Sister Angel (3 page)

“In the morning? At ten?”

“After lunch,” he said. “I’ll come at two.”

Charlie handed Angel a glass of water. “You need this, too,” he said gently. Her face was swollen, hurt-looking. He patted her shoulder, then took brandy to Wanda. And she, he thought looked like staring death.

Amos took the glass from his daughter, put it down, and
left with her, holding her around the shoulders as they walked out.

Now Wanda stood up shakily. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said in a low voice. “I don’t think I can stand to talk about
anything tonight.”

Gretchen left with her. “I’ll be back,” she said at the doorway.

Constance drank her brandy almost as fast as Charlie had done earlier. “Another.”

They both had another. They sat in facing chairs, not talking yet. Finally, he said, “You were swell.”

“And you had your hands full. What happened, Charlie?”

“Damned if I know. Did you feel… ?”

She nodded. “Like being at one of those awful horror movies, and you’re the victim.”

“Yeah. Maybe another brandy. And I’ve got to retrieve that glass.” He went behind the table and stopped, then cursed. “Mrs. Riley found it first. I thought I had it hidden.”

Constance pointed to the water glass. “He handled that.”

He picked up the glass carefully, holding it at the bottom,
and dumped the remaining water back into the pitcher. He started to leave with it, then hesitated, a curious look on his
face, as if he was surprised at himself for the question he had framed even as he asked, “Will you be all right alone for a couple of minutes?”

“Fine,” she said, glad that he had asked, startled that he had asked.

Gretchen joined them while they were having coffee.
Wanda had agreed to take a sleeping pill, something she
generally refused to do, afraid of addiction. She was sleeping already. Lucky Wanda.

“I don’t dare close my eyes,” Gretchen said. Then darkly, she added, “I sure wish Dutch had been here, the bastard, laughing at ghosts.”

“Gretchen, that’s the last kind of thing you should say now,” Constance said severely. “All Wanda needs is any sort of confirmation and she’ll be over that edge so deep, we may not be able to pull her out again.”

Gretchen looked at her with amazement. “What else do you think it could have been? It was Vernon, mad as hell at us for playing with his toys! She knows that.”

Before Constance could respond, Charlie asked, “Is Amos always that solicitous with Angel?”

“Always. He won’t leave her alone at all. That’s why she
isn’t in school. He hinted of bad things that happened years
ago. I guess we all know what that means. She may be a
bit retarded. She looks and acts like a twelve-year-old, but
she’s sixteen or seventeen;”

“Does she sit in on his talks with Wanda?” Constance asked.

“No. But she isn’t very far away, the next room, maybe. No more than that.”

Before midnight, they were all in their rooms, the house quiet. Constance and Charlie had twin beds, each with its own headboard lamp. Charlie’s was turned off; he was lying on his back, his hands under his head, staring at the ceiling, now and then grunting softly, thinking.

In the other bed, Constance was writing in her notebook.
What happened?
headed the page.
Had Angel felt it first,
stronger than the rest of them? Why had she screamed so?
Why had she stopped screaming?
Constance examined that question thoughtfully and then underlined it.

“Honey, you want to go to town with me when I take the glass?”

“I guess I’d better stay here, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, but I don’t want you to.”

“Charlie! Stop that. You’ll scare me!”

“Wasn’t thinking of ghosts,” he said soberly. “Poor old
Vernon didn’t get bopped on the head by a ghost.”

She had forgotten Vernon. “You think all this is connected?”

“Oh sure.” He bridged the space between them and kissed her. “I want to scare you a little. I want you to be damn careful.”

He dreamed: He was dancing with a woman. His eyes were
closed, his cheek against her hair, his hands moving down
her soft, silky body, warm and yielding to his touch, so re
sponsive that her body and his were not really separate, but moved together as if joined at a common nerve center. Her
hands were like warm kisses on his skin; where they touched, he came alive.
Now
, he whispered into her hair.
Now!
They sank into a cloud-like softness.

He came wide awake and sat upright. “Good Christ!” he
whispered, wet with sweat, shivering. He got out of bed
and pulled on his robe, stumbled from the bedroom. Behind him, Constance made a slight noise, and he saw her, an old
woman with graying hair, lines at her eyes, old, old.

Moments later, she sat up, looking at the other bed, sure
he had said something. She reached over to touch him and
found the bed empty. Slowly, she got up and put on her robe and slippers, troubled without cause, wanting to find
him. The bathroom door stood open. She went into the hall, where there was a dim light. Going down the stairs, she felt
again the presence of the masks, the staring eyeholes, and
she drew her robe tighter about her. He was standing at the
broad expanse of glass in the living room, outlined against the pale dawn light. He was smoking.

“Charlie! What’s wrong?” He had not smoked a cigarette in over ten years.

He stiffened, then turned to look at her, and again he saw
an aging woman with tousled hair, sleep-heavy features. The image faded and he saw Constance.

“I thought I heard something.” Deliberately, he stubbed
out his cigarette and turned again to look out over the lake,
which was like a silver skin over an abyss.

She went to stand at his side but did not touch him. In profile, he looked hard, unknowable. “Char—”

“Go back to bed. I have to think and I have to be alone
for a while.” He looked at her; his eyes were like obsidian
disks.

She left him standing before the sliding glass door to the
terrace.

