“May we precede, Eminence?” Leon eventually inquired. But nothing would be that simple tonight. All of these disturbances had caused the Bishop to suffer a dreadful thirst and water should be brought.
Naturally, when he called for water, no electric bell could be used. Leon’s attempted use of the button roused too much suspicion. Fernando had a much simpler solution.
The women should be put to work. They should serve him the water; and serve him with all haste; “And please don’t put ice in it—I don’t even want to start trying to explain that!” Leon advised.
The tepid water arrived, and the Bishop satisfied himself that it was acceptable.
After Holy intentions had been assured, matters at hand could proceed.
“You spoke previously, Sire, of foul balms… In my tongue this term arouses much confusion.”
Fernando eyed Leon unblinkingly; this underling was trying his patience, he was unaccustomed to such insistent badgering for answers.
Leon saw the battle glee in his eye, but forged ahead;
“Is this balm a preparation used to bring time into reduction, so as to…”
“Nay,” the pontiff cut him short, “…the balms of which I speak, invite Lucifer into thy heart.” His voice was calm and low, visibly governed into restraint. “By their acceptance comes certain hell-fire and damnation. Savior from this certainty is only possible through devotion to the Good.”
Fernando’s reply begged more questions than it answered.
Beyond the curtain, both women were wide-eyed and attentive.
“May I ask, Sire, whether these balms were imbibed by the very body that you presently occupy? Did the man known in my time as Roger Daly imbibe these balms?”
“The same Evil is always offered to each soul at your black-mass,” Fernando responded, increasing in agitation.
“Yet your soul did not accept this Evil, Sire?” Leon prompted cautiously.
The Bishop detected the impertinence and insult in the man’s question but he decided to overlook it; heathens could not always be expected to know the depths of devotion.
“The balm was offered to my form, but I would never stand idly by as darkness seized its hold.”
Leon couldn’t miss the chastisement that the grave voice conveyed; he reminded himself to re-double his efforts to proceed with caution.
In preparation for the next question he would ask, Nancy had showed Leon how to use his mobile phone as a recorder for today’s session—he had it recording from the breast pocket of his cotton shirt.
This had freed up his ancient reel-to-reel cassette recorder. He’d held it next to the speakers of his computer to record the voice mail with the strange sounds and Craig’s voice that Ken had emailed to him.
“Sire, I have here an instrument. It has a method to make a record of the sounds of the ear, much like writing records the details of the mouth and heart.”
Leon hoped that using a cassette tape recorder rather than a digital one would provide him at least some mechanical mechanism for Fernando to observe turning; it might quell the inevitable accusations of witchcraft and evil that would certainly otherwise be leveled.
For safety’s sake he had rehearsed some qualifiers that could justify the workings of the antiquated device.
“There is a chord that you will see to move. This chord is not unlike that of a violin bow, which releases sounds according to its movement.”
The description seemed to do the trick, Fernando took the recorder from Leon’s hands the moment that it was produced.
“Where is this chord?” He demanded.
When Leon ejected the cassette, Fernando grabbed it and held the clear plastic case up to the light. He flicked it with his nail, then shook it and tapped it on his teeth, trying to establish if the material itself perhaps held the hidden mysteries that were promised.
“It is a fine chord, Sire,” Leon gingerly pointed out the magnetic tape. Then, realizing that the Bishop was about to hook it out and begin unraveling it, he quickly added, “…that may easily be damaged irreparably by touch.”
Instead of touching, Fernando sniffed and shook it more vigorously to hear if it would utter anything in protest, but only a common rattle emitted.
Satisfied that there were no captured souls evident, he handed Leon the two items.
“Let me hear this sound,” he watched suspiciously as cassette and recorder were married again, one into the other
Leon realized that further suspicion of foul play may arise when the spindles began to turn, so, as he clipped the cassette cover into place, he paved the way by explaining more wondrous facts.
“Please do not be alarmed, Eminence. Not unlike a time clock, this instrument uses springs and weights to achieve its movement for sound.”
At the sound, Fernando sat back as far as the bed would let him, and for good measure he crossed himself twice with a mumbled prayer. It was the mechanism that seemed to bother him, not the sound itself, for, as it went on, he moved cautiously forward, listening intently. Strangely, the sound of Craig’s voice did not startle him either as it had done everyone else.
When the recording had finished, he commanded, “Where did you come by such a sound?”
It had been the one question that Leon had not anticipated. Battling not to stumble over his words, Leon carefully formulated his reply;
“This is something that I wish to ask of you, Sire. I believe that this is not a sound common in my world, it appeared within this instrument by unknown means.”
Leon knew it was a floundering explanation, one that courted suspicion, yet inexplicably Fernando remained relaxed and collected to this unsettling event, appearing to possess an insight.
He was perplexed by the Bishop’s unpredictable character; generally overreacting to perfectly innocuous and innocent occurrences, yet ignoring what others found disturbing.
Committed to the explanation, he stumbled on;
“This sound would seem connected to strange occurrences of late, sire. One of the ladies here present has been much troubled in this connection. She seeks to resolve her suffering, it is why I have brought her for an audience.”
