Decatur

by Patricia Lynch

  They were on the flat roof of the east wing of the hospital in less than thirty seconds. The administration had plans for a helicopter pad but in the meantime the easiest way for maintenance to reach the roof was through the ceiling on locked Ward 5 E. No one ever gave it much thought.

  The processed soy fumes from Staley’s were strong and now mixed with the smell of something burning. On the outskirts of town black smoke was billowing. Some kind of fire in the fields. Father Troy stepped unsteadily and looked up, the smoke seemed like it was tempting the dark clouds to mass together, making the shadows sharp on the roof. The raw hole with a shred of what was once his very being opened like a maw in the fractured sunlight.

  “Here’s what you want to know,” Mark Troy said as he walked the edge of the roof and looked the five stories down to the parking lot of St. Mary’s Hospital in Decatur, Illinois.

  “Get back from there, now Father, this ain’t what you said,” Lumley called but suddenly he was afraid to be out here alone with the priest on the roof.

  Father Troy turned to look at the orderly. It wasn’t worth it, he thought, as some dim memory squirmed of a badge for citizenship, his first, a round blue circle embroidered with a white scale for justice. He saw his nine year old hands sewing it up and over up and over on a background of khaki, the sash for his uniform, while the heavy snow weighted the black bare arms of the trees outside his window.

  “I either try to eat yours, or I fall away. Gar left a broken thread of me inside and that tiny bit, all it wants now is for it to end,” said the priest, closing his eyes and stepping off the edge and falling into the abyss that he was already too familiar with.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  The Tower

  When they came into the white ceramic tiled kitchen of the mansion, there was a resounding crash. Startled, Gar looked to Marilyn who whispered, “It’s haunted” and twisted the brass knob of the door to the servant’s stairway, pushing the old button for the single lights hung at every floor to illuminate their way. It was like she had never left.

  But as they began to climb the steep dark stairway with the rough mudded walls, this place, this place, where she had first understood who she was and had learned that she had to hide it to survive, was like sucking on a gas pipe to Marilyn, she thought she might just die then. It all seemed impossible again, how would she ever succeed against Gar and J. J.? She fell against the rough walls and let the tears come down her cheeks. Gar bent over her suddenly, fingering her cheek, brushing away her tears like she was five.

  “I feel the same way, Marilyn,” he said, his own voice wracked with emotion.

  Marilyn looked up then, her dark lashes crescents around her drowning eyes. “You do?” she said and he nodded. “It seems so steep,” she said in a little girl voice like she was remembering when she had first climbed these stairs.

  “Climb on papa’s back. I’ll be your horse,” he said in a choked voice but managing a goofy smile: anything to make her stop crying at that moment. He crouched down.

  “Oh no, I couldn’t, it’s too sharp a climb,” she protested, looking sweeter than she ever had before. If she could exhaust him she might have a prayer. If her friends could get to the tower in time. If, if, if…

  “My lady, let me serve you,” he said and she climbed up on his back. Her legs wrapped around his torso and she flung her arms around his neck as he began to run, feeling her in every nerve of his body, not minding that this was using all of his reserves.

  He was about to get replenished.

  Rowley charged into the front hallway, sniffing the air for any sign of Marilyn. Max was right behind, the gun secure in his hand. Weston had cut through the kitchen to take the backstairs, the plan being they would approach the tower from both sides.

  It was then that all the dining room chairs, heavy carved mahogany thrones from Spain, fell back away from the big table, causing Rowley to whelp and jump in fear. A freezing draft came out of the room at them.

  Gretch, panting a little, came into the entrance parlor, “Looks like Kiki’s home,” she said, sitting down on the velvet round ottoman and beginning to undo her brace. “Damn leg. Go on without me” she gestured to the big staircase going up to the left, with its heavy oriental runner, chandelier and big arched window on the landing. Max looked at her a little surprised but glad in a way that she wasn’t insisting on coming, she would slow them down. He had to get up there now.

