The Clock Strikes Nun

by Alice Loweecey

  “It has its own parking lot,” Zane said. “I am officially intimidated.”

  “Choose a parking space like we own it. Pretend it’s the Middle Ages when the Church had more authority than any king.”

  “Don’t say ‘Middle Ages’ to a Pagan. We get collective memory flashbacks of the Inquisition.”

  “Don’t look at me. I was a Franciscan.”

  He parked in the first space in the four-car parking lot. “I knew there was an underlying reason I like working for you.”

  “Time for a last-minute rehearsal. Who are you?”

  “I’m your assistant. I’m the strong, silent type. No conversation with anyone after introductions and handshakes.”

  “Correct. We will wrap ourselves in a remote and confident aura. Today we aren’t smiling, helpful Driscoll Investigations making a house call. We are Driscoll Investigations, Spiritual Roto-Rooters.” She giggled, slapped her hand over her mouth, and held her breath until the urge passed.

  “I didn’t hear that,” Zane said. “I am Zane, possessor of mystery and power. Maybe you should teach me some Latin.”

  Giulia shook her head. “My official letter mentions only me. Ready?”

  “We are a united front. I’ll take all my cues from you.”

  “I’ll tell your girlfriend to dress you as a Minion for Halloween.”

  He turned pale eyes on her. “Please don’t give her ideas.”

  “Far be it from me to jeopardize the mental serenity of my employees.” She returned the letter to her messenger bag—one of the few black accessories she’d bought on purpose. The sparkly violet bag she really wanted to buy would not have inspired confidence in potential clients.

  Zane adjusted his collar and slid a pencil and a folded piece of paper into his pocket. “I’ll scribble blind during the ceremony if I think something is too essential to risk forgetting.”

  Giulia touched everything in the bag: flask of holy water, ornate ebony and silver crucifix, and a Bible sized to fit comfortably in one hand. She’d bought an Estonian translation because Zane wanted to see it and because she didn’t know a word of Estonian. With this open in her hand, she wouldn’t be distracted from her memorized Latin.

  They exited the car as a team. Zane said, “Curtains at a side window just twitched closed.”

  “Here we go.” Giulia kept one pace ahead of Zane as they opened the gate and walked sedately up the front steps.

  Overstuffed ivory jacquard cushions topped the brown wicker sofas and chairs on the porch. At the arms of each sofa and chair were small pebbled glass tables. Ivy on trellises anchored in matching wicker baskets flanked the furniture groupings. Suspended from the ceiling, long octagonal church lamps. Giulia had spent thousands of hours in pews beneath the light shining through the same buttery glass insets.

  She led Zane down the short stone-lined path on the left side of the porch and rang the doorbell. The door combined the church lamp glass with the wrought iron fence flowers.

  A maid in a black knee-length dress with white collar, cuffs, and apron opened the door. Giulia applauded the choice of black nursing-style shoes for support but cringed inwardly at her stockings. She cherished an eternal hate for those uncomfortable, impractical, rip or run at the touch of a butterfly wing torture devices. Which is probably why the maid needed only a veil to resemble Giulia in her early convent years.

  “Good morning.” Giulia did not smile. “We are here to see Ms. Newton.”

  The maid paled beneath her olive skin. “Yes, ma’am. Please come in, ma’am.”

  Driscoll Investigations, Spiritual Spring Cleaners, entered the Dahlia castle as though their very presence would make malign influences tremble in their ectoplasmic boots.

  No wonder Muriel mentioned interior design magazines beating down the castle doors for a chance to feature it. The foyer begged to be the setting for bridal photoshoots. Polished oak flooring led the eye to a graceful sweep of carpeted stairs with a curved oak railing. The newel was dahlia-shaped. Of course it was.

  The main hallway ended at a small screened-in back porch with a stairwell next to it. Directly to the left, an archway led into the parlor seen from the front porch. Around the stairs, another archway gave a glimpse of a dining room table.

  No church lights in here. Two skylights flooded the foyer with natural light and the oak gleamed in response. A hanging group of glass-and-gold lamps waited for nightfall.

