by J. R. Mabry
The Demon Bunny of Ipswich
A Berkeley Blackfriars Story
J.R. Mabry
THE DEMON BUNNY OF IPSWICH
Copyright © 2017 by J.R. Mabry
Contents
The Demon Bunny of Ipswich
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The Demon Bunny of Ipswich
“Brian, goddam it, I can’t even find this fucking place.” Kat had been driving in circles for what seemed like an hour.
“You made it out to Stockton, ri—?” Brian’s voice cut out. The cell phone reception was choppy to boot.
“Yes, and it’s hotter than a Guenther demon’s bunghole. I want to fucking punch someone!”
“You mean you want to punch Richard,” Brian offered.
“You’re goddam right I do. Little podunk town…hot as blazes…lost as fuck! Doesn’t he know I have better things to do?”
“You have better things to do than to deliver someone of a demon?”
“Suspected demon. It’s a fucking bunny.”
“Bunnies can be possessed, just like anyone else.”
“Yeah. Shaking in my boots, here. Who called this in?”
“A neighbor, so…go easy. They don’t want you to let on it was them.”
“Great. I could drive all this way just to be told to jack off and go home.”
“But it probably wouldn’t happen in exactly that order,” Brian said. “Unless you’re randier than you let on. I once masturbated while driving on the I-5 up from LA—”
“TMI, Brian,” Kat said. “Save it for your memoirs. That way I don’t have to read it. And you can tell Richard to go fuck himself.”
“You can tell him yourself. We’re on speakerphone. He’s having coffee.”
“Fuck me,” Kat whispered, gritting her teeth. Richard was the prior of the Order of Saint Raphael—the formal name for the Berkeley Blackfriars. She liked Richard…although she had to admit that she was also a little intimidated by him. He was a good guy—but he was also pitifully unlucky in love and a little too fond of the sauce. In spite of his often painful conflictedness, she trusted him—but she didn’t want to get on his bad side.
“He’s smiling, if that’s any consolation,” Brian added.
“Thanks. You could have told me he was listening in earlier, asshole.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“Sin of omission.”
“I’ll put it on my list for Yom Kippur.”
“You do that. Asshole.”
“Well, hey it’s been fun. Don’t bite the heads off of any rodents or you’ll need shots. And call me if you need backup.”
“I just did! I’m fucking lost! Where the fuck is Ipswich? My GPS doesn’t recognize it.”
“Huh. Let me see…” She heard Brian walking, then tapping on a keyboard. She was incredibly fond of Brian, and while she waited she flashed back to the first time she had met him and Terry.
Terry was a Blackfriar, one of the renegade priests of the Order of St. Raphael, and Brian was his partner—a Talmudic scholar who was also the best damned researcher she had ever encountered.
She had known gay couples in the past, but when she moved into the friary she found herself suddenly living with them. And she found them to be surprisingly normal—at least Brian and Terry were. The novelty had faded fast, and was replaced with real affection.
“Okay, this makes sense,” Brian’s voice broke her reverie. “Ipswich is an unincorporated district just outside of Stockton. Enter the address, but select Stockton, and see what you get.”
Kat pulled over, her wheels screeching. She cursed under her breath as her thumbs flashed over the keypad on her phone.
“Did it show up?”
“Yeah…I guess. It’s weird, it’s a range of addresses, not a particular address.”
“It’s a bulk delivery designation—the post office uses that for rural clusters of houses. What you’ll find is that a bunch of mailboxes will all be at one corner—maybe even twenty or so.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I had an uncle who was a postal inspector.”
“What the fuck is that?”
“He’s a federal agent, like the FBI—but he only deals with mail.”
“Huh. Makes sense, I guess.”
“Just find the mailboxes, and you’ll find a cluster of houses—then just ask around.”
“Ask around. Great.”
“Have fun.” Brian hung up.
