The Dark Divine (4 page)

“Work … Yeah, um, that.” April hitched her pink JanSport backpack up on her shoulder. “I’ve gotta get going. See you later,” she said, and scurried off to the main doors.

“She’s … interesting,” Jude said as he watched her leave.

“Yep, that she definitely is.”

“So …” Jude looped his arm around my shoulder,
leading me through a throng of sophomores toward the exit. “Tell me more about this date.”

“It’s
not
a date.”

AN HOUR AND A HALF LATER

“Pastor D-vine is truly an angel of the Lord,” Don Mooney said in awe as he scanned the jam-packed social hall of the parish. There were boxes upon boxes of food and clothing—and Jude and I were in charge of sorting through all of them. “I hope you still need these.” Don adjusted the large box of tuna cans in his arms. “I got them from the market, and I even remembered to pay for them this time. You can call Mr. Day if you want. But if you don’t need them …”

“Thank you, Don,” Jude said. “Every donation helps, and we especially need high-protein foods like tuna. Right, Grace?”

I nodded and tried to pack one last coat into the bulging box marked
MEN’S
. I gave up and dropped it into a half-empty women’s box.

“And it was good of you to remember to pay Mr. Day,” Jude said to Don.

A huge grin spread across Don’s face. He was as big as a grizzly, and his smile resembled a snarl. “You kids are truly D-vine. Just like your father.”

“We do no more than anyone else,” Jude said in that diplomatic voice he picked up from Dad that let
him be humble but contradict someone at the same time. He grunted as he tried to lift the box out of Don’s burly arms. “Wow, you brought
a lot
of tuna.”

“Anything to help the D-vines. God’s angels, you are.”

Don wasn’t the only one who treated our family like a group of celestial beings. Dad always said the pastor over at New Hope taught from the same good book as he did, but most everyone wanted to hear the gospel from Pastor Divine.

What would they think if they knew our last name used to be Divinovich? My great-great-grandfather had changed his surname to Divine when he immigrated to America, and my great-grandpa found it came in handy when he joined the clergy.

I often found it a hard name to live up to.

“Well, how about I let you carry that box out back.” Jude clapped Don on the arm. “You can help us load the truck for the shelter.”

Don paraded his hefty box through the social hall with his trademark snarl/grin on his face. Jude picked up my box of men’s coats and followed him out the back door.

My shoulders relaxed once Don was gone. He was always lurking around the parish “wanting to help,” but I usually tried to avoid him. I wouldn’t tell my dad or brother this, but I still felt uneasy around Don. I couldn’t help it. He reminded me of Lenny from
Of Mice and Men
—the way he was kind of slow and well
meaning but could snap your neck with one movement of his baseball-mitt-sized hands.

I still couldn’t shake the memory of the violence that lived in those hands.

Five years ago, Jude and I (and that person whose name starts with a
D
and ends in an
aniel)
were helping Dad clean up the sanctuary when Don Mooney stumbled through the chapel doors for the first time. Dad greeted him nicely despite his dirty clothes and sour stench, but Don grabbed my father and pulled a tarnished knife to his throat, demanding money.

I was so scared I almost broke my cardinal “Grace does not cry” rule. But Dad never faltered—even when blood started to roll down his neck. He pointed up at the big stained-glass balcony windows that depicted Christ knocking on a wooden door. “Ask and ye shall receive,” he said, and promised to help Don get what he really needed: a job and a place to live.

It wasn’t long before Don became Dad’s most devoted parishioner. Everyone else seemed to have forgotten the way we met him. But I couldn’t.

Did that make me the only Divinovich in a family full of Divines?

EVENING

“I don’t know what to tell you, Grace.” Pete lowered the hood of my father’s decade-and-a-half-old, teal-green
Toyota Corolla. “I think we’re stranded.”

I wasn’t at all surprised when the car didn’t start up again. Charity and I regularly lobbied for my parents to get rid of the Corolla and buy a new Highlander, but Dad always shook his head and said, “How would it look if we got a new car when this one runs fine?” Of course, Dad meant “runs” in a relative sort of way. As in, if you said a heartfelt prayer and promised the Lord to use the car to help the needy, it usually started on the third or fourth turn of the ignition. But this time I wasn’t sure if even divine intervention could get the car moving.

“I think I saw a gas station a couple of blocks back,” Pete said. “Maybe I should walk there and get some help.”

“That gas station is closed.” I breathed on my frozen hands. “It’s been abandoned for a while.”

Pete looked back and forth down the street. Nothing much was visible outside the veil of orange light cast from the streetlamp. The night’s sky was completely blotted out by clouds, and a frigid wind tousled Pete’s rusty hair. “Of all the nights to forget to charge my cell phone.”

“At least you have one,” I said. “My parents are seriously stuck in the twentieth century.”

Pete only half smiled. “Well, I guess I’ll go find a pay phone,” he grumbled.

Suddenly, I felt like all of this was my fault. Only a few minutes before, Pete and I had been joking about
Brett Johnson’s hiccupping fit during the chem test. Pete looked at me when we laughed at the same time, and our eyes met in that cosmic sort of way. Then the car made this horrible clunking noise and lurched to a stop in an alley on our way to the shelter.

“I’ll come with you.” I flinched at the sound of shattering glass in the not-so-far distance. “It’ll be an adventure.”

“No. Someone needs to stay with this stuff.”

The Corolla was packed full of the boxes that didn’t fit in the truck. But I wasn’t sure I was the one who should stay behind to protect it. “I’ll go. You’ve done enough already.”

