“I don’t believe you’ll remember me, sir.” Mortimer could not look away from the man’s eyes. They were invasive, probing. The prisoner was clearly sizing up his visitor. And now, as Paul Marie settled back in his chair and his chains, the doctor wondered how he had fared in the analysis. “I’m a psychiatrist. I was—”
“You’re Ali’s uncle.” The tone was so civilized, that of a gentleman, but with each slight movement, his chains clanked. A warning? A reminder that this was a most uncivil place? “When I was a parish priest, you never came to the services. But the checks you’ve sent to Father Domina—since then—they were all very generous.”
The last phrase was close to sarcasm, but so subtle that Mortimer was unsure. How much could a priest extrapolate from tithings?
“I read the report of your last hearing, Mr. Marie. You showed no remorse for the crime. I expect that’s why they denied your parole. You never admitted to—”
“It’s against my religion to make a false confession.”
The doctor’s skin prickled. He turned his head quickly, but there was no one beside him or behind him. The guard was still seated near the door and half hidden by the opened pages of his newspaper.
At odd moments over the past few days, Mortimer had sensed someone standing close to him. And several times he had seen shadows behind the reflection in his shaving mirror and wondered if he was alone in his own bathroom. Again, he diagnosed himself: he was never alone; death was always close by—and closer now that he had ceased to take his medication. One must expect unusual symptoms and reactions—the racing heart, its missing beats. And breath itself was no longer taken for granted. He tried to remember what his respiration had been like only minutes ago—not too shallow, not too deep. Mortimer lowered his voice, though he was confident that the guard was oblivious to all conversation. “It might be possible to get you a new trial. I have a certain amount of—”
Had he given something away? Paul Marie was shaking his head from side to side, as if the psychiatrist had already named his price for this miracle.
No deal, said the eyes of the priest.
The doctor was more and more deliberate in his breathing, deeper now and slower. Yet his heart quickened, heedless of the fact that it contained a finite number of beats, and they were being used up by irrational fear. He pressed on in a virtual race with his reckless heart, wanting to finish this business before the final beat and endgame. “But first, I wonder if we might discuss another matter—Father Marie—in strictest confidence, you understand.”
More had been given away with the restoration of the priest’s title. Paul Marie was clearly offended, that much was in his face. Could the man already suspect a prelude to a religious ritual?
“Dr. Cray—this is about the missing children?” Paul Marie folded his massive arms across his chest. “I’m tired of eating sins. That’s not my line of work anymore.” He glanced at the guard, and in a louder voice, he said, “I’ll tell that man whatever you tell me.”
The guard looked up from his newspaper, and in that instant, Mortimer knew that the priest was lying, that he held to the holy sacraments and always would. Father Marie had merely condemned his visitor to a more public truthtelling, not allowing an unethical side street of protected confession.
“I want to tell you something, Father. I’m a very sick man. I don’t have much time—”
“But you want more than absolution, don’t you?”
Mortimer felt the drain of blood between the slow beats, the loss of air, breath coming in shallow sips—the fear. Mind and body were surrendering to the priest, who seemed the better man in this art of reading psyche.
Paul Marie’s voice was lower now, less public. “Pious men believe in a burning hell. You’re perspiring, Dr. Cray, and that tells me you’re close to the fire—a true believer.” He leaned across the table, bringing his body as near to the old man as restraints would allow. “Where are the children, you bastard?”
The psychiatrist’s skeletal body sat at attention, suddenly stiffening in every frail joint of brittle bone. His mouth formed the word no—more in wonder than denial. This priest was a throwback to diviners of entrails, reading the sweat of hellfire, guilt from a sinner’s pores. Though Father Marie had never touched him, Mortimer was pressed back in his chair. He had the sense that the priest was growing larger again as the man rose from the table, chains clattering.
They had the guard’s attention now, and he was also rising, stepping forward, but Mortimer waved the man back. After a moment of uncertainty, the guard settled down to his chair, but his cautious gaze remained on the prisoner.
