kit here in Marilyn’s apartment and he half started looking, pulling apart her medicine cabinet. Still, he would rather see a doctor who would do it in neat tiny stitches with the thin invisible thread they used.

Gar blew a long breath out and picked up the receiver of Marilyn’s cheap desk- model phone, thinking: he’d need money and a story to get in and out of the emergency room at St. Mary’s. Or the right escort. He dialed the number to St. Pat’s rectory.

The wall phone in the rectory kitchen rang and rang. It wasn’t yet eleven and Father Weston and Mrs. Napoli were over with the altar society ladies in the church basement getting set up for tomorrow’s funeral luncheon. Father Troy was trying to get ready to take his place at the Monsignor’s visitation but he was having a hard time, the roman collar wouldn’t fasten, he had stained the front of his black frock with a smear of green Crest toothpaste and then made a bigger splotch as he tried to wash it off. He couldn’t get Gar out of his mind, so the damn telephone could just ring off the wall as far as he was concerned. But it kept on ringing and then it occurred to him, it might be Gar. He threw the roman collar down on his high wooden chest of drawers and ran for the kitchen.

Gar’s voice came through the other end of the line like a miracle, “Hey big padre, I need your help.” Father Troy thought he would melt right into the yellow and green linoleum floor. Gar needed him.

“I got a cut, big padre. Kinda of a bad one. I’m gonna needed stitches. Thinking you might want to take your old buddy to the hospital. We’ll need some cash I’m afraid, to pay the witch doctors. Hate to ask you but I don’t know who else to turn to.” Gar kept his tone light so Father Troy could have the emotional fireworks for both of them. But something surprising happened. Father Troy didn’t weep into the phone or call out his name in fear and wonder. He paused so long that Gar was forced to ask if he was still there.

Father Troy felt his stomach drop as he heard Gar tell him he was cut. He was cut, probably from the bike accident with Suzanne Cleary. Because that’s all it was, an accident. But now he was a murder suspect with the Decatur police and the FBI on the look out, and the emergency room always had a cop present, Father Troy knew from his rounds at St. Mary’s. “You can’t go to the hospital now, Gar,” Father Troy said slowly, feeling his way into how he was going to tell him that he was wanted by both local and federal forces and that he, Father Troy had fingered him by identifying his bike that Gar had left behind when Mrs. Cleary crashed her car. “They know about the bike,” he finally managed, “And they’re looking for you.”

Gar gripped the black plastic telephone receiver so hard that it cracked. “You told them? You betrayed me?” Gar said.

What had he done? He couldn’t abandon Gar now
. Father Troy had seen the bank envelope that Father W had put in the office drawer to pay for most of tomorrow’s incidental funeral expenses: flowers, big pans of lasagna, wine and candles. He would take that. Father W could always get more. Then there was the old droopy mustachioed doctor that kept the office on West Main. He had met him at St. Mary’s and had allowed him to grope him in the men’s room there once. The old queer owed him. He would write a note that simply said, like Jesus might, “
Do this for me
.” Gar could go there and get his stitches while Father Troy kept vigil at the visitation so no one would be the wiser.

“Meet me at Clarkson’s Funeral Home, Gar. I’ll have money there and directions to a doctor that owes me a favor. Come quickly. It’ll be quiet until the visitation begins at noon,” Father Troy said forcefully, feeling new energy and purpose coursing through his veins.

Gar looked over both shoulders and made his way as swiftly as he could across the empty funeral home parking lot to the big canvas tubular awning that covered the entryway. He opened the door and slipped inside, his t-shirt still wet but at least not screaming “blood.” The semi-circular entrance had a table set up with a white-and-silver guest book open and a large black-and-white framed photograph of Monsignor Lowell in full dress regalia taken in front of St. Patrick’s at least fifteen years ago. Two big planters of white lilies stood like sentries to the visitation parlor.

Father Troy had been pacing back in forth in front of the Monsignor’s handsome cherry casket with ivory satin lining. The old priest, with his white and blue veined hands folded and holding a rosary, looked so peaceful to Father Troy. It made him wish he could steal some of that peace from the Monsignor to calm the agitation he felt. He had told Tom Clarkson to give him some privacy so he could visit with the Monsignor before the parishioners came, but all he wanted was to get the funeral director out the way before Gar arrived.

Then he saw him, standing hesitantly in the big double doorway with a damp t- shirt on and his right hand lightly covering most of the right side of his face. No, Father Troy thought, not Gar’s beautiful face. He put his hand in the deep slit pocket of this frock feeling the bank envelope and the note to the old doctor. The bastard better do a good job.

Gar looked in at Father Troy who stopped and gazed up with adoration and there he saw it: revulsion at the idea that his face was marred. The anger he had been carrying all morning since the disaster at the ruined mausoleum was like a volcano inside, the pressure just kept building. The priest was a weakling and an unworthy acolyte. He had betrayed him. He had tried to tell Marilyn not to see him. He hadn’t protected him. Gar suddenly was hungry, starving in fact. He just had to eat.

The floral arrangements for the church had been brought over by the Flower Shoppe delivery truck and the driver waited patiently for Father Weston to get the money from the parish office. They were giving the parish a substantial discount but the owner had been very clear: get the bill paid before you put the arrangements in the church. Sometimes the parish was a slow pay and with the Monsignor gone, who knew how things were going to be run in the future.

Father Weston opened the middle desk drawer for the bank envelope he had put together so he could pay off the various vendors easily, he didn’t want to haggle over money with so much stress everywhere else. There was a note from Father Troy on parish stationary right on the blotter saying he had left for the visitation. Father W put his hand in the drawer, not believing what he saw: the bank envelope was gone. A flash of unreasoning panic shot through Father W’s chest. Where was it? He could see the florist truck driver leaning against the blue Flower Shoppe truck. He emptied the drawer out: rubber bands, paper clips, ballpoint pens, dust balls, all of it. It was gone. Shit. Had Father Troy taken it to the funeral home somehow thinking he had to pay for things there? Oh for multiplying fish, nothing but nothing was going right. He pulled the big parish check book from the middle drawer and with a sigh made out a check for one hundred and eight dollars to the Flower Shoppe. It just didn’t make sense for Father Troy to think he needed the money as Father W had been in charge of the incidental arrangements. As he handed the driver the check he had another darker thought. Gar, Gar was out there somewhere and maybe he needed the cash. Turning away as the delivery man opened the doors of the panel truck, Father Weston ran for the garage and his Olds. The traveling sacrament case was still in the front seat from last night, he thought as he pulled out of the drive.

Gar came in the visitation parlor moving a little slowly and Father Troy noticed the laces on his peculiar pointy-toed shoe on the left side were untied. Had he hurt his ankle too? This was awful. He opened his arms like St. Francis might and Gar dropped his hand from his cheek. Father Troy couldn’t help it, he stepped back; there was an ugly, ugly cut on Gar’s smooth sun-kissed cheek, and more terrible still a piece of his lip was hanging in a flap. “Gar, you’re badly hurt,” he said in a rush to cover up how sickening the cuts were. Cuts received in a terrible accident, he reminded himself. “I have what you need.”