The Devil in Gray (19 page)

“Was it
you?
” Rhoda asked.

The candle flame burned brighter. It began to burn so intensely that it hissed, and wax begun to run down it faster and faster, pouring over the candlestick and onto the tablecloth.

“Was it
you?
” Rhoda repeated.

The flame widened, and swelled out, and right in front of Decker's eyes it formed itself into a fiery face, with hollow eyes and a mouth that was open in a silent scream.

“Jesus,” Hicks said.

“Speak to me,” Rhoda said. “Tell me what you want to say.”

The face said nothing, even though its mouth was stretched wide open. But as it burned brighter, it increased in definition, so that Decker could begin to see that it was a young woman, with furiously waving hair.

“Speak to me,” Rhoda encouraged her. “Tell me more about Saint Barbara.”

At that instant, the young woman's eyes opened, and she stared directly at Decker with a look of utter wildness and agony. It was Cathy. Her face was made of fire but there was no doubt about it at all. It was Cathy, and she was screaming at him soundlessly from the other side of sudden death.

“Tell me about Saint Barbara,” Rhoda insisted.

But then—with a soft
whoomph
—the face flared up into a fireball, and rolled up to the ceiling, and was gone. Decker and Rhoda and Hicks were left facing each other with only a small flickering stub of a candle between them, the shadows moving on their faces as if they were alternately smiling and scowling.

Hicks switched on the light. “What the hell was
that?
” he wanted to know. “Static? St. Elmo's fire? What?”

Decker said, “I take it back … about not believing in ghosts. Or spirits, or whatever. That was my girlfriend Cathy.”

“You mean—”

“Yes. My dead girlfriend, Cathy.”

Rhoda said, “She couldn't say any more. It was like she was suffering too much to speak.”

“She spoke to me the other night,” Decker said. “She warned me about Saint Barbara. Somebody painted the words
Saint Barbara
on my wall, too, the other night, in human blood. It wouldn't surprise me if it was her. Or her ghost. Or whatever that was.”

“She's
dead
, Lieutenant,” Hicks put in.

“That makes no difference,” Rhoda said, gently. “Our spirit lives on, even after we die. Sometimes, if someone died a violent death, that makes their spirit even stronger … even more determined to protect the loved ones that they left behind. Your Cathy, Lieutenant, is trying very hard to warn you of a coming danger. That is why you carry the shadow with you. You've been marked already, for some kind of revenge, and Cathy knows it.”

“
Rhoda
,” Hicks protested, “this is my superior officer. You can't go telling him he's doomed or nothing.”

“I'm sorry, but I have to. Would you stand by and say nothing if you saw that a man was going to be hit by a car?”

Decker said, “You don't have any idea what this ‘coming danger' might be?”

“Your Cathy started to appear to you when you took on the Maitland homicide, so I guess it must be connected in some way. She senses that something very bad is going to happen to you, but I don't think that it's an accident or illness or anything like that. I think she believes that something terrible is after you, something that goes by the name of Saint Barbara.”

“Santería,” Decker said.

“What?” Hicks said.

“A saint's name, Saint Barbara. That's the whole thing about Santería, isn't it? When the slaves were brought over from Africa, the slave owners wouldn't allow them to worship their own gods, so they disguised what they were doing by calling their gods by the names of Catholic saints.”

“That's right,” Rhoda said. “‘Saint Barbara' may not be Saint Barbara at all, but some god worshiped by the Santeríans.”

“Santería?” Hicks said. “That could mean Queen Aché.”

“Makes sense,” Decker agreed. “We definitely need to investigate that lady a whole lot closer. Although I don't see why
she
should have been interested in killing the Maitlands, or Major Drewry. What the hell did
they
ever do to upset her?”

“I'll check if either of them had any business dealings with the Eguns. Gerald Maitland was into real estate, wasn't he? It's possible that he might have done some property deal that ruffled Queen Aché's feathers.”

“Okay. Look, it's getting late. Tim—Rhoda—I feel really bad for messing up your meal.”