  Not waiting, he took the grand staircase at a run, calling for Rowley, “Come on boy, let’s go get Marilyn.”

  Petey leaned his forehead against the iron bar for just a second, just a half of a second, he pleaded in his mind. Then to his own horror his hand began again, the woven whip clutched in his palm, he lifted it up and let it down again and again against his own thighs, his jeans ripped and torn now, blood seeping through. The jagged white lines wavered below. The mirror reflected him as a pitiful sight in shredded clothes hanging in an iron cage with a sheet wadded up nearby and the old man in a camel suit laughing, laughing, saying, “Bet you think twice now about what you did, forging that permission slip. When J. J.’s through you’ll never give yourself permission to do anything again. But what the hell, just for old times sake I may suck your soul out myself, like marrow from a bone.”

  Father Weston cautiously opened the back door and let himself into the large kitchen with its marble counter tops and white tiles on the walls and floors, feeling like a hollow shell of himself. He had just used the old tricks, the Catholic priest tricks to get some kids out of danger, true, but it was all false. He was an agent of an organization that professed a lot of things, faith, piety, compassion, when it was mostly about keeping authority and power, facilitating any connection to the Divine was decidedly beside the point. Now, when he needed to tap into some real spiritual power, he felt utterly bankrupt. Still, he couldn’t let Marilyn face Gar alone even though he had nothing with which to fight an animphage: a crucifix and holy shaker just didn’t count, he thought, as he spied the door to the back stairs open and, listening, could hear the pounding of feet

  They were in the linen closet with its door that led into the turret, and just as it had so many years ago, the little key hung from hook. Marilyn bit her lip and let herself slide off Gar’s back, fighting the claustrophobia and panic that the closet, with its blood stained dirty sheets now yellowed with age, gave her.

  Gar leaned over his knees for a minute after she was down, trying to catch his breath. “Where are we now, my lady?” he asked as the closet pulsed before his eyes. His heart was hammering, he shouldn’t have tried to run carrying her, it was too much and now they were at a dead-end, a closet with two doors, no celebrant in sight.

  “Give me a sip, papa needs it.” Gar looked at the amphora clutched in Marilyn’s hand: if he could just have a sip he’d be all right.

  Marilyn shook her head. “I can’t, he’s through there, the one who made you, and he wants this back. It’s time,” she whispered, taking the key from the hook, willing her hands not to shake.

  Gar let his eyes close for just a moment to gather himself; flashing back on the temple of the Castello, not wanting to remember how it had felt to have his own soul taken, knowing in every fiber of his being that his master was a frightening being that had to be obeyed. ‘Join the hunt’ It had been so long and now the long journey was over; he would take Marilyn’s essence into his own and, transformed, she would join him.

  J. J. saw the closet door knob turning and smiled. Despite the fact he had gone through two renewals, graduating from merely inhaling souls to being able to cast himself into others, he was still limited. Mentally he was nearly unstoppable, but physically only the lowest or most damaged beings would fully accept him. He couldn’t wait, he was sick of J. J.’s mortal body. Now the elements had come together, Gar ready to take the soul he had been so long in the hunt for, the amphora returned, it was finally time for the third renewal. He had carefully plotted his way to this place but along the way allowe
d for some inspired improvisation like a marvelous dance. Soon the blood and flesh of his long-lived mortality with all its hungers and fluids, mess and vulnerabilities would be gone. He would be as the wind, move like a tornado, his very own cosmic storm. Just as Gar’s renewal would make him an even stronger Destroyer, with the Instrument turned, the demon inside J. J. would at last be one with the Infernity, on the cusp of a millennium become a phage of the lux, “the light everlasting” no more.

  Marilyn twisted the closet knob but, feeling protective, Gar pushed through; wanting to make sure he was between her and the one who had made him. The door opened and there was the being, in one corner in a Western suit and hat, but it was the same, the celebrant, wearing a jagged grin like his face had been slashed.

