Mortal Sin (22 page)

They were going down. Several stairs, then a slope, then more stairs. At least two stories. It was colder, damper down here. Rafe was beginning to feel a bit claustrophobic. Did this really go to the rectory?

Suddenly, the narrow passageway opened into a room the size of a small bedroom. It was sealed with brick.

“We’re trapped,” Skye said. “But maybe they’ll be able to put the fire out before it gets down here.”

Rafe didn’t want to count on it. He closed his eyes.

The wall glowed in front of him, along the seams of each brick. Glowing with bright light. Not each brick. Only some of the bricks. It was a code. What had the Bishop said?

And I will lead the blind into the way which they know not; and in the paths which they were ignorant of I will make them walk; I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight; these things have I done to them, and have not forsaken them.

Rafe didn’t know where the verse came from, but that was the code.

“Isaiah 42:16.” He opened his eyes and looked at the wall again.

“What?”

“It’s the code. Isaiah is the 29
th
book in the Bible.”

“I thought it was the 23
rd
book.”

“Not to Catholics.”

“There’s a different Bible for Catholics?”

“I’ll give you a history lesson when we get out of here. 29. 42. 16.”

“So where’s the keypad?”

“It’s not a keypad. Just wait a sec.” He shined the flashlight and counted bricks. There were either eight or nine full-sized bricks across. He found brick twenty-nine and pushed.

It went in half way.

“Okay, that’s very cool,” Rafe said.

Forty-two. He counted. Pushed. Nothing happened.

“That’s not cool.”

Forty-two from the last brick.

He counted again, from brick twenty-nine. Pressed.

The brick sank into the wall half-way.

Counted to sixteen. It was the second to last brick. Pressed.

Waited.

Nothing happened.

“Isn’t it supposed to open?” she said.

“I’ve never done this before.”

“Then how did you know this was here?”

He didn’t answer. He closed his eyes. And the answer was there.

He pushed hard on the entire wall. It moved slowly on heavy hinges.

They entered another dark room, but it was a basement. Stone stairs led up. This time, Skye took the lead. At the top of the landing, she tried the door.

“Locked,” she said.

“Break it,” Rafe told her.

“It’s a heavy door,” she said, rattling it. “Go down the stairs. I need to shoot the lock mechanism.”

Rafe went halfway down. Skye aimed at an angle, then turned her head slightly to avoid getting debris in her face, and fired three bullets into the area between the lock and the frame. She pushed twice and the door fell open.

They were in a storage room of sorts. Supplies for the rectory. The door on the other end led to another half staircase, and then to a large kitchen.

When they were up there, they heard both the roar of the fire and the sirens of fire trucks.

Rafe ran out the front while Skye called her people. He stared at the old church. The stone structure still stood inside a wall of flames.

There was nothing natural about this fire. It might have been set by a man, but it was fed by magic. That was the only explanation for how it had completely engulfed the building preventing anyone from getting in…

… or getting out.

When Ethel Dobson was eight years old, nearly eighty years ago, when she was Ethel Sue McGillicuddy from Houston, Texas, when her parents and two sisters were still alive, when her biggest complaint was having to get up at five in the morning to feed the chickens and milk the cows, she’d had a recurring nightmare.

The monster came to her that summer in her dreams, a dark monster with glowing red eyes. Daddy thought the monster came because she was reading books she shouldn’t be reading, but Ethel knew he was the devil coming to take her. It wasn’t from any book she read, unless you counted the Old Testament when Pastor Elijah Parker read it. Because Pastor Parker’s eyes practically glowed and his face got red and Ethel knew for absolute certain that she was going to Hell because of things she hadn’t done yet, but was probably going to do. Her older sister had kissed Billy Joe behind the barn and so Maggie was going to Hell, too. And Ethel was going to Hell because she saw Maggie and Billy Joe and didn’t tell Daddy. But Ethel was more scared about Daddy paddling Maggie’s rear end than about Hell. At least until the dreams came.

