The television snapped off. She jumped. There were footsteps in the living room. Someone was in the apartment! She gagged her mouth with her hands. How? She’d checked the apartment. And she’d bolted the door, and the windows were now a wall. Then she remembered the living room closet, which she hadn’t checked. Whoever was in the other room had been in there, probably behind the clothes, waiting.
Two more footsteps. The sound of heavy breathing.
She looked wildly about for anything that might protect her. In desperation, she ducked into the bedroom closet and shut the door. Holding the knob in her right hand, she leaned back into the hanging clothes. Her muscles were frozen in place, her body motionless.
Heavy footsteps sounded in the hallway, moving slowly, but deliberately toward her and, as the magnitude of the echo increased, so did the feelings of hopelessness for the closet held no protection. Whoever was in the apartment knew she was there and would find her.
The footsteps stopped at the entrance to the bedroom.
She pulled harder on the knob, as if she were trying to permanently fuse the door closed and isolate the terror outside.
She inhaled, the acerb odors of the naphthalene that protected the clothes from moths scorching her lungs and eyes. She lifted her hand and held her chest. Her already overworked heart was beating frantically, exerting so much pressure that at any moment, she expected it to blow her organs through the door into the bedroom.
The footsteps resumed; they seemed to course over the far side of the room, stop near the window for several seconds, then move back to the dresser.
She pulled the knob harder.
The footsteps started again and moved to the bed.
She held her breath, afraid to make any sound, risking suffocation rather than discovery. She took her hand off the knob, dried it, returned it to its place. Her other hand was wrapped around the crucifix. She was soaking wet.
As the footsteps circled the bed and moved in the direction of the closet, she felt her entire body constrict. A warm flow of fluid ran down her leg and onto her feet. She’d urinated. She looked down at the soft light that crept in under the door and saw the wretched liquid slowly filtering under the crack and into the bedroom. She cringed and tightened her muscles, hoping to cut off the flow. But it was impossible. She squeezed her eyelids shut, as she thought of the pool that was oozing into the bedroom and betraying her presence.
The footsteps moved by the dresser and stopped in front of the door. She could see the shadow of the two feet in the light. This was it! Again came the surge of horror, nausea, and dizziness. The doorknob began to turn; she receded.
The door opened an inch and stopped. The intruder breathed deeply, then pulled back the door with a violent thrust. She opened her mouth in terror.
27
“Michael!” she cried.
“What are you doing in the closet?” he asked, as she fell forward and dropped her powerless arms over his shoulders.
“Michael, Michael, Michael,” she moaned, burying her head in his neck.
“Everything’s going to be all right. I’m here now.”
“I can’t…”
“Just relax. I’m holding you.” He squeezed her tightly, trying to reassure her of her safety.
“I saw the blood, the cufflinks.”
“Everything’s going to be all right,” he said. “Everything!”
“The headache,” she cried, clutching at her throbbing forehead. “I feel so sick.”
He pulled her to the bed and sat down with her. “Take it easy, no one’s going to hurt you,” he said softly, as if there’d never been any danger.
“Michael, why?”
“Soon, soon.”
“You’re here.”
“Yes, and there’s so much to explain.”
“Explain?”
“Yes. In the last few hours I’ve found out the secret of this building. And the roll of Father Halliran.” She squirmed at the mention of the priest. “Believe me, it’s almost beyond the comprehension of the human mind.”
She looked at him quizzically.
“I’ll tell you everything, but I want you to compose yourself first and relax. You’re still too shaky.”
“I’m fine,” she said. “And I want to know. Tell me!”
He looked at her, gauging her, and then began. “It’s unbelievable!”
“What?”
“This!” He dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out the slip of paper on which the translation had been written by Ruzinsky. “Have you ever seen this before?”
She grabbed the paper, held it close, and read the inscription. “No!” she declared pointedly.
“You have, but in Latin in the book. You see, I had it translated. But it wasn’t in the book, although for some reason you perceived it through the book.”
“Where was it?”
He pointed to her head.
“The Latin version of that transcription was imprinted on your mind, so that by the time your mind had been stripped of all other faculties, it would be the only thing to remain. A command!”
“Michael, I…”
“And because your mind and body were being stripped, you were sick, dizzy and had a constant headache.”
“But…”
“I’ll explain everything. Just be patient.” He lifted himself off the bed, walked to the dresser and lifted a book off the top; he returned to her side. “Do you know this book?”
“Yes, vaguely.”
He laid Milton’s Paradise Lost on his lap and thumbed through the pages. He stopped, marked a page, and held it up. “What do you think?”