The priest was standing very still, but he continued to grow in Mortimer’s eyes, massing with energy and form. Soon Father Marie would be a giant.
And himself? Altogether gone.
“I don’t remember you as a religious man, Dr. Cray. Come lately to God? Seeking forgiveness? Or did you only plan to shift the burden?”
“Would you tell?”
“In a heartbeat. I wouldn’t send those little girls to God under any circumstances. It’s pretty obvious He doesn’t know how to take care of them.”
Liar. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. My last confession was forty—”
“Enough!” The chained hands were rising. Then the priest’s anger subsided, and his hands lowered. “The children are dying, Dr. Cray. You have to tell someone, don’t you?” There was a cunning aspect in the face of the priest. “I can see the pressure building. Your fists are clenched, your knuckles are white, the vein in your temple is throbbing—and you’re sweating even more now. Proximity to the fire?”
Mortimer began again—the magic words, “Bless me, Father, forI—”
“Never.”
“For I have sinned.”
“May you burn in hell.”
The priest stretched out one hand toward Mortimer. The guard left his chair again and started across the room, the newspaper crackling in his tight grip.
“I’d rather kill you than hear your confession.” The priest’s hand dropped to the table, and the chains clanked on the wood. And now, in the manner of a perfectly rational man, he said, “But I won’t do that.”
The guard stopped and only gaped at the prisoner, not moving any closer. Was this man also frightened of the priest? Perhaps it was no illusion, but—
“You wouldn’t mind dying, would you, Dr. Cray? The long, sweet sleep? What if the last second of life is the real eternity, expanding out for all time—forever fear, forever guilt. And all that physical pain you’re feeling right now? Is your heart bothering you, sir?”
The priest’s eyes were following the slow crawl of Mortimer’s hand to that place where his organ was hammering wildly out of rhythm.
“The soft gloved hand of Death? Is that how you see it? I don’t think so. I see a fist with all the implements of torture—all for you.” Paul Marie leaned forward, hands flat on the table, looming closer.
The guard was edging toward them. His newspaper fell to the floor with a soft rustle.
“Not appealing? So that leaves you with what, Mortimer ?” The priest spat out the more familiar Christian name. “To go on living, knowing that children are dying in pain? Can you do that?” Paul Marie rose to his full height. “Of course you can. What was I thinking? How many times?” The priest pointed one damning finger, but not at the old man’s face—at his heart. “How many children?”
Father Marie, nine feet tall in Mortimer’s eyes, sent his hands and chains crashing to the table, and he roared, “Tell me where those children are!”
Mortimer could feel the hot flush rising in his face, and the tight clenching of the heart muscle, a fist inside his breast. And now his eyes were playing tricks on him again. Flashing white stars shot across his field of vision. Then he saw balls of bright red fire and black lakes. Hysteria heightened to a crescendo as he detected a slow-crawling shadow along a brightly lit wall behind the table. Not the guard’s shadow—not the priest’s.
Suddenly, a great buzzing filled his ears and grew in volume. He stared up at Paul Marie. The buzzing drowned out his very thoughts; it was deafening, unremitting, insectile. His mind was cracking open, reason and logic escaping him, swept away by mounting terror and panic. The buzzing came from within, and the volume grew as the priest raised his fists high in the air, as though commanding, orchestrating the madness.
Mortimer stumbled to his feet, knocking into the table. He slapped away the guard’s outstretched hands. The shadow was all around him now, engulfing him as he fled across the room to the door.
It was locked. No! No! No!
He banged his clenched hands against the metal, and the buzzing of a million winged insects drowned out the voice of the worried-looking guard, who was fumbling at the intercom buttons. Mortimer’s legs failed him. He ceased to struggle and sank to the ground; his eyes were closing as his gray, sunken cheek met the hard floor. His last clear image was of the priest slowly lowering his hands. Then the buzzing stopped, and the ensuing darkness obscured the Lord of the Flies.
Sadie took the journal from Gwen’s limp hand and set it on the stack by the wall of the white room. “You shouldn’t have stayed awake so late.” She looked up at the burnt-out bulb over the door. “When we hear his car, we’ll have to move fast.”