  Max whispered to Rowley as they were nearly to the top of the staircase, the third flight narrower with the tower room’s carved black mahogany door directly ahead, “No barking, we don’t want to warn them,” He had the gun out; he knew once they opened the door it was no holds barred.

  Rowley knew it too and was ready. He thought of Marilyn’s scent, of the way the sofa felt under him at home, and then he let that fall off him and willed all his being into the fang and blood instinct.

  “Welcome back. I’d knew you’d come,” J. J. said. Gar looked weak to him, but Marilyn had the amphora: there was time, it would happen as he had planned. “Take her, and your hunger will be released, and drinking the pure soul’s tears we shall both be renewed. You, baby girl, this is your turning, I kept the boy for your first taste,” J. J. rasped, raising his arms like he was conducting a symphony, his red rimmed eyes glowing as the afternoon darkened all around them and the rumblings of a coming thunder storm off the prairie could be heard through the tower window.

  Gar looked at Marilyn then, her white skin, silky black hair, the way her pulse throbbed in her neck, memorizing her sweetness, loving even the way she was trying to back away and hold the soul’s tears from them. He was just so dizzy and exhausted from the climb, he thought, as his big paw ineffectually tried to keep her close.

  Marilyn felt a horror come over her as she saw the kid with tousled hair and bloody ripped clothes hanging from the ceiling in the iron cage. She was not going to ‘turn’ like this. She backed away from Gar and concentrated on opening the door to free the kid.

  The iron cage had been made for pain, and had held a lot of it, but when it had been forged it had been made of the very materials that had exploded when the universe began, so when it felt a connection with the woman calling it to open, it couldn’t help itself, it had been so long since anything other than pain had communicated. It swung open its door and let the man child fall out onto the floor made of milled tree planks.

  Max opened the black mahogany door and froze. Gar was reaching for Marilyn who was bending over a student, his student, on the floor looking up in terror, clothes ripped, a medieval looking iron cage hanging open above him. Dressed in a camel suit with red and grey striped tie and pressed white shirt, J. J. stood with his back against the window, arms upraised, as Max’s mind flooded with images of Lawrence, his now dead student, another victim of his research, his precious work, his fucking ego, and he couldn’t raise the gun, what was the point now.

  Rowley was letting out a canine battle cry as he rushed past Max standing stock still in the open door, holding his head in one hand, nearly weeping.

  “Go on, bite me, that’s what you want,” J. J. breathed to Rowley in a voice that sounded like scraping nails, and suddenly Rowley swerved. He had been heading for Gar but now biting the old man felt exactly like the right thing to do. Rowley leapt towards the window and took the outstretched hand in his mouth and bit down ferociously even as Gar was stumbling towards Marilyn. The electric jolt through his teeth as he bit into a flesh that tasted like a thousand burning deaths made him howl in surprise, and suddenly he knew what it like to be a rabid dog, because he was turning into one and he just wanted to rip things open and tear at them and destroy everything in his path, starting with Max.

  Rowley saw Max through a rush of red, a red threatening looking man with a gun in his hand telling him to stop, well he wasn’t stopping.

  Max saw Rowley’s head come down, saw the foam at the corner of his lips pulled back in a canine snarl and he lifted the gun that Gretch gave him and was about to fire when he heard Marilyn pleading with both of them to stop.

  Marilyn saw her dog’s eyes, his beautiful brown eyes, go wild with shock as he bit down on J. J.’s hand and she knew what it meant, she saw suddenly her sweetheart boy becoming a vicious attack dog, a hound of hell. Using all her strength she pulled away from Gar even as he came at her and, not knowing what she was doing, moving entirely on instinct, she inhaled and then exhaled. All the love that she had felt for Rowley since finding him as an abandoned puppy in an alleyway came into her exhaling breath like a gift she had just discovered and it carried into the room and landed like a glistening net over him. Gar had her now, but Rowley felt the love that they had for each other descending on him like a gentle mist. He turned and saw his mistress reaching for him, knowing she would risk everything to save him from this new awful self, and he let her love into his heart and, whimpering, went down low and into himself. The boy on the ground needed a dog to hold onto then, and Rowley lay beside him, panting, and licking the kid’s hand. He would lie here and protect the boy for Marilyn.