She gasped. Printed on the page was the inscription: Part of Book Four.
“Michael, this doesn’t make any sense. I never read Paradise Lost, in English or in Latin.”
“Ah, but it does. Remarkably so!” He stood up and moved to the middle of the room, book in hand, like a lecturing professor. “The quotation in question was a warning from the Angel Uriel to the Angel Gabriel, who’d been stationed at the entrance of Eden to guard and protect it against any incursion from purgatory. Uriel had perceived a sinister form flying toward Eden and with his warning caused Gabriel to dispatch two angels to guard Adam and Eve’s bower. They found Satan at Eve’s ear and threw him out of Eden, but Satan guilefully returned as a mist by night and breached the bonds of Paradise, entering into a sleeping serpent. Then came man’s transgression! Interesting?”
“Yes,” replied Allison, astonished by this display of erudition.
Michael consulted the book. “The Guardian Angels returned to Heaven,” he said, and he read:
Up into Heaven from Paradise in haste
The Angelic Guards ascended, mute and sad
For Man, for of his state by this they knew,
Much wondering how the suttle Fiend had stolen
Entrance unseen.
“God absolved them and sent his son to judge the transgressors. But Satan bade Sin and Death to proceed to Paradise.”
“Michael, this is ridiculous!”
“Shh,” he admonished, holding his second finger before his lips. “Just listen!”
She nodded, winced in pain, and nodded again. He smiled, held the book in front of him, walked to the back window, and continued, “Satan turned to his legions and told them follow him once again to their new kingdom. But God, hearing these vilifications, turned them all into foul creatures, set them upon each other with awful hissing, and sentenced them to yearly humbling in order to dash their pride and joy over man’s seduction.”
He closed the book and laid it on the dresser.
“I feel so sick. I want to leave here, please.”
“I haven’t finished.”
“Later.”
“No, now!”
“But Michael, th
is gibberish!”
He looked at her angrily. “This is not gibberish. I’m trying to explain to you what has happened here and who you are!”
She cocked her head and stared coldly. “Who I am?”
“The Sentinel,” he said. “The successor to Father Halliran, the Sentinel before you, who was the successor to a long line of guardians leading all the way back to the Angel Gabriel.”
“What?”
“You heard me!”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I didn’t.”
“When mankind was thrown out of Eden and set upon the world, Satan swore that he would return with his legions. God, thus, had to maintain his guardians about the new world. But he chose not to use his angels for this task, for they had failed through no fault of their own. Rather, the perversion of Eden had been caused by man’s transgression, so man was charged with the task of guarding the world, just like Gabriel had been charged, Father Halliran and now you. And all Sentinels were chosen because of their iniquity…attempted suicides…chosen not only to guard the Kingdom of the Lord, but for their own preservation, to sit in penance for their sins against themselves, and, thus, save themselves from damnation.”
“This is ridiculous!”
“Is it?”
She laughed through her agony. “If God was going to choose a guardian, he certainly wouldn’t have chosen me!” She laughed again. “After all I’ve done and been?”
He smiled wryly. “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
She’d heard that before, most recently at the church.
“You know how you found this brownstone?”
“The notice in the paper that you couldn’t find.”
“You were lured. There never was a notice in the paper. It was imprinted on your mind as was the book passage. You were literally commanded to come here and wait for the moment when Father Halliran would pass the crucifix to you and you would take his seat to watch. Your entire existence has been orchestrated and your safety insured by a vigilant priest. Miss Logan’s associate. A Monsignor Franchino. He removed the body, after you stabbed the detective to death. The detective I hired to check out the building and verify or contradict what you’d told me. It was Franchino who gave orders to Miss Logan, also an agent of the church. He arranged her disappearance when things go too hot.”
“Michael…”
“This brownstone is the bridge over Chaos. It is the connection between the Gates of Hell and boundaries of the earth. It is the place where the Sentinel, God’s angel on earth, is charged to sit and watch for the legions of hell.” Michael’s voice had risen and was now tinged with revelatory strength. “It is where you are to sit when the transfer has been completed…tonight…unless it is stopped. If it isn’t, you will be stripped of your remaining faculties, physically deteriorated to hide your identity, and confined to the chair to watch and wait.”
“What do you mean stopped?”
“Stopped. They are trying to destroy you by forcing you to renounce yourself. Take your own life. The ultimate sin. It is a difficult task. That is why the chain has never been broken. Mrs. Clark, the lesbians, the others you saw…your father…all soldiers in Satan’s legions. They tried once before. The night you confronted your father. And they will try again tonight. And if they succeed, they will unleash their hordes on the earth.”