Fernando ignored Leon’s allusion to Catherine’s suffering. Indifferently, he continued on his own tack;
“This is the sound of the spirit world, it is associated with the movement through the planes… from your world to the next. The voice is of one who has been seized. I was in attendance at his departing your world. In order to save him his fate I offered absolution, but his deeds of this past existence had been too great and he became overwhelmed by the dark.”
The Bishop spoke as if he were addressing a child, his patience ebbing as he proceeded;
“He did to me confess foul deeds before he was took. And in repentance he resolved to return and make amends in the name of Good. It will serve his justice more peace, yet he will surely burn all the same.”
Leon could see that irrationality was boiling in the cauldron, Fernando’s control of it slipping.
In the hope that the small token would quench the powder keg threatening to ignite, Leon offered more of the water that had earlier been brought.
The Righteous Father quaffed the tumbler to its end.
“Send a woman for more…,” he brazenly instructed.
Leon did his bidding, passing the empty jug to Nancy. She took it and departed in a huff.
Outside of the ward, forced to miss the unfolding intrigue, she hurried past the scullery where she’d previously collected water. A group of passerby’s sensed her mood and stood aside.
“The Bishop can drink water from the Ladies’ toilets,” she told them with satisfaction.
Fernando brooded a while, thinking. Then, at his leisure, he spoke;
“Show me this woman who is troubled.”
Keeping her eyes averted, as Leon had instructed, Catherine dutifully appeared.
On seeing Catherine full in the face for the first time, Fernando sat bolt upright in his bed. �
��This soul is ancient!” the pontiff moaned, suddenly gracious.
To Catherine the Bishop’s words were not words at all, they were an emotion; an introspective the like of which she had never before experienced, as though a pedigree she didn’t know she had, had suddenly been shoved in her face. The instant cartwheeled her emotions backward through time to another age, another place, a place where she heard the clash of arms and the cheer of crowds.
Catherine had gasped at the sight of Fernando. Coming back to her senses she realized that this was not the same youthful Roger whom she’d recently chatted pleasantries with, nor was it the six year old Roger on his first day at school. As she studied him, she noticed the way he held his face and body, that they seemed entirely altered; a withered old man.
His eyes forced her a half step back, mesmerizing her, cauterizing to the depths of her soul.
At that precise moment, beyond the curtain, Nancy came silently through the door. Hearing the Bishop speak, she froze in her path, hesitating to round the curtain and break the flow of conversation.
“This soul has grown ahead of itself with confidence. A test is failed and the instant to move onward is imminent….”
Fernando’s tone was haunting as he pointed a gnarled accusing finger at Catherine. Fanaticism overtaking him, he began to convulse with intensity, a torrent of warnings belching from his gut.
“Beware… BEWARE…! For the evil is upon you! Take my heed and repent against the power that already possess you. I stand as a pillar at your back but tendrils already have you within their grasp. The Great Goat will have his way with you.”
The old man began to froth from his mouth and Leon leapt in to end the session.
A few minutes later the young and oblivious ex-General, Roger Daly, smiled pleasantly at the distraught pair of women he had just terrified out of their wits.
Among the thoughts cramming through Catherine’s mind was one silly and insignificant fact. Today was Thursday the twelfth.
If, three weeks ago, she had stuck to her original date with Ken, tonight would have been the Big Date.
At the very least, she thought, I’m three weeks better off.
Chapter 30
It was eight o’clock on that stormy Thursday night when three figures huddled together against the driving storm, broke rank and scattered, each to their own vehicle.
Windshield wipers flogged out a loosing battle against the torrential downpour and headlights barely dented the smothering blanket of sleet. They stopped once to collect supplies, then, never braking convoy, the three vehicles picked their cautious way out of the city, on into the wooded suburbs.
On reaching their destination the occupants disembarked at their own timing, bolting for the safety of unity and the warm comfort of the palatial villa.
“Have you ever seen a night like this?”
“Never! And—my word—I have never seen a house like this either Catherine, never a house like this!” Without yet venturing beyond the entrance hall, Leon was already in awe.
During Catherine’s hospitalization, after her fight with Jacky, he had been to the house, but on that occasion the house had been like a construction site; a shambles charged with a negative repulse, and he had been utterly focused on the unfolding saga, taking none of the surroundings in.
He was stunned to see how it had changed, transformed its mood with lights on and the zest for life re-injected.
Nancy completed the trio as she came skidding through the door, pursued by another squall. She was drenched to the bone from her short dart across the few feet of distance.
After deserving hot beverages had been served and gladly wolfed down, Nancy took Leon on a tour of the rest of the house.
When Catherine called “Dinner’s on the table”, they returned to partake of another Oriental delight bumped from its cardboard container, garnished by a good dollop of Catherine’s apologies.
The Bishop’s ranting had fired the bogeyman into one and all and they had not discussed the details any further, none of them wanting to further fray the exposed nerves that his outpourings had tweaked.
