Decatur

by Patricia Lynch

  “A snowy yard. There’s a round stone barn. I’m watching for someone,” Marilyn said, now looking out onto the yard, watching the barn doors closely. Her heart was pounding.

  “Where are you?” Max asked.

  “Hancock Village,” Marilyn whispered, “Here.” Marilyn rose and went to the map of the Americas and traced her fingers up through New England to the Berkshire Mountains. “He found me again in another lifetime after missing me in two others. Here I was not nearly so lucky.” She again pointed to a little town called West Pittsfield.

  “Is that a community of some kind?”

  “Yes, we are Shakers. I’m Sister Ellen, soon I’ll be an elder.” Marilyn shook her head sadly. The man in the map room seemed far away. She sat back down so she could concentrate. It was what was happening in the yard that was important. A bird flew over the snow making a shadow. Was he coming? Was the shadow a sign from the spirits? Marilyn bit her lip and twisted her hands in her lap.

  “Who are you watching for, Sister Ellen? You seem anxious,” Max said gently. Marilyn was in another past life regression and as a member of a Utopian society, the Shakers, who believed in a connection to the divine, who had trances, healed the sick through spirits, and made beautiful music, buildings, and furniture. They were also celibates, which was why they died out as a society. Much like priesthood, celibacy didn’t work in the long run, thought Max, straining to remember everything he had ever read about the religion.

  “He came to us Believers a month ago. It’s been a bitter winter. We take in those that need our help and we kindly welcome them into our community only asking they observe our ways and praise the Lord in worship. Young and strong, he’s worked hard like a true Believer doing many things our Shaker men have grown too old for. We have too few men in our community these days and our industry suffers from it. So when death first came calling but two nights after his arrival there was no suspicion. We needed him that winter. They found our old Brother Paul on the floor of the carpentry shop with his eyes wide open and his mouth gaping, but it could have been anything that caused his passing,” Marilyn broke off, putting a hand up as if to block out something.

  “Were there other deaths?” Max asked, thinking hard, trying to piece together what was happening. Any doubts about the authenticity of her channeling past lives under hypnosis evaporated; too many details and the kind of symmetry found in nature between the past lives bore out a spiritual journey taken over lifetimes.

  “Another drifter we had taken in was found dead in the far field, he had been running from something they said, but no-one knew what. They had shared quarters together - him and what I thought was the good stranger - it was innocent enough. Then Elder John took me aside. He bade me read the story of Lot and asked me if I would disobey like Lot’s wife and be turned into a pillar of salt. Where was Sodom, I asked? He pointed to the new convert. He felt I had developed an improper affection for this man who had come to our community. Faith, I only spoke to him twice. My hair is gray, where was the harm?” Marilyn as Sister Ellen spoke quietly but there was deep emotion in her tone.

  The man talking to her in the room was distracting. She had to keep her eyes sharp. Then the red doors on the barn opened. A man simply dressed in an outer coat and hat came leading an oxen and cart. Her breath caught in her throat. It was him. She shouldn’t take her eyes off him. He had an axe in the cart. “Elder John has been missing now for two days. The community’s harmony is broken. Chores undone, hymns unsung. I promised even though I knew it was wrong to go with the new believer. I am to meet him as sun sets. He says he found Elder John’s body. That Elder John fell beneath the ice in the mill pond but he won’t chop him out alone. Bitter cold has come down from the mountains and everything is frozen hard. I can’t leave the elder beneath the ice.”

  Max felt the hairs rising on the back of his neck. “Sister Ellen, I thought you said you only spoke to this new believer twice, how did you learn about Elder John?”

  “I couldn’t help myself once I started sinning with this man. We never had relations but I broke the separation of the sexes and we communicated any way we could, through notes, songs, and I sinned with him in my mind. We touched our hands just once palm to palm. It was like lightning striking. The stranger told me I have something he needs and that Elder John was wrong to try to keep it from him. It is not our way and I’m ashamed. Now the sorrow begins. Mother Ann was right and I’m afraid. I have to get away from here. ” Marilyn’s voice was a hushed whisper.

