Seraphim (29 page)

Crinkling her nose, the girl said, “That’s Toni, the babysitter. She was always mean to me. I don’t remember her last name...but I think it was like a nut.”

“Akhorn,” Patricia said, then closed the album; gently, delicately, as if she were a minister closing her
Bible
on the last words of an unusually poignant sermon.

Chris, tugging the rings on his right ear the way Carol Burnett used to, said, “Way to smoke ’em, dude!”

Duncan said, “Patricia, I know it’s the hardest damned thing in the world to believe, but you have to stay calm. Don’t go flipping out. There’s nothing wrong with you.” He turned to Joan. “Either one of you.”

“We know what you’re going through,” Rachel said. “You have your Katherine back, but now it’s our little girl who’s gone.”

“The one who was in the hospital?” Patricia said. “Amy, right?”

“Yes,” Rachel said. “She suffered some kind of...seizure.”

Although their eyes locked, Rachel’s soul looked away after a moment, and Patricia saw in the vacancy a desperation so sharp, so relentlessly keen, as to be an unstoppable force. Patricia knew of another woman who’d been driven by such despair, but she hadn’t led the charge in years. Hope, like her rapiers, had dulled and rusted.

Patricia tipped her head toward the girl. “But—this is her, right? This is Amy?”

Duncan raised his eyebrows. “Not anymore.”

“She
was
Amy,” Rachel said. “Now she’s
your
daughter.”

Patricia held up a finger. “Um, let me see if I’m getting this: your daughter Amy, who is only ten years old, winds up in the hospital, believing her name to be Katherine Bently, my daughter from Rock Bay, Massachusetts. The very same Katherine Bently who disappeared from the boardwalk over eleven years ago. And, as it just so happens, Amy looks exactly like my Katherine looked when she was ten years old. And not only does she walk the walk, but she talks a good talk, too,” she said, patting the photo album. “And to top it all off, the biological parents of this little girl, out of the billions available, just happen to be our own Rachel and Duncan McNeil, the latter with whom I once shared more than just a motel room.” She cleared her throat. “How am I doing so far?”

“So far, so good,” said Duncan.

“What is this about motel rooms?” Juanita said.

The girl snickered.

Patricia slowly shook her head.
“I...just...can’t...accept it.”
She turned to the girl. “I’m sorry, but you are not my daughter.”

“Excuse me, but I think we can all appreciate just how unbelievable this all is,” Joan said, appearing as if she didn’t really appreciate the unbelievable at all. “But just remember, Patty, that God works in mysterious ways.”

Patricia slammed her fist on the table. “God has never worked a day in His life, mother,” she reminded. “He’s a loafer, a lazybones.”

Juanita crossed herself as a shocked Joan clutched the big gold cross dangling above her cleavage. Patricia had not seen her mother wear that necklace since she’d thrown it at the television when
America’s Most Wanted
ran the last discouraging update on Katherine’s disappearance, six years ago.

“Oh,
puh-leese
, Mother,” Patricia moaned. “One little ghost and already you’re pushing your way past the ushers. Before too long, you’ll be singing again in the front row of the choir—if you can make the steps, that is.” She was standing now. “But that shouldn’t be a problem because God works in mysterious ways, right, Mom? He’ll not only cure your arthritis, but as a bonus for hopping back on the minstrel wagon, He’ll make it so you’ll sound just like Etta James—”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Duncan said. “Patricia, sit down. Please.”

Patricia lowered her head, suddenly ashamed. “Oh...Mom, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right, Patty dear,” her mother said. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, Mom. Honest.”

As Patricia gathered herself, Duncan used the moment to confiscate Chris’s Walkman, and to finally make introductions.

Patricia looked at Juanita. “I’m sorry, but you’re here because...?”

“I make sure that nothing happens to the girl.”

“Why? Is something supposed to happen to her?”

“
Si
,” she said with heavy certainty.

Patricia turned to the girl. “And how do you feel about that?”

Smiling, she said, “Juanita worries too much, but I guess I feel safer having her around.”

Now to Chris: “And you have ESP?”

“That acronym encompasses all paranormal abilities and should, like, never be used to designate individual talents,” Chris lectured. Then he grinned. “But in my case, it pretty much sums it up.”