The unabating storm had created the ideal excuse to mill about in the hospital’s foyer, none of them wanting to return to lonely dwellings apart. Even Leon, the seasoned veteran of things mysterious, had not escaped the supernatural horror that seeped into the stormy nights tone.
The longer they had stood in the hospital’s foyer listening to the crashes of thunder in the heavens above and watching the backlit sheets of rain lashing the windows, the more the tang of apprehension brewing within each of them grew.
“I don’t know about you lot, but I’m not going home alone. Either you follow me or I’ll follow you,” Catherine’s voice had quavered.
A chance lightning bolt had punctuated the end of her statement, and it had swung the vote unanimously in favor of her large white walled rooms and modern decor.
The meal was over and a round of coffee had been served as they cautiously waded into the murky waters of the pontiff’s parables.
Catherine checked her watch. It was nine forty… Jacky should have been in some time ago, she thought, hoping that the storm wouldn’t delay her inbound flight. She felt uneasy, a dreadful boding trying to suppress her mood yet further. Then again, it always felt like this when Jacky was up in this weather, she reminded herself.
“I told you that the tongues were television, remember Leon—you laughed at me… I told you. Just call me brilliant,” Nancy tentatively kicked off the proceedings.
“All right, … Miss Brilliant… then tell us what a goat with tendrils having his way with me… or whatever it was that he said… what does that mean?
The statement had terrified Catherine, she dealt with fear by challenging it—it was a gauntlet thrown down at fate.
“Stop it Catherine!” Nancy admonished her. The tempting of fate scared her to death and on this dark night, with Fernando’s direct predictions so fresh in her mind, her willingness to continue was deflated.
“Stop what?” Catherine laughed out of fear, not humor. The laughter a surrogate for tears.
“Don’t be silly, Cath. Let’s not fool around with our emotions… they’re raw, far too raw.”
Even Leon was uneasy with the affair, struggling to get a grip on his own galloping emotions. He took Catherine’s hand;
“We’re all edgy tonight, we should talk through everything and plan the best solutions, but there’s no need, between friends, to put on a brave face.”
Suddenly and with no warning Catherine lost control, bursting into sobs of terror.
Leon and Nancy moved as one to embrace her.
Moments later the door blew open, admitting an apparition wrapped in an icy blast of wind.
The tight huddle of three spooked in unison, then Catherine broke away and ran toward it the instant she recognized the sodden thing;
She halted short, “Jacky?” she called, hesitation suddenly in her voice.
“Sorry Cath, did I scare you?” She dropped the drenched jacket held over her head aside, “…I was wondering whose cars… oh, it’s Nancy.”
The hand of fear that had gripped them was broken and Catherine moved quickly to Jacky, hugging her furiously, overjoyed to know the ill omen of impending disaster was taxied and safely parked out of stormy skies.
Jacky headed off to shower and top-up beverages were poured.
When Jacky returned, they played her the recording to get a more objective opinion. The peculiar sounds proved meaningless to her, but the recorded voice of Fernando and the content of his ravings chilled her to the core.
Foul Balms triggered Catherine; “Darn… someone remind me to contact Kevin tomorrow to see if he’s found anything in the patch.”
“Ooh… sorry Cath, I chatted to him last night,” Jacky piped up, “forgot to tell you, he said he’s found something that ‘doesn’t seem nutritional’… mean anything?”
“Is that it?” Catherine quizzed.
“H
e’s still trying to refine it… thinks he might have more by the weekend. I hope that it wasn’t too important?”
“Is this something to do with the missing patch?…!” Leon puzzled.
“Yikes… I’m busted,” Nancy laughed, “You heard about it?”
“Heard about it? I had to put up with Ken’O for three days… totally off his head about it… crazy.”
“I know… new protocols now—they’re weighing packages to the gram… both ends. Every patch getting a RFID tag. They were already three short from Kampala, I thought a fourth wouldn’t do much harm.”
“It’s been a witch hunt alright, a real witch hunt.”
“I know, I copped it too. Really sorry, I had to keep it quiet. The excitement seems to have blown over.”
“Not really… at the last Board Meeting Ken hit the roof about security… we’re outsourcing to offsite CCTV monitoring round the clock now. Big Brother all the way, Nance… all the way.”
“Sorry for the shop talk…” Nancy apologized, “we interrupted… nutritional results?”
“Yes… and something about adrenaline and endorphins. It went over my head.”
“What time is it? Do you think that I should call him?” Catherine asked, checking her watch. “What…! It’s almost eleven!” She was stunned.
Opinion was divided whether to phone or not, but curiosity was too strong a persuader and Catherine took the less intrusive option and messaged;
“Per the patch… Plse call ASAP regardless of time. Wont be sleeping. Plse don’t forget VERY important”
When Catherine hit ‘send’, Leon was on his feet;
“I’m off to club duvet, ladies… where the pillows are playing… definitely club duvet.”
There was a general round of dissatisfaction that the star analyst was deserting. Jacky, the most superstitious of all, was also the most vociferous;
“You do know what tomorrow is?”
Leon laughed at the suggestion; “Friday the thirteenth; what poppycock Nancy… utter poppycock.”
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