“Asshole,” Kat said out loud. She watched the map unfold on her app, her intended path lit up in blue. At the bottom it said twenty-one minutes to her destination. “Great….”
Kat wiped the sweat from her brow and cursed the ecclesiastical fashion gods that there wasn’t a lighter cassock available. Sure, she was wearing her summer cassock—it was made of a much lighter material than her winter cassock—but its long sleeves were a nuisance and the fabric clung to her back.
She loved being a Blackfriar. It would never have been something she would have seen herself doing five years ago. The notion that she would be ordained as a Catholic priest seemed absurd. Yet here she was, already a transitional deacon, her priestly ordination date scheduled for the Feast of All Saints—just a few short months away. And here she was, a trained exorcist, going out by herself on a call.
She wished Mikael was with her. She had fallen for him—hard—when she’d first met the Blackfriars, and she always felt grounded by his invincible cheeriness. She loved that he was a punk musician, she loved his wild hair. She could do without his pretensions to being a lame superhero, but no one was perfect.
Ordinarily, they were never sent on calls alone. The fact that she was being sent on this one rankled her. It meant that Richard didn’t take it that seriously. The fact that he had given it to her made her feel like he didn’t take her all that seriously, either. She wanted to punch his Irish-looking face.
Besides, she’d already been pissed at him. They’d had a catechetical meeting devoted to the doctrine of original sin, and she just wasn’t having any of it. “You can say ‘I’m a sinner’ till Toby poops again, but that doesn’t make me one,” she’d told him.
“We’re all sinners,” Richard had insisted.
“Speak for yourself,” she’d told him.
“Uh…I am.”
“Well, you don’t speak for me!” Kat shouted and stormed out of the room. Sin. She hated the word, and she hated that her new faith insisted that there was something in her that was beyond her control—something wrong, something ugly. That was yesterday. And today, Richard had sent her here—into outer darkness, where the worm didn’t die and there was surely a lot teeth-gnashing—at least among the locals who still had teeth. Kat sighed.
Up ahead, she saw a rack of mailboxes. She checked the address again and, sure enough, there was a mailbox that matched. She got out of the car and looked around. Nothing. Dusty, yellowed fields stretched in every direction. There was exactly one road, and she’d passed no houses. Only one way to go, then, she thought. She shrugged and got back in the car.
As she continued further down the road, she was confused to see a cluster of houses—not as many as the mailboxes, but a few, laid out subdivision-style. It was like an alien had picked up a half-block of subdivision houses and had set it down in isolated farm country.
“Weird,” she said. She repeated the house number to herself as she scanned the houses. They were small, identical, almost prefab-looking things. Finally, she found the number she was looking for.
The house was lemon yellow, which was a nice complement to the amber waves of—well, not grain, but maybe hay—behind it. The sun reigned over a sky that seemed impossibly, disconcert
ingly huge. One scraggly tree in the front yard stood barely taller than Kat herself and seemed to be precariously clinging to life.
Kat parked and got out, holding her cassock away from her skin, hoping for a cool breeze to dry it. No such luck, she thought, and let it fall again to her skin with sucking adhesive power. She retrieved her kit bag from the trunk and, facing the house, took a deep breath.
She closed her eyes and began to speak to herself in a self-soothing tone. “I don’t want to be here, but I am here. I am learning obedience…even if Richard is an asshole. The fact that he sent me—alone—into fucking red-state California territory to minister to cow-farmers and the dentally challenged is not a reflection on my skills or the esteem in which he holds my work. Goddam it.” She felt the heat rising up her neck again, and it had nothing to do with the blazing central-valley sun.
“Relax,” she told herself aloud. “Let go of your anger, your resentment, your hair-trigger desire to rip out the entrails of some unnamed prior. You are a representative of Jesus, and you are here to do his work. These people need your best. They need you to love them…no matter what you’re really feeling.”