“I’m sorry.” Gwen had fallen asleep propped up against the wall under the only source of light. Every muscle ached, but the leg was a separate pain; it came on quickly with no warning, stabbing, stabbing. She accepted a single pill from Sadie’s hand and then the glass jar. She wolfed down the painkiller and looked up to see her friend balancing on the rolling chair from the white room, changing the burnt-out bulb for a new one.
“That was only one pill, Sadie.”
“Why don’t we see if that’s enough, okay?” She climbed down from the chair and pointed to the trunk of the nearest oak tree. “So what did your journal lady name that one?”
“She calls it Elvira, after a baby who was killed before she was born. Elvira never even had a gravestone, but now she has an oak tree. I think that’s sweet.”
“Oh, yeah? What about the poor Samuel tree?” Sadie was looking at the nearby stand of gnarly logs, limbs from the dead oak, namesake of a soldier. “Samuel dies, and then she hacks off his arms to make more mushrooms. How sweet is that?”
“I need another pill, Sadie.”
“Give it a little time, okay?”
It was time that frightened her. She could not even bear the expectation of pain. Her leg was throbbing, and when she stood up, she felt the dead weight at the center of her shin where the punctures were. Something had gone horribly wrong with her body, and this thought kept coming back, no matter how fervently she denied that this destruction was part of her. “What do you think happens after you die?”
“After they bury you? Who cares? The funeral is the main event.” Sadie wheeled the chair back into the white room, and Gwen trailed behind her. “If you’re a cop, they play bagpipes and drape your coffin with a flag. Before they put you in the ground, they fold up the flag and give it to your mom. Pretty cool.” Sadie looked at the burnt-out lightbulb in her hand. “But now that I’ve been buried alive, I can’t come up with anything to top it.” She hurled the bulb at the wall. It exploded into tiny fragments of a glass shower, and the silver metal base went careening off to a corner.
Sadie no longer cared about putting each thing back in its place. Gwen tried not to think about what this implied, hiding it from her own mind with thoughts of death. “But, after you’re buried. What then, Sadie?”
“You’re bug food.”
The dog barked, calling for their attention, and they ran out of the room to find him sitting under a tree near the chewed body of clothes and stuffing.
“How long has he been holding that pose?”
Sadie craned her neck to look back through the open door to the clock on the wall. “Fifteen minutes—a new record.”
“Give him the attack command and another biscuit.”
“Geronimo!” yelled Sadie. The dog hit the body of the dummy and began to gnaw on it. Then he ripped a shoe loose as he whipped the dummy from side to side.
“Call him off before he wrecks it.”
“I thought that was the general idea. Sitting Bull!”
The dog backed off to the trunk of a tree and sat there, waiting on his biscuit. Sadie tossed it to him. He leapt into the air and his jaws clamped on the food. “Good boy! So, all that reading last night—did you find the dog’s name?”
“He doesn’t have one.” She had finished scanning all the pages, hunting key words for every reference to the dog. “When the kennel closed down, the animals were auctioned off by strangers. No registration papers—there wouldn’t be any on a mongrel.”
“The journal lady never gave him a name? She had to call him something.”
“She only writes about him as ‘my friend, the dog.’ I guess you can call him whatever you want. The Blood Beast?”
“Night of the Blood Beast, Ross Sturlin, 1958. No good,” said Sadie. “The dog had a name once. I can’t change it.”
Gwen struggled with this, for Sadie had no trouble with naming the man for a famous insect. This might be a measure of her greater respect for the dog, an echo of the journal lady, who had not named him either—she didn’t feel she had the right.
Sadie threw him another, unearned biscuit. “He’s as ready as he’ll ever be.”
“No, not yet.” Not ever. “We have to be sure he takes orders only from you.” And now that Sadie was less inclined to kill the dog, they might all get out of this together—if they could only hold on until the journal lady came home. “Maybe tomorrow or the next day.”
Sadie turned on her, and the small pale face was all but screaming, What? Are you nuts?