Why didn’t it fade? he thought almost savagely. Dreams
always fade on awakening; the most frightening dream loses its power after you’re fully awake; the edges begin to crumble, details sink back to the pit. He was still there an hour later when rain fractured the surface of the lake. He went back to bed then. Constance was awake, he knew, but
he did not speak, nor did she. He was so tense, he knew he
would not go back to sleep, was afraid to go back to sleep,
afraid he would slip into that other reality that was more
compelling than anything he had ever known.

Gretchen and Constance had breakfast together in a pleasant little room off the kitchen. Charlie had gone into town, and Wanda was not feeling very well.

“What was the routine here?” Constance asked. “They were both home most of the time—doing what?”

“I don’t know what Vernon was up to. We never did until he showed us, like with those damn cats. That was a
complete surprise. Wanda’s allergic to cats, you see, and he
wanted to give her a present. Spent over a year working on
the fool things. And Wanda could afford to be a consultant
when it pleased her. The last job she did was two years ago, a remodeled opera house in Bridgeport. They wanted to recreate a turn-of-the-century ambience, and she flew
into it like a whirlwind. It’s gorgeous. He walked every day for a couple of hours. Sometimes she went with him, some
times not. She was busy off and on with her pet charity, a crippled children’s hospital in Bridgeport. And they played games—word games, chess, even television games. He loved games.”

Constance finished her toast and sighed. Nothing there. “Did they entertain much, go to other people’s houses, that sort of thing?”

Gretchen shook her head. “When he married Wanda, it was evidently the last thing this nice old community could tolerate. Someone snubbed them both early on, and that was the end of that.”

“Did Amos live over there last summer?”

Gretchen frowned. “I just wish,” she said. “But no. They
moved in two and a half months ago. That’s when Wanda
began hearing from Vernon. She was doing okay until then.
There was the shock, of course, and she was grief-stricken,
but she was pulling out of it, and then he came along and threw her into a tailspin.”

Outside, the rain was splashing on the red tiles and the lake was churned by a brisk wind, and Charlie did not have a raincoat with him. Constance knew exactly where it was, in their hall closet at home. She wondered if the snow was getting too deep to dig out again without a tractor, wondered if their house sitter was burning wood and not turning
the thermostat up, using oil that was fantastically expensive,
when the wood was free. Charlie would be soaked. She had not even seen him before he left that morning. She had been in the bathroom showering and when she got out, he was gone. The rain began slanting in against the glass.

Gretchen had shopping to do. Constance read for a while, then prowled the silent house restlessly, finally settling down to look through scrapbooks she found in the television room. Many of the pictures were of Vernon, a
gray-haired, slender man with a straight carriage, squared
shoulders. There were also many pictures of children, most of them in braces, or in wheelchairs. There were several of Vernon holding one child or another up at a game of chance, a ball toss, or dartboard; then one of Wanda at a
booth, with a child on a counter, eating cotton candy. There
were no more pictures after that series.

Charlie called shortly before noon. “I won’t be back for a couple more hours. Everything quiet?”

“You wouldn’t believe how quiet. What are you doing?”

“I don’t want to talk now. Okay? Guess who’s chief of police in Bridgeport these days. Tony Francello! We’re having lunch, and I’ll hang around to get some information when it comes in.”

Constance stared at the phone for a long time after replacing it. She shivered with a sudden chill. What in God’s name
was wrong with Charlie? He had talked like a stranger.
Thank heaven Tony was at hand, she thought then. He would
speed things along. He and Charlie had worked together for
several years before Charlie transferred out of the arson squad. She wanted this finished, wanted to take Charlie and run home as fast as they could get there.

Amos and Angel arrived shortly before two. Constance
admitted them, prepared to take Angel somewhere to talk.

“Hello,” she said cheerfully.

Amos nodded at her. “I told Sister Angel that she could
watch television while I talk to Mrs. Garrity. I’ll hang up your coat, honey.” He hung both coats in the closet, and Angel went down the hallway toward the television room. Constance started to follow her.

“Mrs. Meiklejohn,” Amos said urgently, stopping her,
“your husband is in danger. I see him surrounded by flames
and he is desperately afraid. Take him away from here!”

“What are you talking about? What do you mean?”

“He is in mortal danger! He fears the flames as he fears
hellfire! Take him home! If you want to save his sanity and
his life, take him away from here!”

“Brother Amos! Come up, please!” Wanda stood on the
balcony, looking down at them. Amos turned away from Constance and ran up the stairs.

With great effort, Constance released the railing she had
grasped. Flames! She had known when Charlie began having nightmares about arson. She remembered too vividly the things he had muttered, thrashing about in his sleep.
Here! Not like that for Christ sake! It won’t catch like that. Let me do it!
They had talked about it then, but not
since, never since. He had asked for a transfer, had changed
his job, and, she had thought, it ended. The nightmares
stopped gradually. Was that what had troubled him so terri
bly last night? One of those nightmares? Her palms were wet. She wiped them on the legs of her pants. How had Amos known that?

The masks stared down at her. They saw everything with those empty eyes, heard everything, knew everything. And
Amos? How had he found out that?

She knew she was not ready just yet to question Angel.

She wished Charlie would come back. More than anything,
she wanted to talk to him.

Half an hour later, she joined Angel in the television room.
“Mind if I watch with you?” she asked. “It sure is quiet in this house today.”

Angel glanced up at her and shrugged, turned her attention back to the set. She was watching a game show.