  Gretch reached down, undoing her brace: first the top, where it was lined with sheepskin so it wouldn’t cut into her leg where it encircled it like a steel hand, then down the side, latch by latch, lifting her nearly useless right leg out with both hands. It was numb and shooting sparks of pain from being walked on. She was down alone in the entrance hallway, the others making their way upstairs, leaving her behind. Fine. She would join them in her own way.

  She meditated and hovered for a second and then lifted herself clean up and out of her body, leaving it and her leg brace on the velvet ottoman, and easily began to climb the grand staircase after Max and Rowley. She was aware now of all the unseen things in the house: the rodents in the basement, the bird’s nest on the turret, the way the floors were slowly settling at a slant making the dishes in the china cabinet roll centimeters to the left every so often. But she also knew that Kiki’s ghost was in the house, moving like a cold wind, aware of each of them and not liking it. Matter looked different now, it had streaks of light seeping through it, you could see the spirit world through the cracks of reality if you knew how to look.

  Father Weston moved stealthily up the back staircase, hearing the sound of a door opening and closing at the top. They must have reached the turret room. Just as he was thinking this he felt an icy-cold breath on his face, and he stopped. It was the ghost, the woman who committed suicide, and she was standing right in front of him, a freezing image of fog like river smoke coming off the dark wood stairs. Her hair hung down in wet waves. “I have been condemned, help me,” she wailed.

  Father Weston knew he should be scared, but the Monsignor’s ghost had saved him in the funeral parlor and he knew this one was just trapped in the half world because of her pain. But he had no remedies for this. “I can’t help you, I’m sorry” Father Weston said. The truth slipped out before he could start with the customary lies, the prescriptive Hail Mary’s and the like.

  “But you’re a priest, you must help me,” the ghost wailed.

  “I’ve lost my faith, I’m sorry, you’ll have to get someone who…” Father Weston trailed off unsure of who the ghost could turn to.

  “Help me! Pray for me,” the ghost wailed again, weeping now, a truly pitiful sight.

  Why had he become a priest? If not to give comfort, and yet how? The tools seemed so useless. He began saying the Our Father out of pure hopelessness but the ghost stood there and listened. “Forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”

  It was like he heard the words for the first tim
e. They no longer felt hollow. Things broken could be repaired. Then he thought of Father Troy and bowed his head again. Not everything. Some things were past repair. But still, imperfect and marred as life was, it still had hope; there was still hope of redemption, if not for everyone, for some. The Church might be a flawed and unworthy vessel for this hope but it didn’t mean that it wasn’t worth working for. But he had to forgive the flaw in the Divine, the beast in the angel, the dark in the light, or there was no getting over it, just as he had to forgive his own clumsy thick-headed stumbling on the path.

  The ghost rose from where she knelt and touched him lightly on the shoulder.

  “You may pass,” she said and stepped aside, the freezing air dissipating. He would take his hope to the tower room, God help them.

  Gar saw Marilyn’s essence come out of her, she was so rich with it that she could spread it around the room, onto her dog, change the air, it was wonderful! It would transform him and he had to have it.

  Gretch came into the room then in her spirit self and J.J. found himself surprised. There was a white Guardian all light and silver in front of him, and she was battling his will. The lux was putting up a fight. Well, good, he liked fights. Come on, you old bitch.

  Max felt a rush of relief come over him suddenly and he remembered the gun in his hand, and he aimed it at Gar and he pulled the trigger, feeling its legendary power once again.

  Gretch could see the dark hunger of the demon coming at them and she pushed her own light back out against it.