  “What are you afraid of?” Max asked, gripping his pen so tightly he thought for an instant he might break it.

  “I had a vision on the Holy Mount. A spirit warned me about the one who came to us a laborer this winter.” said Marilyn.

  “What was the warning?” asked Max

  “That I knew this evil. That my spirit had met it in another world and that it is hunting my soul, it wants my immortal life. That’s why I’m watching. I need to teach myself. He can’t see me but waits outside of the dwelling building by the barn for me. But I’m hidden from his view. I will have to confess to my sisters, chop my hair off and take on the clothing of man. I will wear Elder John’s cloak and hat and leave this place in shame. My sisters I will ask to spirit sing to protect me, and in their good love they will sing out one after the other and help me escape. I will humbly ask the spirit to guide me through the snowy fields and see even now how the flakes fall and will cover my tracks. The voice has risen up in my heart and told me to go to West Pittsfield and live like a man with a good family we know that believes in us Shakers, in the world of the spirit, and hope that will shield me.” Marilyn even though her eyes were closed her face as Sister Ellen was strained as she peered from somewhere deep inside herself into the other world.

  “What do you want to teach yourself?” asked Max.

  “To recognize the signs,” Marilyn said in the low tones of the trance.

  “The signs?” Max prompted.

  “Of he who would rob me of my soul for all time,” Marilyn as Sister Ellen said.

  “Like the demon in Attyahuya?” asked Max, careful to keep his tone modulated.

  “What?” The questions were like flies landing on her. She wanted the man in the yard to look up and see her watching him from the window. She felt if he would just look up she would know if the spirit’s warning was true. In other lifetimes. Then he took the hat off that hid his face and, like he had heard her, the man turned around not knowing she was standing in the window, watching. “No!” the words slipped out of her mouth and suddenly Marilyn was on her feet.

  “What? Sister? Marilyn? Are you all right?” Max’s anxiety was flaring. He had to end this session.

  “Stop now. Stop.” She didn’t want to see, she forced her eyes open, she didn’t want to look out the window and see the face. There was a wobbling in the world between two places, like being shaken from a dream.

  “Wake up, Marilyn. Wake up. You’re fine. You feel fine,” Max commanded as Rowley whined and jumped down from his seat. Marilyn’s beautiful dark eyes were huge, like smudge spots in her white face, and she looked rattled to her core. Rowley felt shivery and he skulked next to her legs as she breathed hard and tried to keep her composure. Marilyn didn’t smell right, there was something off in her normally sweet odor, something like a human ozone smell, sickly, yet heavy and dangerous.

  “Marilyn, you went back again,” Max said, indicating his open notebook.

  “Back?” she said carefully, feeling like she was walking around a crater on the moon and didn’t want to fall in. “To Siam?” she ventured finally when Max didn’t reply. He just kept looking at her with those tobacco-colored eyes; his face creased with little worry lines.

  “No, to another place but the interesting thing is, Marilyn -- you were experiencing your life again as Sister Ellen in Hancock Shaker Village from what I could tell, but like your monk self in Attyahuya, you had an encounter with a man who you began to be deeply frightened would rob you
of your soul. Do you remember now anything I’m speaking of?

  Marilyn felt a heaviness in every vein, every pore, even her bones seemed to be made of concrete. Her finger tips had layers of memories pressed into them and one -- how an old window sill felt, beautifully made with the grain of the wood like a lacquered river -- leaned in on her hard. “Yeah,” is what she managed to say.

  “I want my colleague Dr. Wendell to examine you and everything we’ve learned. I’m going to put it straight to you now, what you’re describing is a paranormal. Not like you, Marilyn, you’re more like a channeler, an extra sensitive human instrument, but your pursuer is something else entirely, he belongs to a class of creatures that feed on human spirits. If this is true, Marilyn, if that’s what he is, then we really need to get to the bottom of this, and quickly before he finds you again. Do you understand?

