Dark Angel

by Eden Maguire

  ‘Come over to the studio,’ Zoran instructed down the phone. ‘Send Callum here to the house. Tell him Tania’s here, looking for Jude.’

  And Daniel, I thought, though of course I didn’t admit this. I kept expecting, maybe even hoping to bump into him any moment, or better still, for Daniel to hear that I was around and come looking for me.

  I also expected to run into Grace and Ezra, but my feelings here were even more mixed. I didn’t know if I could stand the tension of seeing my old friend in one of her manic, elated phases; or else bewildered, sad and scared like a little girl lost in a fairy-tale forest – the one where the stepmother wants to have her secretly killed and put in a pie then fed to her father. Or did I make up that gruesome stuff? Anyway, I mean that I thought of Grace these days as a child in the grip of something evil – the spellbound kid with the splinter of ice in his eye in The Snow Queen may be a better comparison.

  In any case, Zoran trusted me with the Warhols as he made arrangements then left the house by the main door and I stayed where I was until Callum and Jude came to find me.

  ‘Hey, Tania.’ In fact, Callum showed up alone. Like all of the personnel at Black Eagle Lodge, he was exceptionally laid back, never out of jeans and T-shirt unless in costume for one of the big events. Now, as I looked up from an art magazine left on Zoran’s coffee table, he struck me as easily hot enough for a lead role in a long-running TV show about doctors rather than the real thing.

  ‘Where’s Jude?’ I asked with a note of panic in my voice. ‘Is he still sick?’

  ‘Take it easy,’ Callum advised. ‘It’s true he wasn’t in good shape when he got here – it was a bad attack. But I knew his history so I gave him intravenous medication – a shot to help him breathe.’

  ‘So he’s OK?’ I was looking beyond Callum, still hoping that Jude would be following.

  ‘I sent him to the hospital to get checked out by his own physician.’

  ‘You didn’t let him drive?’ I protested.

  ‘What kind of doctor would I be?’ he smiled. ‘No, Cristal drove him there. Take it easy, Tania – Jude is going to be OK.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I gasped, taking a deep breath. ‘So Cristal – she hasn’t heard the news about Oliver?’

  ‘That poor kid.’ Just like his boss, Callum seemed to say the words without meaning them. ‘I knew he suffered from depressive episodes and he was pretty close to the edge when he arrived here. Actually, I prescribed medication to help him.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘We see his type a lot. Kids who don’t relate well to their peer group – lonely, lost individuals without too many social skills. They drop out of the mainstream and gravitate to charismatic figures like Zoran. There was a serious case of hero-worship going on there.’

  ‘Which you didn’t discourage.’ I grew angry and I let it show. ‘In fact, I’d say that you guys work hard at getting people like Oliver to stay here. The parties and those celebrations in the chapel. They turn a lot of heads; it happened with Grace, Oliver and I would guess a whole lot more.’

  ‘Oh, Tania,’ Callum sighed. ‘Why not come clean about what’s bugging you? You believe we’re creating a cult here, that we brainwash people, don’t you?’

  ‘The thought had crossed my mind,’ I muttered, though the second he brought it out into the open it began to look flaky and absurd.

  ‘Yeah, it’s how a lot of people view us, so what’s new? It’s something Zoran has learned to live with over the years – accusations about his motives, the bad effect he has on his fans. He’s studied the Michael Jackson phenomenon and he knows his enemies won’t let this stuff drop. By the way, Tania, did you take my advice about seeing a neurologist?’

  So here I was, suddenly wrong footed again, just like on the tennis court when Holly sends a sly passing shot down the line and I’m stretching wildly for a return. ‘Actually, I looked it up on the Internet,’ I muttered.

  ‘And?’

  ‘I didn’t follow it through. I’ve been totally fine since then, thanks.’

  ‘Yeah, because you didn’t encounter any flashing lights. That’s the trigger with photosensitive epilepsy, remember.’ Just then Callum’s phone rang and he answered it. ‘Hey, Daniel …’

  I heard the name and took a sharp breath, listened on.

  ‘… Good job,’ Callum said. ‘You brought them all back? Cool. Is Zoran with you?’