  The maid pressed a discreet intercom next to the light switch. “Ms. Newton, they’re here.”

  Giulia did not think of Carol Ann in Poltergeist. Absolutely not.

  Cissy Newton bustled into the foyer from the dining room. With her khaki trousers and white blouse, she blended in with the maid. Then again, Giulia’s and Zane’s choice of clothing blended in as well, making the entire bunch of them look like various ranks of servants.

  Cissy’s open arms dropped to her sides before she hugged Giulia. Her sneakers squeaked to a halt on the oak, and she grasped Giulia’s free hand instead.

  “Ms. Driscoll, we’re extremely relieved you’re here. It’s been hel—that is, dreadful.” She tilted her head toward the maid. “Melina says we shouldn’t mention certain words. I don’t want to risk a horrible mistake through misplaced skepticism.”

  Giulia chose not to address the idea. “Before we start, please let Ms. Patrick know we’re here.”

  When Giulia donned Sister Mary Regina Coelis’ authority, Cissy responded like she’d been programmed. Catholic school in the old days without a doubt.

  “Certainly.” She went to the same wall intercom and pressed a second button. “Elaine?”

  A light voice distorted only a smidge by the speaker replied. “Are they here? I’ll be right down.”

  “Come on out, you two.” Cissy beckoned toward the door behind the central stairs.

  A rail-thin older woman with bright auburn hair and faded eyes reached the foyer first. She wore the same maid outfit. At her heels came a pudgy young man with small dark eyes, a small crooked nose, and a small plump mouth. Despite the decades between the two, he seemed the elder. The worry lines scored into his forehead, perhaps, versus the extreme vitality of the woman.

  “Ms. Driscoll, this is the household staff. Melina you’ve met. She does most of the heavy work. Georgia is our whiz at light cleaning, and Mike is our treasure of a cook.”

  Handshakes all around. Melina bobbed a brief curtsy. “You are the holy one. Ms. Newton tells us of you. You will rid this place of the demon.”

  “That’s why she’s here.” Elaine clattered down the central stairs in a daffodil-yellow skirt and leaf-green sleeveless blouse. The yellow and green beads on her sandals clacked against each other for a few seconds after her feet stopped moving. “Ms. Driscoll, I’m thrilled to discover you’re more than the average bear.” A breathy giggle. “Oh, dear. I stayed up late watching Yogi Bear cartoons. Do forgive me.” She took Giulia by the shoulders and turned her right and left. “You look marvelous. I can’t wait for you to evict the nasty old demon in my house.” The shoulder grip became a weak hug. The thin fingers twitched on Giulia’s spine.

  Giulia allowed herself a light pat on Elaine’s back and stepped away from the hug. Her first mental note: Elaine’s mother took Xanax. Muriel had hinted Elaine followed suit. Check the med’s side effects.

  Elaine shrank into the cowed wallflower who’d knocked on DI’s door a few days earlier. “I’m—I’m lucky to have so many wonderful people taking care of me. Cissy told me all about hiring you, and Pip says Cissy is the best manager ever.” Her fingers twisted and untwisted.

  Giulia said, “Is there a table large enough for all of us to sit at once?” She said it with a straight face too.

  Elaine the princess of her castle appeared. “Oh, yes. Please come into the dining room. Mike, would you bring tea and scones, please?”

 
Giulia held up one hand. “Thank you, no. We are here on business.”

  Elaine saved Giulia from continuing the pompous speech. “Oh! Oh, of course, you must be fasting or something.” She led the group toward the dining room. “I read all kinds of exorcism information on the internet last night.” A shiver conveying delight rather than fear. “It’s thrilling. What else are you able to do if we need it? Can you read Tarot cards? Can you cleanse a room with salt and sage? What about a Ouija board? I have a Ouija board. Oh—I suppose you’d want to use your own. Do you have a spirit guide? Is it from Ancient Egypt? Ancient Egypt fascinates me.”

  The twelve mahogany chairs at the dining room table were upholstered in ivory brocade. An oriental carpet in shades of crimson, ivory, and black covered two-thirds of the oak floor. A crystal vase filled with multicolored dahlias in the center mirrored one on the sideboard. The ivory wallpaper set off the crimson curtains. The floor and table glowed in the light of two chandeliers.