She remembered that Terry had once told her that effective ministry sometimes means being a good actor, putting your own feelings on hold, and “playing” the loving, interested minister until you can actually be the loving, interested minister. “Looks like today is going to be good spiritual practice,” she said. She squeezed the grip on her kit bag and set off up the walk toward the door.
She stepped up on the porch, noted how the weathered board gave beneath her weight. She rang the doorbell. She didn’t hear anything ring, though, so after a few moments, she knocked.
About a minute passed. Then the door opened, and Kat found herself looking at a frail, mousy woman about her same height. She looked twenty years older than Kat was, but it looked like a hard life, so it was hard to tell. Kat gave her a professional smile, holding her kit bag in front of her in both hands. “Hi, I’m Deacon Kat Waller. I’m here about the bunny.”
The woman looked confused. “Our bunny, Sniffers?”
Kat cocked her head. “Sure…Sniffers. Why not?”
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Are you a veterinarian?”
Kat could understand her confusion. She didn’t look like a veterinarian. “No ma’am. As I said, I’m a deacon. More specifically, I’m an exorcist. I’m here about your….problem.” She lowered her head and gave the woman a conspiratorial look. If Kat had been wearing glasses, she would have been looking over the top rims of them.
“Oh…uh…” the woman looked behind her. Then she looked past Kat. Then she put her fingers in her mouth. “Oh, dear. Oh, dear.” She looked back up at Kat. “Who told you?”
“We work for the big man,” Kat smiled. “Sometimes we just know.” It was an outright lie, but she didn’t want to impugn the neighbors. And besides, the mystery of it would lend her some authority.
“Oh.” The woman’s eyes widened, and she looked Kat up and down with a sense of awe. “Okay then. Please…come in.”
The woman opened the door wide, and stepped aside so Kat could pass. “Where are you from?” she asked.
“Berkeley,” Kat said. “But we service the upper part of the state—wherever there’s need.” She didn’t mention that they do it grudgingly if it’s in the dustbowl of Central Valley.
The woman closed the door. “Berkeley. I went to Berkeley once. My husband took me to Chez Panisse for my birthday.” She looked down and pressed her fist against her chest. “Those were better times. Phil is…gone.”
Kat didn’t know whether to ask for details. Was Phil dead? Away on a business trip? Did he leave her for a less-mousy woman? She didn’t want to get distracted. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said, not very convincingly.
The woman didn’t seem to notice and didn’t respond. “Please,” she pointed to the kitchen table. Kat’s teeth ground together. She didn’t want to sit and “visit” with this woman. She wanted to sprinkle the damn bunny with holy water and get the fuck out of there.
She took a deep breath and remembered her spiritual practice. She sat.
“Tea?”
Kat pursed her lips, moving them to one side. She knew it was going to be tea. She opened her mouth to say, “I’m more of a coffee girl,” but thought better of it. “Tea would be…lovely.” Is this what ministry feels like? She wondered. Because it’s nothing like what I thought it would feel like. She thought it would be heroic, with everyone admiring her. Instead, it was a string of tedious, dreary little moments in which she kept telling herself that she was doing some good for the world. She shook her head. “What’s your name?”
“Me?”
Yes, obviously you, Kat thought, but did not say. There’s no one else in the house except you, me, and presumably Sniffers.
“I’m Dephna. Parks. Dephna Parks.” The woman tried to smile, but it seemed to Kat that her upturned lip was fighting to emerge through decades of depression and struggle.
“Good to meet you, Dephna. As I said, I’m Kat.”
“Is Kat your given name?”
“No. It’s Katherine. Kat’s a nickname, but I’ve had it as long as I can remember.”
“You didn’t choose it yourself, then?”
“No.”
“My son Edward started calling himself Drake last year. After a singer of some kind, I think.”
“I’ve heard of him—the singer, I mean.”
“I just can’t bring myself to use it.” Dephna looked impossibly sad.
Kat looked at her watch. “Um…what can you tell me about…Sniffers?”
“Oh…well, we got him from the Pryde family, when their doe gave birth.”