  The talk went on and I gathered that Daniel had been out on Black Rock to round up the runaway mustangs. None had been injured and they were presently being led into their feed stalls. I also heard that the smoke from the Forest Service fireline was dispersing and all was well.

  ‘Did Zoran tell you about the kid?’ Callum asked Daniel as I faked an interest in the art magazine while drinking in every syllable of the conversation. ‘The Forest Service guys stretchered him off the mountain. They’ll deal with the family, so we don’t have to. Yeah, I guess the cops will want to check it out. There’ll be an autopsy to establish cause of death.’

  I was busy pretending to study a reproduction of a Brancusi sculpture and my vision took me by surprise. There was the usual supernatural warning – a hot, suffocating blast of air – then the voice.

  ‘Come with me.’ The woman in my dreams reaches out her hand to a slender, fair-haired kid. She is kind. She offers to lead him off Black Rock, away from the towering smoke and flames. I see her face more clearly. She has hazel eyes with heavy lids, rose-pink lips and softly curling fair hair. She reaches out but the blond kid doesn’t respond. He walks past her through the drifting smoke towards other, darker and more sinister figures waiting further up the mountain.

  Tuned into my waking dream – or whatever you want to call it – I blanked the cool, uncaring talk between Callum and Daniel.

  ‘Daniel says hi,’ Callum told me as he came off the phone. ‘And Zoran said you should talk with Grace while you’re here.’

  ‘Sure!’ I jumped at the chance. Even though Jude had failed in his mission, it seemed I was being given the chance to speak for him.

  ‘She’s by the pool. Do you know your way?’

  I nodded. Up in the elevator, out through the main door and down on to the terrace, where I’d stood with Daniel and he’d told me about the sun setting behind Carlsbad, with his arm around my waist, close enough to feel his breath on my cheek. ‘Does Grace know Jude was here?’ I checked.

  Callum was already on his way out of the room ahead of me. ‘Why don’t you ask her? I have to go now, Tania, but you take your time, OK?’

  So he strode off down the corridor and disappeared into one of the side rooms, leaving me to find Grace.

  I dealt with the elevator and the automatic doors, hit daylight, dipped into my pocket for my sunglasses, put them on and made my way on to the pool terrace.

  The sun was shining and there was music playing – the fast, hard-hitting track called ‘You Don’t Know Me’. ‘You don’t know me though you see my face/ My name is lost in time and space.’ There was a row of empty loungers down either side of the bright-blue pool. A white robe was flung over one at the near end, one corner trailing in the water – typical Grace. She herself was in the pool at the infinity edge, looking out over the mountains.

  ‘Grace!’ I called. My stomach tightened to see her so close to the edge.

  ‘Hey!’ She twisted round, saw me and waved, started swimming towards me. ‘Did you bring your swimsuit?’

  ‘No. Come and talk to me.’ I picked up a towel ready to hand it to her, noticing how skinny she’d become, how her ribs showed and her always slim hips were now positively bony.

  Grace wrapped the towel around her shoulders and shook out her wet hair.

  ‘Good to see you,’ she told me. ‘I hoped you’d come back to visit.’

  I nodded, decided not to mention Jude yet. ‘How have you been?’

  ‘Good. I missed you after the celebration. It was my big day and I wanted you to share it with me.’ She took another towe
l from a neatly stacked pile and wrapped it turban-style round her head. Then she sat on one of the loungers. ‘Come sit. Didn’t you think the whole thing – the chapel, the music, the dancing – was so cool?’

  ‘I was scared for you,’ I confessed. ‘I didn’t even know what you were celebrating.’

  ‘Just being here!’ she sighed. ‘I’d made my decision to stay on with Ezra. That’s a big deal. The celebration is Zoran’s way of saying welcome.’

  ‘So that’s it?’ I stared in disbelief, recalling with a shudder Zoran’s satanic power-fest in the chapel. ‘No going back.’

  Grace smiled and nodded. ‘It’s my best decision ever. I’m so happy here. Ezra is amazing and he totally loves me.’

  ‘So what do you do all day?’ I was still staring at her, watching for any expression or movement to suggest this wasn’t the paradise she was describing.