Rhoda said, “Don't. I couldn't let you sit there with that shadow on you, and not say a word. Would you like some coffee before you go?”

“No, thanks. I think me and my shadow will just take ourselves home. See you tomorrow, Tim.”

That night, Decker was back in the blazing bushes, his face and his feet lacerated, and even more exhausted than before. He knew that the tall dark figure was very close behind him. He could hear him surging through the underbrush in his ankle-length greatcoat. But the heat and the smoke were searing his throat and his clothes were snarled by briars at every step and he was almost past caring.

“Muster at the plank road, boys! Muster at the plank road!”

He thought that he must have almost reached the plank road by now. Over the crackling and the popping of burning branches he could hear men shouting and screaming for help, and every now and then there was a brisk rattle of rifle fire. Minié balls came moaning and snapping through the scrub, and from a mile or so in the distance came the distinctive thudding of artillery.

He turned around to see how close the tall dark figure was, but he couldn't see it, only the fiery latticework of burning briars. Then, however, he heard a heavy rustling sound off to his left, and saw a shadowy shape moving swiftly behind the trees. The figure was outflanking him, and that meant that it would reach the plank road before he did, and cut off any hope of escape. Not only that, God alone knew what it would do to his friends and his fellows.

“
It's coming!
” he shouted out, even though his throat was raw. “
Keep away from the road! It's coming!
”

The figure stopped, and listened, and then it turned toward him.
Oh, Christ
, he thought.
It's heading straight for me. It'll have my guts
. He tore his tunic free from the thorns, and tried to run in the opposite direction, but already he could hear the figure coming closer and closer.

He twisted around, spraining his ankle. As he did so, the figure was on top of him, tangling him up in knobbly bones and suffocating cloth. “
Can't breathe!
” he screamed. “
Can't breathe!
”

He jolted upright.
Jesus
. He switched on the light and he could see himself in the mirror on the opposite side of the bedroom, his hair sticking up and his T-shirt dark with sweat.

He eased himself out of bed. His feet were scratched and bleeding, like before, and when he tried to stand up he found that his ankle was swollen. He hobbled into the bathroom, stripped off his T-shirt, and splashed his face with cold water.

He no longer believed that he was hallucinating, or suffering from stress. Rhoda had shown him Cathy's fiery face, and for Decker that was proof enough that something malevolent was after him, and that Cathy was trying to protect him from it. He had a pee and flushed the toilet, and then he went back into the bedroom to take a fresh white T-shirt out of the drawer.

As he pulled the T-shirt over his head, he suddenly realized that his top bedsheet was missing. He ducked down and looked on the floor. He looked around the other side of the bed, but the sheet was definitely gone. “The hell,” he said, and stood perplexed in the middle of the room, trying to work out what could have happened to it.

Keep calm
, he told himself.
Maybe you never had a top sheet
.

He went to the linen closet to take out another sheet. As he did so, however, he heard somebody chanting in the living area. Somebody was singing in a high, breathless voice, like Cathy's—
up
, down,
up
, down, plangently, yet he didn't recognize the song. It certainly wasn't Bob Dylan, or Joan Armatrading, or any of those other singers that Cathy used to like. He limped to the bedroom door and pressed his ear against it.

“—
ko gbamu mi re oro niglati wa obinu ki kigbo ni na orin oti gbogbo
—”

He listened for a moment, and then he opened the door.

“Cathy?” he called, and his heart was thumping hard against his ribs. “Cathy? Is that you?” The living area was totally dark. All he could hear now was the sound of traffic in the street below, and the faint whirring of the air conditioner.

“Cathy, if that's you, let me see you. I love you, sweetheart, and I know that you're trying to help me.”

There was no answer. But as Decker's eyes became more accustomed to the darkness, he thought he could see a whitish figure standing close to the kitchen archway. He said, “
Cathy?
” and he was sure that he saw the figure sway from side to side. He edged across to the nearest wall, wincing on his twisted ankle, and reached for the light switches and flicked them on.