Huh, Kat thought. A female rabbit is called a doe. You learn something every day.
Dephna set a cup of tea in front of her. She bobbed the teabag up and down as if she were steeping a dead mouse.
“Would you like some honey?”
“God yes,” Kat said without thinking.
“Did you say you were a deacon?” Dephna sat and took a tentative sip from her own cup.
“Yes. I’ll be a priest soon, though.” Despite herself, Kat gave a real smile. The woman was being very gracious.
“Is that how it works? Daniel Pryde is a deacon, but I don’t think there are priests in his church.” She looked down at her lap. “We’re…not very religious.”
Kat felt the first glimmer of pity for Mrs. Parks. It didn’t override her drive to get to it and get out, but it surfaced. “That’s…okay. It’s not everybody’s…thing.” In truth, she hadn’t thought it was her thing until she’d met the Blackfriars. She’d enjoyed Wicca, but had really been more of a dabbler. When she thought about it, it was the friars’ community that really grabbed her—not the doctrine, not the rituals, not even the magick. Although she was certainly falling in love with Jesus. She hadn’t expected that, either.
“Mr. Pryde is probably a Protestant. Deacons in Protestant churches are lay people. In Catholic churches, like ours, it’s a kind of ordained ministry. Like being a priest, but the lite version. You can do half the sacraments.” It was, she realized, a terrible and inaccurate explanation. But in the moment, it didn’t seem appropriate to say more. It would do.
“I thought only men could be priests.”
She seemed genuinely interested, so Kat pressed forward. “In the Roman Church, yes. But Romans aren’t the only kind of Catholic in the world. We Old Catholics have been around for about three hundred years, and there’s about a quarter million of us. About 75,000 in the United States.”
“I’ve never heard of that.” Dephna looked genuinely surprised.
“We try to keep a lid on it,” Kat waved her hands around, summoning mock spookiness. “We love the air of mystery.”
Dephna just stared at her.
“Hoookay,” Kat said. “About that rabbit….”
“What makes you different from the regular kind of Catholic?”
“We fuck. And, obviously, we cuss,” Kat said, looking her in the eye without blinking. “Tell me about Sniffers’ behavior.”
“You said you are an exorcist. You mean like in the movie?”
Obviously, this woman wants to talk about anything so long as it’s not bunny-related, Kat thought. “Yeah. Just like the movie. Green pea soup and all.”
“That sounds horrible.”
“It does get kind of grimy sometimes,” Kat agreed. “About. The. Rabbit.”
Dephna’s mouth was open, but then she closed it. She took a sip of tea and seemed to reorient herself. “Oh. Okay. Well, he’s scared.”
“Bunnies are always scared. I think it’s part of the dictionary definition of ‘rabbit’—‘scared rodent,’ definition number three, or something.”
“Um…rabbits aren’t rodents…but I don’t disagree…” Dephna looked at her like she might be crazy for the first time. She obviously did disagree, but didn’t have the courage to say so. “But not like this. Whenever I come near, he huddles in the corner of his cage…”
Kat wanted to say something nasty about any creature reacting to Dephna’s pitiful presence, but bit her tongue. Enough tea, enough pleasantries, enough fucking chitchat, Kat thought. “Can you show me the rabbit?”
Dephna’s lips gathered together in a grim line. She gave a curt nod and stood. Kat followed her. As they walked down the hall, she realized Dephna didn’t live here alone. They passed a bedroom that could only have belonged to a little boy. Kat noted bright anime posters stuck to the wall with scotch tape, a baseball glove, a discarded carpet sample that seemed to serve as a parking lot for jumbled Tonka trucks and hot wheels.
She paused as she took in the room, then hurried to catch up with Dephna. She followed her into another bedroom. This, too, belonged to a boy, but an older boy. There was a movie poster for one of the Fast and Furious films, and another of three girls in bikinis posing with beer. Oddly, this room was messier than that of the younger child.