  ‘I live, I breathe, I do whatever Ezra wants to do. Sometimes we walk on the mountain, sometimes we study.’

  ‘What do you study?’

  ‘History, philosophy, religion.’ She kept her answers brief and they seemed to me deliberately vague. There was a small shrug, a moment when her hand flew nervously to her cheek. Then she resumed her bright smile.

  ‘And who’s your teacher?’

  ‘Ezra. He’s a psychology major.’

  ‘Yeah, I heard.’ I interrupted, not knowing where I was headed, only that my time was limited. ‘Listen, Grace, I don’t understand how you got here.’

  ‘Because you refuse to listen,’ she said simply, with a sigh that was full of regret.

  ‘How you got here to this place in your life where you make this big decision to cut yourself off and step across into a world none of us knows anything about.’ Ignoring her sorrowful gaze, I ploughed on. ‘All I know is – and I’ve told you before – you’re hurting people.’

  She frowned, stroked her cheek, turned her head away and when she spoke, it was in a flat, detached tone. ‘Tania, I’ve tried to explain.’

  ‘No! You’ve spouted stuff about moving planets around and changing the weather … daring to believe, but that doesn’t justify what you’re doing to your parents, to Jude.’

  ‘Every time you come here I tell you not to mention that name,’ she warned, picking up the robe and drawing it around her then walking the length of the pool.

  I followed her to the infinity edge. The mountains were misty blue, the sheer drop at our feet terrifying. ‘Jude came here to find you today.’

  Grace didn’t react to my news.

  ‘You don’t know me though you see my face.’ The track played insistently. ‘My name is lost in time and space.’

  ‘Grace, we don’t know anything about these people, but every time I come here something bad happens – something weird and twisted. And it’s not just me. Ask Holly, she’ll tell you the same thing.’

  ‘I knew Holly would never understand,’ Grace sighed, turning to me with the same sad look. ‘The doors in her mind are all shut tight. But you, Tania – I hoped you would get it.’

  ‘I try, I honestly do. But it is just so scary. Things happen to me when I’m here; my brain stops making sense of what I see.’

  ‘Because you won’t open your mind,’ she sighed.

  ‘No. I see things – inanimate objects – move without anyone touching them. I get pains in my hands; I lose things – my necklace for instance. I go dizzy and black out. Worst of all, people change shape, turn into creatures that don’t exist. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  ‘And why does that scare you?’

  ‘Because it can’t be real,’ I cried. I got the usual feeling of wanting to grab her by the wrists, to drag her out of here back into reality and make her safe. ‘You talk to me about moving planets around the universe – show me, show me!’

  ‘We don’t have to do that. We have nothing to prove,’ she replied calmly. ‘Ezra says that those without the courage to join us don’t matter. All that matters is that we know it’s true.’

  I shook my head at the catch-22 and changed track. ‘So, Jude,’ I went on. ‘What happened to the feelings you had for him? Don’t you care what you did to him?’

  Grace’s eyes widened, she spread her palms upwards. ‘What did I do? How am I responsible for the way Jude chooses to react to my moving on?’

  Ouch, ouch and ouch! ‘He’s sick, Grace, and getting sicker. He practically risked his life to find you today. Don’t you even care?’

  ‘Nobody told me he was here,’ she said with the first break in her voice – the one I was looking for.

  I seized my chance. ‘Of course they didn’t! The last thing they want is for you to meet the guy who truly loves you, has loved you for two whole years and will do anything to get you back. Are you still listening to me, Grace? Am I finally getting through?’

  ‘Where’s Jude now?’ she whispered with tears in her eyes.

  At last, a glimpse of the old, empathetic Grace. ‘He had an asthma attack. Cristal drove him to the hospital.’

  As she closed her eyes, the tears brimmed over and trickled down. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘He was here – literally here – and they didn’t tell you. How does that make you feel? What does it tell you about what these people are trying to do to you?’

  She swayed and took a step closer to the edge.

  ‘And Oliver – did you hear what they did to him? He died, Grace. He had a major breakdown then he walked out of here and he died on the mountain. And guess what – they don’t even care!’