  Marilyn stood up suddenly as the lights began flashing in her brain. She hadn’t felt the blood rush and explosion in her temples that signaled a massive migraine since she had passed through puberty, but it was unmistakable now. In a dizzying flash she saw the frozen face of a wide-eyed grey bearded man staring up at her underneath a sheet of ice cracked and spreading out like a spider web. Elder John! she thought as the migraine swept down on her like all the dark migraines of her youth rolled into one and she staggered and fell into Max’s arms.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Clawing up to the Surface

  Father Weston sat next to Monsignor Lowell in the geriatric ward of St. Mary’s. The ward was a quiet place with machines breathing and sucking and dripping fluids. Despite the blue walls and the modern bronze statue of the Madonna in an alcove by the nurses’ station it was a place of misery, a station of a cross, near the end but not yet, the occupants here were dragging their crosses alone no matter how many family members sat woefully by their sides. After a stay here the only place usually left to go was the grave, or worse yet St. Joe’s nursing home. Father Weston hoped for Aloysius that it would be the grave.

  “Monsignor, I don’t think you can hear me but I want you to know I’ve already performed the sacrament of extreme unction, so you’re free to go at any time.” Father smiled at his own sad little joke as he held the limp translucent hand of the priest who had been nothing but kind to him in the seven years they had worked together at St. Patrick’s. Normally he hated this kind of duty but with the Monsignor it seemed the least he could do. “I wish you would hear my confession once more, Monsignor,” Father Weston said in a near whisper as he looked out the window along one side of the room. The storm clouds had scoured the sky a rough uneasy grey that mirrored the way he felt inside.

  Monsignor Lowell lay at the bottom of a well, or at least a pond, and the world was far above him. People came and went and they shouted down at him, the doctors had yelled and yelled it seemed, in the first frantic moments when he arrived by the ambulance, but he couldn’t get them to hear his answers back. Once or twice he thought they did but their eyes showed no comprehension of anything he managed to say. He had decided that he was covered over in ice and that they couldn’t hear him through the barrier. Now his young friend, Father Weston, was trying to talk to him. At least he wasn’t shouting. There was no need for shouting anymore, Monsignor Lowell knew. Confession, the word floated down from above and landed like a leaf skidding across the ice that held him trapped here. He tried to nod to encourage young Frank but his neck was immobile in the ice.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” Father Weston knelt suddenly by the Monsignor’s bedside and began the confession prayer, wanting the priest to absolve him from all his sins, sins of the flesh each and every one, Frank knew. “You know the woman Marilyn? I broke my vows with her not just once but on three separate occasions and many times in my mind,” said Father Weston hoarsely. He had never told anyone of his affair with Marilyn or the fact that after it had more or less ended he continued to see her and care about her as one would a very dear friend.

  Monsignor Lowell saw that Father Weston was kneeling out of his peripheral vision but he couldn’t move to face him, he was bound underneath away from where contact could be made above. But when the word Marilyn landed on top of the ice, it didn’t skid across like Confession, no, it cracked the surface in a smack and suddenly Father W’s voice was the slightest bit less muffled. A precious streak of life leaked into the crack and it was like air to Monsignor Lowell, maybe it was air, it felt like heaven. Marilyn, the girl with the ancient eyes, whatever Father Weston had done with her he hadn’t harmed her, of this Monsignor Lowell was sure, at least not in any material way.

  “I wish I had told you before this, Monsignor. I shouldn’t have waited to have this conversation about her with you, because now I think she might need my help. You had an exorcism experience with her and her mother that I wish you could tell me more about so I could understand. I think it might be important.” Father Weston noticed a slight twitch in the Monsignor’s face, or was it his imagination?

  Monsignor Lowell could hear better through the crack that had opened up and the words fell through it and landed in his heart. Marilyn, the source, the man Gar, these thoughts struggled out of his head and heart and tried to get to his tongue but they seemed to lose their way and fall back before they made it to his lips. He would have to try again, he put his lips as close as they could get to the crack in the ice barrier sealing him in and Father W out. The man Gar, he wanted to get to Marilyn and he was, he was, he was the one who should be exorcised. Monsignor Lowell wanted to lift his arms and claw out through the crack now. “Gar,” he shouted through the crack. “Save her from Gar.”