Patricia nodded, indulging him. “In other words, you’re a sort of supernatural jack of all trades?”

“And master of none,” Juanita grumpily added.

Chris glared at Juanita, poking his chest. “Hey, man, I just go where they tell me.”

“Do they ever tell you to go to hell?” Juanita said into her coffee.

“Juanita!” Rachel gasped, appearing both shocked and amused.

Juanita bit into a lemon cookie and shrugged.

Patricia half-smiled as she looked around the table. “This is just the tip of something, isn’t it? I can see it in everyone’s eyes. You’re not telling us everything.”

“We’re just as lost as you are,” Duncan assured.

“Juanita,” she said, “tell me what happens from here?”

“I do not know, Mrs. Bently.”

“What about you?” she said to Chris. “What are your psychic antennae picking up?”

“I know this: At sunrise tomorrow, your nice little town will go down in history as the place where it all began to end.”

“You mean like end of the world kind’ve stuff?”

“It will be like nothing you’ve ever imagined,” he assured.

Patricia was trying not to laugh. “In that case, I guess I’d better get some laundry on. I don’t want to gallop off with the Horsemen of the Apocalypse wearing a dirty bustle.”

“Think I’m full of it?” Chris said, soft but sinister. There was now a faint tick beneath his left eye. “Think I’m some idiot dealing Tarot Cards here?”

“Easy, Chris,” Duncan cautioned.

“Think I burn incense and gaze into crystal balls?” he continued with rising malevolence. “Then get a load of this. You haven’t been laid in over four years. You and your bowling buddies just got new jackets but they misspelled your name on the front. Pretty boy Marco at the Phillips 66 just robbed you of over three hundred bucks last week when he did absolutely nothing to your Accord except change the air filter. Your best friend in high school was K-Karen Koch who died three days ago in that Amtrak c-crash that killed f-forty-one people. She says hello and not t-to worry anymore about—about that diamond ring you stole f-from her mother’s j-j-jewelry box. And—and—” Chris fell from his chair, convulsing.

Patricia remained seated, staring at the spot he’d just left vacant.

Duncan and Rachel reached him immediately. The spasms were primarily occurring on his left side. His eyes rolled to the whites, and his hands, rigid and bent at the wrists, jerked and twitched above his chest. He looked like a praying mantis on crank.

Rachel, on her knees, stared down into his face. Panicked, she said, “Is he trying to swallow his tongue? I think he’s swallowing his tongue.”

“He can’t swallow his tongue,” Duncan said. “We just have to wait it out. That’s all we can do. Just keep him from hurting himself until it passes.”

“Is he high on drugs?” Juanita said, now standing at Chris’s right shoulder. With her rosary dangling from both hands, she appeared ready and more than willing to give last rites.

“No, it’s just his...disease,” Rachel said.

Chris, still quivering and jerking, rolled his eyes back down, then winked at Duncan.

After the initial shock, Duncan grabbed a handful of shirt and pulled Chris to his face. “Just what the
fuck
is your major malfunction?”

“You asshole!” Patricia shouted, now back with the living.

Rachel, eyes closed, appeared to be searching for the manual that provided a list of all the retaliatory measures utilized by decent, God-fearing people who’ve been duped by lowlife punks with ESP. Finally, she opened her eyes, got up, and kicked Chris’s leg. Then she kicked him twice more before silently striding back to the table, fists clenched.

Chris was laughing hysterically now. He kept trying to say something but couldn’t find a wide enough spot to get the words through.

“I ought to kick your ass right here in front of God and everybody,” Duncan said, appearing to be an eyelash away from doing just that. “I mean, so far up between your shoulders that you’ll have to pull your shirt off to take a shit.”

Chris howled even louder.

The girl kneeled next to Chris’s red, twisting face. “You have a mean streak in you.” She grinned, then whispered, “I like that. A lot.”

Joan, raising her voice over the commotion, said to Patricia, “Darling, did you really steal a diamond ring from Mrs. Koch’s jewelry box?”

“Jesus, Mother,” Patricia said. “Not now!”

“You are sick!” Juanita said, bending over Chris, quivering with anger. Eyes black and portentous, she shook her fists. “Sick! Sick! We do not have time for this bullshit!” Then, like some raving exorcist, she slammed her rosary into his stomach. But the look on Chris’s face indicated that she had struck him with something considerably larger. A dump truck, perhaps.