  ‘No! They— We’re not responsible!’ she cried. ‘People choose their own courses of action.’

  ‘So Oliver wasn’t brave enough and that’s why he died?’

  She nodded, choked back the tears and stepped away from the edge. ‘It’s down to you, what you choose to believe, Tania. I was hoping I could explain, but obviously it’s going to take more time.’

  ‘You wanted to convert me?’ I gasped, following her back down the side of the pool and laughing at the irony of the situation. Only this wasn’t funny and my old Grace was disappearing fast. ‘Won’t you meet with Jude? Please – just once!’

  She kept her head turned away, looked up and saw Ezra coming down the steps to join us. Quickly she dipped her hand into the pocket of her robe. ‘I found something that belongs to you,’ she said quietly, handing it to me without letting Ezra see. ‘I know it means a lot.’

  I glanced down and saw my gold cross nestling in the palm of my hand, glinting gold and red. I closed my fingers over it and thanked her.

  ‘I found it on the floor of the chapel,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t tell Ezra I gave it back.’

  So Grace had a secret too – a tiny doubt, an area of mistrust. It was the one hope I still held out for her as I said goodbye, left Black Eagle Lodge and made my way back down to Bitterroot.

  11

  I walked down from Black Rock at the same time as Zoran rose above it. At least, it was his private helicopter taking off from the helipad and so I assumed that he was in it, rising into the sky and gazing down on us mere mortals crawling like ants across the landscape. The force of the churning blades flattened the feathery grass, a wind whipped through the silver aspens as the machine gained height and banked off to the south.

  I pictured Zoran at the controls, a co-pilot at his side, swooping off the mountain into the valley below. And a heavy weight lifted. I felt I could breathe easier now that he was gone.

  ‘Hey, you found crucifix!’ were Dad’s first words when I went into the house.

  I’d hung the family heirloom back on its gold chain, next to Orlando’s heart, soon after Grace had smuggled it from her pocket into my palm. It felt cool and smooth at my throat, back where it belonged.

  Dad’s next words, spoken emphatically and with a serious expression, were, ‘Facebook news. Come see.’

  So I followed him into his small office at the back of the house and waited while he clicked on to an exchange in Romanian w
ith a friend listed as Dr Stefan Bibesco.

  ‘Who’s this doctor guy?’ I asked.

  ‘Cousin,’ Dad replied, busy finding the right click to translate the entries into English for me. ‘Father’s sister’s kid. Works at Spitalul de Urgenta Floreasca in Bucharest. The Emergency Hospital. Now read.’

  I stooped to read the screen.

  Hey, Stefan, Dad had begun. Long time no speak. Say hi to your father, mother and sisters. Hope all is good with you. Do you still work in the Floreasca hospital? If so, I want to ask you a few questions.

  Hey, Andrey, came the reply. Look who crawled out of the woodwork! How is life in the US? How are Karen and Tania? And yes, I’m still at the clinic, overworked and underpaid. Anyway, feel free and ask away.

  OK, Stefan. The question goes back a couple of years. You remember when big star Zoran Brancusi smashed up his Porsche and came to your hospital? Were you on duty that day? Do you recall any medical details?

  I stood back and exchanged glances with Dad. ‘What are you up to?’ I asked.

  ‘Read!’ he insisted.

  Unexpected line of questioning, Andrey – Sure. I was there. Crash happened on mountain road. They airlifted Brancusi out of there – multiple injuries to skull, spine and internal organs. X-rays of head and full body scan, then emergency surgical procedure to release build-up of pressure from bleeding inside the skull. Why do you ask?

  Thanks for the detailed reply, Stefan. Recently Brancusi came to live in America. He built a home near us – did you know?

  I read about it. How do you like your new neighbour?

  Not a whole lot. But here’s my main question – what happened in the operating theatre? And how come there were rumours that he died?

  More than rumours, Andrey. The surgeon, Mihail Cantemis, is a friend of mine. The bleed out into the brain was massive, and there were other complications. Cantemis told me they lost the heartbeat then attempted to resuscitate for thirty-five minutes before they finally declared Brancusi dead.