Gwen looked around at the debris of the torn dummy. Plastic bags had come out of the pants and the sweater. All this mess had to be cleaned up. How were they going to retrieve what was lying within the circle of the dog’s chain? It would be a mistake to trust the animal within harming distance. And where was the man—The Fly? Why hadn’t he come back again? “The Fly must be going crazy wondering where I am. Maybe he figured I went to the police. Maybe he ran away.”
Sadie shook her head very slowly, to say, No, don’t hope for things like that. Aloud, she said, “We should change your bandage. It’s really dirty.” She pressed one cool hand to Gwen’s forehead. “And you’re burning up.”
“I need another pill. My leg really hurts.” No—really, it only throbbed, but the pain was surely on the way back to get her again.
They walked down the aisle of tables and shelves to the white room and its precious store of pharmacy bottles. Sadie lagged behind for a moment and then caught up. “Your limp is getting worse.”
“I probably pulled a muscle. Remember when you did that in gym class? You limped for days.”
Sadie preceded her into the room and pulled open the medicine drawer. “There must be a zillion drugs in here.” She picked up a bottle and perused the label. “We won’t do this one again. I think it’s what kept you awake.”
Gwen picked up another bottle and read the label. “Why don’t we try one of these? Flurazepam hydrochloride?”
Sadie gently took it from her hand and put it back. “No, that’s old stuff. The label is all yellow.”
“Here’s a newer one, same thing.”
“No.” Sadie’s hand covered hers before she could pick it up. “Read the whole label. ‘One pill at bedtime.’ That probably means it’ll make you fall asleep. Bad timing for that.” Finally she selected one that she approved of and handed over the pill with a fresh jar of water.
The moment Sadie’s back was turned, Gwen slipped one more pill from the bottle, and then she caught her friend’s eyes on her in the reflection of a glass cupboard. But there was no scolding; Sadie said nothing at all; she only rolled the bottles absently with one finger.
“Is there a n
ame on one of the labels?” Gwen drained the jar of water. She was thirsty all the time now. “My mother’s name is on the pills she takes for migraines.”
Sadie picked up one bottle after the other. “Most of them say, ‘Sample, not for sale.’ This one has two names. E. Vickers—that’s probably your journal lady.”
“And the other name?”
“Dr. W. Penny.”
“I know that name,” said Gwen. “William Penny. He’s in the journals.”
Sadie put the pills back in the drawer, but took no care to leave the labels as she had found them. The child was no longer afraid of discovery. So she meant to use the dog today.
But Gwen knew it wasn’t going to work. The man was bigger and more frightening to the dog—a superior Alpha wolf. When the man found out what they had done, when he saw this mess, he was going to be so mad.
Sadie knelt on the floor in front of Gwen and unwound the gauze bandage, exposing the puncture wounds to the light. The small holes had not healed; they oozed with yellow-green pus. The surrounding skin was bronze in color, darker today, and the leg was bloated. “It smells.” Sadie leaned closer to the wound.
Gwen looked away, not wanting to see it. “E. Vickers. I wonder what the E stands for?”
“We have to get out of here. You’re getting worse, not better. You need a doctor.”
Gwen picked up the pill bottle from the drawer and stared at the name on the label. “Dr. Penny. Miss Vickers writes about him a lot.”
“Listen to me, Gwen. Your leg—”
“Dr. Penny is her heart specialist. He makes lots of house calls. But Miss Vickers thinks he only comes by to see the hired woman, Rita. She hears them whispering together all the time. Rita is on vacation too. They’ll all be back in a few days.”
“Don’t count on it. We have to get out of here—soon. The dog is ready.” Sadie was soaping the wound very gently.
A stab of pain made it through the barrier of drugs, and Gwen bit down on her lip until it went away. “They all go on vacation at the same time every year, Miss Vickers, Rita and Proper William—that’s what everyone calls the doctor behind his back.” Another stab. Gwen stared down at the bottle in her clenched hand, willing the pain to end before she cried and broke down, confessing the depth of her cowardice, and the terrible cost of it.
The Judas Child Page 25