“Stop it! Stop! What are you trying to do to me? Drive me crazy? This is insanity.”
He rushed to her side, sat down, and threw his arms around her. “Calm down. I’m here and I said everything is going to be all right. I’ll stop them, but you must believe that what I’m telling you is the truth.”
“Michael…I…” she stammered, as she held her hands to her head. “How can I believe this?”
“It’s true, that’s how! Now come with me. I want to show you something.”
She placed her hands on the bed, began to push herself up, then stopped and looked strangely at him. She raised her hand to her lips, thought for a moment, then asked, “Why didn’t you answer me when I was calling you?”
“I didn’t hear you.”
“I was screaming.”
“The doors to the apartments are thick.”
“Yes, but not when I was in the living room.”
“Excuse me,” he said, not quite understanding her point.
“When you were in the closet in the living room, you had to have heard me.”
“No,” he said innocently.
“You had to,” she screamed.
He frowned. “I wasn’t in the closet.”
She gasped. “The door was bolted. How did you get in? And how do you know all this?”
He breathed deeply, then opened his mouth to answer. Suddenly she screamed. In the darkness by the bedroom entrance stood the cat, Jezebel, eyes opened wide and back arched.
“The cat!” she screamed, scrambling back on the bed to the headboard, the farthest point in the room from the dreaded animal.
The cat spit and hissed and started to inch forward.
“Kill it!” she cried.
“No, let’s see what it wants,” Michael suggested.
“Kill it!” she screamed again.
Tracking its prey, the cat slithered to the edge of the bed, hissed, spat into the air, and jumped up.
Allison pushed herself against the headboard, then froze, terrified. Michael grabbed her hand reassuringly.
“Kill it,” she cried.
The cat slowly crawled along the bed, until it stood directly in front of them, then coiled to leap and attack. It spat viciously at her and then sprang into Michael’s lap, where it cuddled under his arm, then turned toward her and spat again.
She gasped and looked at him queerly. “Michael…I don’t…” she said, repulsed by this excrescence of horror.
“You don’t understand?” he asked calmly, as he petted the animal.
“No!” she screamed. She shot off the bed and began to move to the window. “I don’t’ understand, but you’re evil.”
“I’m good.” He began to laugh with an intensity that seemed to build with each intake and expulsion of air. Louder and louder it became, and slowly the hint of the unnatural crept in and her skin began to tighten on her body. It was horrible.
He screamed, “I was killed by the priest Franchino when I tried to strangle Father Halliran, and I’ve been damned to eternal hell for my sins! For having arranged Karen’s murder by Brenner.” He continued to laugh, as his body began to vibrate. “I am one of the legion!”
Before her very eyes his soul, which caressed the cat, assumed a posture of eternal vexation. The body suddenly possessed little substance, only a sallow coloring and a skin that seemingly would have blown away in the wind. And the laughter; the sound of his voice seemed to emanate from someplace distant, a place of evil and detestation. No, he was evil. She was good!
She bolted from the room down the hallway and to the door. As she fought with the locks and listened to his slowly moving footsteps, she knew that she couldn’t win. He wins she’s destroyed. She wins, she’s also destroyed, sentenced to sit forever in penance for her sins. But, as the lock snapped open and the bolt drew back and she attacked the chain, she knew that if she had to lose, she’d rather lose to God, sit and watch, and be his Sentinel, and, by doing so, save herself from damnation.
She threw open the door, ran down the staircase to the second floor, hesitated momentarily in front of apartment 2A, continued to the end of the hallway, stopped with her back to the still unnoticed inscription, and peered down to the first-floor hallway. She wavered, then grabbed the banister to steady herself, heard the sound of footsteps behind her…Michael…and surged down the staircase, stumbling, falling, forgetting to test the railing. She ran past the mirror and came to a dead halt.
“Welcome home,” said Charles Chazen beni
gnly. He was standing in front of the front door, dressed as he’d been the night she’d first met him. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you. I so want you to help me redecorate my apartment. You have such flair for that, you know. And you’re such a sweet child. I just love having you around.”
She began to step back. “Jezebel was so happy that you were able to make her birthday party, even though you didn’t have time to buy her a gift. Next year, I’ll let you know a little earlier. Definitely so!”
“No!” she screamed.
“Tut, tut, so much noise; it hurts my ears. Why should such a delicate child make such a racket!” He started to walk toward her.
The Sentinel Page 25