Ethel went through nearly two years where she hardly slept. She was certain that the monster with glowing eyes like Pastor Parker would grab her by the ankles and drag her down to the fires of Hell. His breath was hot on her face, his voice dark and throaty with a deep hiss that made her shake. She thought for sure he was real, but every time she opened her eyes, he was gone. So she kept her eyes open.

She lost weight and her mama took her to the doctor in town because she was worried. Ethel didn’t want her mama to worry so she tried to eat and pretended to sleep. It got to be that the only time Ethel could really sleep was during the day. Because she needed to be awake at night to protect her family from the red-eyed monster.

She didn’t know why the monster stopped coming in her dreams, but for the rest of her childhood, after those two years, he left her alone.

He returned after the birth of her first child, when Ethel was certain that the monster was going to kill her son. Ethel sat watching Johnny’s room every night for a year until the monster wasn’t around anymore. Frank thought she was overprotective, and her sisters all thought she was a touch crazy, but now Johnny was a retired surgeon and lived in a pretty house in Arizona and she had three grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

Her second child wasn’t as lucky. Ethel was sick after Adam was born, and she couldn’t stay up all night to protect him from the monster. Adam had gotten into a lot of trouble and went to prison, the first Dobson or McGillicuddy who had gone to prison (except for Uncle Horace who often slept off his drunk spells in the county jail, back in Houston.) And Adam killed a man, then ended up dying in prison when he was only thirty-five.

Ethel blamed herself. Because she hadn’t kept watch when Adam was a baby, to protect him from the curse of the monster.

For nearly fifty years, she hadn’t felt or seen the monster, and believed, deep down, that the monster had taken Adam as penance or punishment for something she’d done or hadn’t done or would do or wouldn’t do. He would leave her dreams alone.

Until now.

The dreams started nearly six months ago, a few weeks before Christmas, and they’d only gotten worse. Until she wasn’t sleeping, except a few hours during the day. She sat watch over her husband, Frank, resenting that he had always slept so well. They’d be married sixty-two years next month, and there wasn’t one night he hadn’t slept like a baby.

Maybe if he’d sat up every night while Adam slept in his crib, the monster wouldn’t have claimed their youngest.

And the anger built.

The anger built for months as Ethel cooked and cleaned and did what her mother had taught her wives did for their husbands. It didn’t matter, not anymore, that Frank had worked forty-five years in the sugar processing plant, ten hours a day, working past retirement age so they could send Johnny to college and bail Adam out of jail and pay off the mortgage. When did Ethel get to retire? When did she get to stop cooking and cleaning and shopping? When did she get to relax? When did she get peace?

“It’s nearly dinner time,” Frank said when she shuffled into the kitchen after her afternoon nap. A nap where the monster came, again. Her head ached.

“I’m getting it.” She might have snapped. She didn’t know. She could barely hear her voice.

“We can go out.”

“We went out last night.” They didn’t have the money to go out and eat every night. They had social security and Frank had a small pension, but they couldn’t spend $12.95 at the diner for the meal they usually shared, at least not more than once a week. And they always went out for brunch after church at that nice little place down the coast. They’d done it for twenty years, ever since their favorite restaurant next to the First Baptist Church closed down when the owner died.

“There was a fire at the Catholic Church,” Frank said. “I saw it on the news. They said the whole place is in flames.”

“Hmph. My granddad always said the Catholics would burn in Hell.”

When Ethel was little, when the monster still came to her, she thought he was coming because her best friend was Anna O’Brien, who went to St. Ignatius, a Catholic Church. Pastor Parker agreed with her granddad, that Catholics believed all sorts of weird things, like worshipping statues and burning incense and praying to Mary. So she told Anna she couldn’t be friends anymore because she was a heathen who would burn in Hell. That’s what her granddad said.

Anna had cried. Ethel cried, too, because the monster didn’t go away.