  Giulia had to will herself to enter the room with confidence. Raised in a lower middle-class neighborhood and living on the edge of poverty in the convent, even now with a successful business she seldom spent money without three separate reasons. She’d never have thought the most difficult part of becoming Giulia Driscoll Ghost Breaker would be sublimating Giulia the perpetual drudge.

  Elaine took the chair at the head of the table. Giulia sat in the chair to her right and slid her iPad across to Zane on her left. At a nod from Cissy, the other three took chairs as well.

  Giulia didn’t dare look at Zane lest they both break character. “I would like each of you to describe any anomalies you have seen, heard, or felt in the house. Mr. Hall will catalogue them in our database.”

  “You see?” Melina elbowed Mike. “They do not use only holy water and books. They are up to date. I told you.”

  Mike raised both hands in a gesture of surrender. “I concede. Chocolate soufflé for dessert tonight.”

  Cissy said, “Dessert is not why we’re here. Georgia, please begin.”

  As one, the castle staff became serious.

  “I’m going to be blunt.” Georgia’s voice was as deceptively youthful as her appearance. “I’ve never heard of a female exorcist before. What are your credentials?”

  “Georgia,” Melina hissed.

  Giulia took Pat’s letter out of her messenger bag. “I wouldn’t expect you to believe everything I tell you without proof.” She handed the letter to Cissy, who passed it down.

  Georgia opened it and gave Giulia a “point to you” look. “The church seal looks genuine, but I don’t read Latin.”

  Melina plucked it from her hands. “This is from a Franciscan. The Jesuits possess greater knowledge and history of the war against evil, but my great-grandmother would accept the word of a Franciscan.”

  Giulia bit the inside of her lower lip.

  “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost…” Melina handed it back. “I only know words from the prayers my great-grandmother taught me.”

  Giulia translated the letter.

  “You’re related to this priest?” Georgia said.

  “He’s my brother-in-law.”

  “Good.” Melina stuck a finger in Georgia’s face. “I know what you are thinking, and you are wrong. No priest would risk censure from the Bishop and the wrath of the family at Thanksgiving dinner by falsifying these credentials.”

  Zane snorted and coughed together. Giulia held her breath until the same urge passed.

  Georgia laughed out loud. “You’re reasoning’s cuckoo, but you have a point. I accept your authority, Ms. Driscoll. I haven’t heard much out of the ordinary. Mostly odd footsteps in the upper floors when I knew I was the only one around.”

  “That could be the house settling,” Cissy said.

  “Not at noon. If I’d heard things early in the morning or at twilight, I’d give the house the benefit of the doubt.” She sat back, arms crossed.

  “Mike?” Cissy said.

  Giulia may have drawn a parallel to her own teaching years calling on students in a classroom.

  Mike tented his fingers. “I applied the Sherlock Holmes deductive rule to the problem. I ruled out rats and mice, because we don’t have any, and I know by heart all the sounds Ms. Newton’s chameleons make.”

  “Chameleons?”

  Cissy said, “I breed chameleons. Not near the food preparation area, of course, but their sun porch opens off the kitchen hallway.”

  “We’re all familiar with chameleon noises,” Georgia said. “I stopped hearing them years ago.”

  “Like I said,” Mike continued, “I eliminated critter noises and the house settling, same as Georgia. I also ruled out the usual stray radio signals my dental work picks up on cloudy days.”

  Georgia snorted. “You never told me that one.”

  “Because I knew you’d laugh, old biddy.”

  Cissy rapped her knuckles on the polished table.

  The cook shifted his attention to his hands. The outer rims of his ears turned cinnamon. “When I eliminated the impossible, I knew that whatever remained, however improbable, had to be the truth.” He met Giulia’s eyes. “I fudged that quote a little, but you know what I mean.” Back to his hands. “I keep hearing whispers. Not every day, and not at the same time or anything, but I’m alone in the kitchen a lot, and when I’m concentrating on a recipe I don’t keep the radio on.”