He lay frozen in an odd posture, as if he’d been attempting to get to his hands and knees, but had slipped a disc halfway through the roll.

Just as the rosary had struck Chris, evicting all demons and giving the rest of his motley tenants something to think about, a powerful noise burst from the stairway; a shattering, crackling, glass-like sound.

6.

Duncan was already up and moving toward the stairs, as was Pillsbury, hackles up on both.

“Pillsy, you get back over here,” Patricia ordered. “Now!”

The dog stopped at the foot of the stairs, growling.

Patricia leered at the dachshund. “You’re only brave when company’s here.”

All eyes followed Duncan as he climbed. He stopped halfway up stairs and began inspecting a round stained-glass window. After a moment of scrutiny, he stepped back and leaned against the banister.

“Well?” Rachel hollered.

Appearing especially worried, Joan said, “Is the window broken?”

Duncan stepped up to the window again. “I think...I think it’s a mouth. And an ear. Definitely an ear. There’s part of a nose, too.”

Chris was off the floor now, staring up at Duncan. No one spoke.

Pillsbury, after a thorough sniffing of the bottom stair, decided that Duncan could handle the situation without her, and rejoined the others in the dining room, growling at Chris as she passed.

“Well,” Rachel said to Chris, “you don’t have to have a ‘universal translator’ to know what she just said.”

Finally, Duncan looked down at the group. “Chris, you missing two earrings?”

Chris felt his right ear, then stared up at Duncan, incredulous.

Duncan returned his eyes to the window, nodding. Then, after an exchange of mumbled words, he descended the stairs.

Sauntering up to Chris, he said, “Looks like the joke’s on you, Hollywood.” He threw a thumb over his shoulder. “Somebody up there wants to talk to you.”

“Well,” Joan said, rising from the table, “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I could sure use an ice cream about now.” She moseyed into the kitchen, the dog in close second, both obviously more interested in Sidewalk Sundaes than talking, earring-snatching windows.

Chris couldn’t move, was petrified of what awaited him up the stairs. Not counting his refrigerator, this was the kind of thing he expected when he went journeying through the human mind, or what he’d come to call Wonderland. But this wasn’t Wonderland. This was Massachusetts, USA, where windows were supposed to mind their own fucking business.

With a hard and totally unexpected push from Patricia, the spell was broken, and he made his way up the stairs, albeit slothfully.

Duncan told everyone else to stay back, that this was between Chris and the window.

The stained glass window was a round multifoil, two-and-a-half-feet across its center, with an unpretentious sunburst design radiating outward in fat, orange squares, then gradually ending in narrowing rectangles of fire-yellow. The digressing pieces from there were choppily grouped, ranging from cobalt blue to blue-gray, and a ruby fringe worked nicely to capture the colors.

It appeared to Chris as if someone’s face had struck the glass from the outside, at an angle, left-center, leaving the raised, multicolored impressions of a forehead, an eye, cheek, an ear with two of his own steel hoop earrings, and half of a nose and mouth.

The lips moved.

“Holy shit!” Chris shrieked. “What—who the fuck are you?”

“Sonny Bono,” said the lips in a strangely familiar voice. “Now come closer.”

“Come closer my ass.”

The lips sighed. “Are you man, or mouse?”

“Don’t mess with me, dude!”

“Just get your brave self over here.”

Chris inched along the carpeted stair. The eye followed his progress with lustful anticipation, as if he were a busty blonde just two pasties and a G-string away from a table dance finale.

“Closer, closer.”

“Alright, okay,” Chris said, now up close. He leaned as far back as he could, as if the mouth had garlic breath. “What gives?”

“First off, kindly remove your jewelry from my ear.”

Chris complied. “Okay, so what’s the deal?”

“It’s Juanita’s fault. Like you, she has a gift. Unfortunately, she doesn’t know how to use it yet.”

“You mean it’s, like, dormant?”

“If you’d only concentrate, you’d know, just as I do, that she just acquired it.”

“Cool,” Chris said. “What’s her specialty?”

“You’re staring at it.”

“What? Like, she can warp glass into caricatures and shit?”

“Hey, stop playing stupid. It’s you you’re talking to here. Literally, you know as much as I do about Juanita’s gift.”