  Father Weston crossed himself and got up from where he was kneeling on the cold tile floor. The ventilator breathed, the heart monitor bleeped, the IV dripped, and Monsignor Lowell was immobile and silent. A foolish Don Quixotic type of thing to do, to kneel in front of a massive stroke victim and hope for some kind of mutual redemption. To dream the impossible dream, thought Father Weston, nearly weeping at the waste of it all.

  “Rest now, Monsignor, and go home to the God that loves you.” Father Weston said as the Monsignor was screaming back up at him through the crack in the ice, “Gar!”

  Father Weston leaned down and looked closely at the Monsignor, there was a film of sweat on his wrinkled brow and the right sides of his lips were moving. Father Weston put his head close to Monsignor Lowell’s face. The old priest was struggling mightily to say something, Father W realized. “Rag,” the word flopped out of the right side of the Monsignor’s mouth in such a raspy whisper that Father W couldn’t be sure he heard right. “Rag?” he repeated. Monsignor Lowell’s faded blue eyes looked back into his with despair.

  “Gar,” he screamed again but the crack began to narrow and heal itself back together as a perfect isolating icy whole and then Monsignor Lowell couldn’t manage to get the word to his mouth again and Father Weston was just as far away as he had been when he came in the door earlier. In a split second the ice barrier was unmarred and the Monsignor knew the uselessness of trying to speak through it. He was sealed up as if in a crypt and realizing that there was nothing now left to fear, he closed his eyes and let go, watching himself fall through the inky darkness to where a faint light glowed, going home to the God that loved him and leaving the rest finally behind.

  Father Weston was almost out the door when the heart monitor began to sound an alarm. He turned back and suddenly shut the door, not wanting the sound to travel down to the nurses’ station. He stood with his back against the door and began to say the “Our Father” as loud as he could to drown out the alarm sound, dreading the white uniformed rush to preserve a life that was already gone. The line on the heart monitor was jagged and then began a precipitous decline like someone falling down, down, down and away. Away, sweet Monsignor, Father W prayed in his head as he sang out the “Our Father” to cover up the monitor’s alarm. God speed you to the angels. He didn’t stop until the monitor had gone flat and he was sure Aloysius Lowel
l had escaped his earthly bonds.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Graveyard Ramble

  Marilyn didn’t know what time it was as she awoke, finally free from the prison of pain that had kept her locked down since Max half dragged her up her own stairs after taking her home from the map room. But there was light leaking through the blackout shades she used in her bedroom and it didn’t make her want to vomit, so she knew the migraine had passed. Gingerly she rolled over to look at the alarm clock buried under a pillow, one o’clock it read. Rowley whined, sticking his snout into the opening of the bedroom door and Marilyn pushed off the covers and got to her feet. She was still in the linen outfit of the night before but it was like a used handkerchief, crumpled and smelling of sweat. Pushing her hair out of her eyes she stumbled to the apartment door with Rowley’s leash. He had to go out and the good boy had waited until she came to, so it was pretty well an emergency now. When she got to the bottom of the porch steps with Rowley out ahead of her on the lawn, peeing so long it was like the extended dance version of a hit song, she remembered that the man named Gar was coming by to see her in an hour’s time. Harry the Pill downstairs was peering out his front living room window at her and Rowley, shaking his finger at her. “Come on, Rowley, if you poop in the front yard he’ll lose it for sure. We’ll go for a walk. Promise.” Rowley came back up to the porch and cocked his head. Marilyn was better, he had peed, and a walk was in the offing. Things were looking up.

  Gar had a hard time leaving the parish house that afternoon. The news of Monsignor Lowell’s passing had been announced at every mass, and black ribbons had been tied to the church doors. The flag had been lowered to half-mast in the school yard and the entire parish seemed in a funk. Except for Gar, who was trying to keep his head down and stay out of the way. Father Troy had really annoyed him by asking him where he was going as he was rolling his bike out of the parish house garage. “Out,” Gar said brusquely as Father Troy lingered in a lonesome way at the garage doors.