  “Is it the same voice every time?” Giulia glanced across to confirm Zane’s fingers were doing their job. She’d forgotten one of the iPad keyboard’s selling points was its silence.

  “Oh, God, do you mean there could be more than one?” Sherlock Holmes vanished. “Ms. Driscoll, can you do the kitchen first?”

  Giulia didn’t respond to the plea. “Please be specific about the voice or voices you have heard.” Rowan was right. Certain clients responded better to the businesslike approach.

  “First was the high, breathy one. I never understood what it said, and it only seemed to show up when I was using the mixer or some other loud appliance. It likes to play tag team with the giggler.” He shivered. On Elaine, a shiver looked cute. On him, it looked like he needed his mother. “The giggler never says anything, it just laughs.”

  “When did the voices begin?”

  Mike looked at Georgia, who looked at Melina.

  “Six days ago.”

  “You forgot about the sunrise cackler.”

  “Was that my day off?”

  “You are both neglecting the one who moans in the night.”

  “Tuesday, wasn’t it?”

  “Also Sunday and yesterday.”

  “The giggler is worse. It sounds like a demented circus clown. I hate clowns.”

  “Stop.” Melina put out her hands to her co-workers like an old-fashioned traffic cop. “The evil has also touched Miss Elaine.”

  “Oh no, no, no, don’t say ‘touched.’ Now I’ll think a disembodied hand is lurking in the corners of every room.” Elaine shuddered hard enough to rattle the flowers in the centerpiece.

  Cissy’s glare withered Melina.

  “I apologize, Miss Elaine. What I should have said was that you too have experienced otherworldly phenomena.”

  Elaine smiled at Melina as friend to friend, not master to servant. “That’s all right. We have to give our exorcist all the correct details or we’re not helping her help us.” To Giulia: “Pip heard things first. I tend to live in my own world, you know. People say it’s because I’m an only child. Anyway, the first few times Pip heard things I was in the middle of designing a dress or reading a book. You could set a bomb off in the room sometimes and I wouldn’t hear it.”

  “That’s true,” Cissy said. “Elaine’s been like that since I first came here when she was seven.”

  Elaine’s dazzling smile brightened every castle inmate’s face. The room’s
gravity lightened. After a beat, Zane resumed typing. Giulia regretted not smuggling in Olivier as part of her entourage. She set herself to remember his name when she and Zane catalogued today’s experience.

  “Cissy always knows.” Elaine included Giulia in her diffusion of sunshine. “After Pip twice heard sounds I missed, I put all my favorite books away and listened to my own house.” She leaned forward a hair, well short of Giulia’s personal space. “I heard the footsteps.”

  “Was that all?”

  The blue eyes opened wide enough for the whites to circle them completely. “Oh, no. I heard the cackling too. And the books. Melina, tell them about the books.”

  “Three days ago, I found one of the family Bibles torn to pieces and scattered on the library floor.” Melina crossed herself. “In Miss Elaine’s bathroom we found a prayer book of her grandmother’s in the sink. Such a beautiful book ruined.”

  “That particular faucet has a drip no one’s ever been able to stop. I’d say it’s the first sign of a haunting, but it’s dripped ever since we bought the castle back when I was three. No ghost would dare haunt a house my mother lived in.” Elaine’s bright smile turned brittle. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say my mother’s haunting me because she doesn’t approve of the way I decorated the house.”

  Despite the fascinating revelations everyone was gifting her, Giulia herded her clients back into line. “I want to be clear. Have you called us to exorcise a demonic presence, or do you believe nothing more than a ghost is disturbing the house?”

  Silence. Surreptitious glances.

  Melina: “It is a demon.”

  Georgia: “If it were only footsteps and whispers, I’d say ghost. If anything besides Bibles and prayer books had been destroyed, I’d go for poltergeist. But I have to agree with Melina.”

  Mike: “I guess I’m not sure. I mean, I’m not Catholic or anything. I’ll defer to them.”

  Giulia gestured to Zane, who closed the tablet. Giulia pushed back her chair. “Ms. Patrick, please take us to the library.”

  They followed Elaine like ducks up the graceful central stairs: Giulia and Zane, Cissy, the staff.