He said, “
Ah!
” out loud.

The figure was draped in his bedsheet, at least five and a half feet tall, with its arms outspread. Its hands were as white as alabaster, and so were its feet, and it appeared to be floating about a half inch above the floor.

Decker was so frightened by this apparition that he didn't know what to do. He stood by the light switches, rubbing his right arm, feeling terrified and miserable and helpless. This might be Cathy, covered by a sheet, but what if it wasn't? What if it was something terrible? How could it be Cathy? She was dead, with her head blown apart.

“Listen,” he said, and his voice was very dry, as if he really had been running through burning scrub. “I need to know what you want. I need to know who you actually are.”

The sheet-covered figure swayed a little more, but remained silent.

“If I was to drag that sheet off of you—I mean, who would you be underneath?”

Still the figure didn't respond.

Decker thought,
Shit, what am I going to do? I'm not dreaming, am I? I know I'm not drunk
. He took one step toward the figure and then another.

“I'm scared of you, right? Hiding under that sheet like that. But I'll bet you're scared of me, too. Otherwise, why don't you show yourself?”

“Saint Barbara,” the figure whispered, although its voice seemed to come from behind him, and he wasn't at all sure it was Cathy's voice. “Saint Barbara wants her revenge.”

Decker said, “Saint Barbara is a saint, that's all. A good saint, from what I've been told. She protects people from fire and explosions and stuff like that. Why should she want to hurt me?”

“Come closer,” the apparition said.

“I don't think so,” Decker said. “Not until I know who you are.”

“Come closer, my darling.”

Decker didn't know what to do. He was frightened that this figure wasn't Cathy, but in a way he was even more frightened that it
was
. He looked over at the hat stand, where his Colt Anaconda was hanging in its holster, and wished that he had learned the lesson and taken it into the bedroom with him.

“Are you Cathy?” he asked the sheeted figure.

“Don't you trust me?” it whispered, and it sounded as if it were speaking down a hollow pipe.

“I don't know. Aren't you going to show me who you are?”

“I am many things. I have many different faces.”

“Are you trying to warn me about something bad?”

“Something bad is happening to you already.”

Decker circled cautiously around the figure toward the hat stand. It didn't turn around to follow him, but stayed where it was, with its arms outspread, more like a statue than a human being, a statue that was waiting to be unveiled. Decker's throat was so dry that he had to cough, and cough again, but still the figure didn't move.

“Tell me about Saint Barbara,” Decker said, without taking his eyes off it. He reached up for his holster and unfastened the clasp.

“Saint Barbara wants her revenge for what you did. For what you all did.”

“Was it something that happened in the Wilderness? The Devil's Brigade?”

“Promises were made and promises were broken.”

“What promises?”

“Promises of honor. Promises of war. Promises of just rewards.”

Decker eased his revolver out of its holster and cocked it. He approached the figure until he was almost close enough to reach out his hand and touch it. He could see the indistinct outline of a face under the sheet, and the cotton was being drawn in and out, in and out, as if the figure were breathing.

“Are you afraid of me?” the figure whispered.

“Should I be?”

“Are you afraid of Saint Barbara?”

“I don't know. Are we really talking about Saint Barbara, or are we talking about somebody else?”

“
Oche ofun
,” the figure said. “
The saints rescue you from the dead
.”

Decker took hold of the edge of the sheet, close to the figure's wrist. His blood was pounding in his ears and he couldn't remember ever having felt as terrified as this, not in all of his years of police work.

“Are you sure you want to know what I am?” the figure asked him.

Decker didn't answer, but grasped the edge of the sheet even more firmly, in his fist. He was just about to drag it off the figure's head, however, when the figure let out a piercing screech—a screech of rage and pain and frustration, as if five voices were all screaming at once.

The screech went on and on, and Decker let go of the sheet and stepped awkwardly away, his revolver raised, not knowing what to do. But then there was a dull, wet
thud!
and the top of the sheet ballooned outward, and was drenched in blood. Instantly, it collapsed onto the floor.