Ethel opened the refrigerator. She had a leftover casserole from two nights ago. If they didn’t eat it tonight, it would go to waste, and she couldn’t waste food. She’d been raised during the depression, and her mother never allowed any food to go to waste. Ethel always kept leftovers, and they ate them until they were gone. There had been times growing up when they had eggs for dinner because all they had was the eggs their chickens laid. Eggs and fresh milk.

Ethel hated eggs.

She put the casserole in the microwave—Ethel wasn’t into all the newfangled devices that everyone seemed to walk around with these days implanted in their hands or ears, but she loved her microwave. Her life became easier when Frank bought her one twenty-two years ago. And a new one when that one broke and no one could fix it.

She served the casserole while Frank read the newspaper. Again. He read it twice a day, slowly. She thought he might be getting forgetful, and that made her angry, too. She didn’t know if she could keep watching over him, protect him from the monster, if he got sick.

She sat down, weary, lowered her head to pray. She hadn’t noticed when she put her housedress on that it had a spaghetti sauce stain right down the front. She frowned. She never wore dirty clothes. She’d always prided herself on keeping a clean house, and that including keeping herself clean. And yet that stain mocked her.

“Ethel?”

“Yes, Frank?”

“Don’t you think the casserole is a little dry? The microwave does it, I think. Sucks the moisture right out of the meat.”

Her microwave? The one thing that made her life easier? And Frank thinks the microwave is the problem?

Maybe he was the problem.

She stood, her old bones creaking. She picked up the casserole with both hands. The ceramic baking dish had been her mother’s. It was Ethel’s favorite.

She held it up over Frank’s head and hit him with all the strength her skinny arms had.

#

Russell Campbell sat at the bar and motioned for Josh to bring him another beer. He slid over the empty mug when Josh placed the fresh brew in front of him.

“You look tired, buddy,” Josh said.

“I’ve had a fucking headache all day,” Russ said. “Can’t seem to get rid of it.”

“How’s the job going?”

He shrugged. “Slower than I want.”

Russ’s construction company was rebuilding Rittenhouse Furniture Warehouse. It had been the site of an employee going postal and killing a bunch of people. SWAT took him out, good riddance, but the place had a bad vibe, Old Man Rittenhouse said, so Joe was hired to gut the building and completely redesign it. Instead of one building, there would be three connected structures, and one was going to be leased to a church because Rittenhouse thought the prayers would help get rid of the bad vibes.

Russ didn’t know if anything would help that place. He’d already lost three workers who’d walked off the job in the middle of the shift because they said they’d seen a ghost or some stupid ass thing. Russ didn’t believe in ghosts or curses, but the place did creep him out and he couldn’t wait to be done.

“My cousin Ricky is looking for a summer job. He’s only eighteen, but he’s a hard worker. I can’t hire him here, but if you want, I can send him to you. He graduates in two weeks.”

“That’d be great. I hope to be done by August first.”

Josh made a note on a pad behind the bar. “I’ll have him stop by.”

“Monday,” Russ said. “I’m taking the weekend off.”

“Looks like you could use a break.”

“Don’t you know it.”

“Josh?” Violet Williams approached them. Violet had been a troubled teenager, but had cleaned up and she and Josh were living together in the apartment above the bar. She seemed happy for the first time in her life. And everyone in town knew her because of her dad, the assistant sheriff.

“Something wrong?” Josh touched her arm lightly.

“A couple guys arguing. I tried to calm them down, but they seem ready for a brawl.”

“Drunk?”

“No, I don’t think so. They’re suits. They work for the city manager I think.”

Josh glanced over to where Violet pointed. Russ looked as well. He said, “Josh, the guy with the navy tie is the planning commissioner. George Calvin. Do you want me to talk to him?”

“Thanks, but I got it Russ. Enjoy your drink.”

Russ watched Josh go over to the table while Violet stayed behind the bar, serving the regulars.

Russ sipped his beer. It wasn’t making him feel any better.