“No way, Grace. Pastor or not, your dad would kill me if I let you walk by yourself in this part of town.” Pete opened the car door and pushed me inside. “You’ll be safer—and warmer—in here.”

“But …”

“No.” Pete pointed to the squatty building across the street. I could hear a couple of guys shouting at each other from one of the broken windows. “I’ll just go knock on the door of one of those apartments.”

“Yeah, right,” I said. “Your best bet is the shelter. It’s a mile or so that way.” I pointed down the dark street. We were parked under the only working lamp on the block. “There are mostly apartments along the way, and a couple of bars. But stay away from those unless you want to get your teeth kicked in.”

Pete smirked. “You spend a lot of time on the mean streets?”

“Something like that.” I frowned. “Hurry … and be careful, okay?”

Pete leaned in through the doorway with one of his triple-threat grins. “This is some date, huh?” he said, and kissed me on the cheek.

My face prickled with heat. “So this
is
a date?”

Pete chuckled and rocked back on his heels. “Lock the car.” He shut the door and shoved his hands into the pockets of his letterman’s jacket.

I clicked the door lock and watched him kick an empty beer can as he walked away. I couldn’t see him once he left the light of the streetlamp. I scrunched down in my coat for warmth and sighed. It might be going badly, but at least I was on a date with Pete Bradshaw, sort of.

Sc-rape
.

I shot straight up. Was that the shuffle of gravel on the pavement? Was Pete back already? I looked around. Nothing. I checked the passenger’s-side door. It was locked. I sat back and rested my hand on Pete’s hockey stick, which lay in between the front seats.

I had almost died when Don Mooney asked if he could ride along with Pete and me in the Corolla. I couldn’t tell if he was clueless or if he thought we needed a chaperone. Luckily, Jude had saved me by plunking down a box of women’s coats on the backseat of the car. “No
room here,” he said, and convinced Don to squeeze into the truck with Dad and him. They pulled out first and Pete and I followed, but I had to drop off a bag from the pharmacy to Maryanne Duke on the way. Even though she looked tired, she invited us in for some rhubarb pie—she makes the best ever. But I knew she’d give Pete the third degree worse than my real grandmother, so I promised to stay longer the next time I came. Then, to make up time, when we got into the city, I took the shortcut down Markham Street, a decision I totally regretted at the moment.

Things had been quieter for the past few years, but this area of the city had once been infamous for strange happenings and disappearances. And then, on a monthly basis, dead bodies had started turning up like daisies. The police and the newspapers speculated about a serial killer—but others talked about a hairy beast that stalked the city by night. They called it the Markham Street Monster.

Nonsense, right?

Like I said, it had been years since something truly weird had happened around here, but I still found myself wondering if I’d be better off now if Don had come with us. Would I feel more or less uneasy if Don were alone in this alley with me?

More!

That thought was followed by an instant surge of guilt. I closed my eyes and let my mind wander, trying to stay
calm. For some reason, I thought about the time I’d asked my father why he’d helped someone who’d hurt him.

“You know the meaning of your name, don’t you, Grace?”

“Yes. It means heavenly help, guidance, or mercy,” I’d said, repeating what my father had always told me.

“No one can make it in this life without grace. We all need help,” he’d said. “There’s a difference between people who do hurtful things because they’re evil and people who do bad things because of their circumstances. Some people are desperate because they don’t know how to ask for His grace.”

“But how do you know if someone is bad or if they just need help?”

“God is the ultimate judge of what is truly in our souls. But
we
are required to forgive everyone.”

My father left the conversation at that. To be honest, I was more confused than ever. What if the person who hurt you didn’t deserve to be forgiven? What if what they’d done was so terrible—?

Sc-rape. Sc-rape
.

It was the shifting of gravel again. On both sides of the car now? I gripped the hockey stick. “Pete?” No response.

Rattle. Rattle
.

The door handle?! Electricity shot up my spine and surged through my arms. My heart hammered in my chest, and my lungs ached with heavy breaths. I peered
out the window. Why couldn’t I see anything?
Rattle, rattle, rattle
.

The car shook. I screamed. A high, piercing noise echoed outside the car. The windows moaned and shrieked like they were about to shatter. I smashed my hands over my ears and screamed louder. The noise died. Something clanked on the asphalt outside my door. My pulse pounded in my ears—it sounded like running footsteps.

Silence
.

Every nerve seared under my skin. I shifted and heard the rattling again. It was just my shaking knee against the dangling keys in the ignition. I let out a short laugh and closed my eyes. I waited, listening to the silence, for as long as I could hold my breath. I let it out in a long sigh and eased my grip on the hockey stick.

Tap, tap, tap
.

My eyes popped open. My arm flew up. I whacked my head with the hockey stick.

A shadowed face stared at me through the fogged window.

“Pop the hood,” a muffled voice said. It wasn’t Pete.

“Get lost!” I shouted, trying to make my voice sound huskier.

“Do it,” he said. “It’ll be okay, Gracie. I promise.” I put my hand to my mouth. I knew that voice. I knew
that face. Before I could stop myself, I said, “Okay,” and pulled the hood release.

His footsteps scraped against the frozen pavement as he walked around to the front of the car. I opened the door and saw a crowbar lying at my feet. My spine tingled as I stepped over it and followed Daniel. His head and shoulders disappeared under the hood, but I could see he wore the same ratty jeans and T-shirt from yesterday. Did he even own another set of clothes?