Servant
Page 14
“How will you know what she looks like?”
He gave Phil a piercing stare. “Randy and I spoke at length on the phone this morning. If his description of the girl is accurate, I believe I know exactly what she looks like. I’ve seen a girl fitting her description at Mass a few different times. She sat toward the front but wouldn’t take communion, so I assumed she wasn’t Catholic.” He looked to Randy. “Was she Catholic?”
Randy had no idea, as the subject never came up during the painful conversations he’d had with the young woman. “I’m not sure. I actually don’t know much about her at all.”
“Shouldn’t God have given you better insight than that?”
Randy’s muscles tensed. “You make it sound like I should have all the answers.”
The priest gave him a hard look, and Randy didn’t like it. “You told me his Spirit flows in your veins.”
Phil muttered “Uh-oh” and turned away from them both.
Randy tried to keep his tone civil. Father Preston, also a servant of God in his own way, couldn’t imagine what it was like to be in his position. “That may be, but I am not God. He just enables me to see the evil that walks among us.”
“You didn’t see the evil in your old mentor.”
“Graham wasn’t possessed. What he did was of his own choosing.”
“But you didn’t see it coming.”
“Clairvoyance is not my spiritual gift, Father, nor am I a prophet. I’ve been chosen to help free the afflicted and encourage them to devote their lives to Christ. I can’t read minds and I can’t predict the future with any more certainty than you can. I’m simply a humble servant like you.”
Father Preston gave a slow nod. “I thought your abilities extended beyond that.”
“You give me too much credit.”
Silence engulfed them until Phil broke it a second time. “Okay. Father, you’re going to keep an eye out for Trish at church, but we should check the woods around here first. If you’re right about her being alive, she’s going to be a danger to herself and anyone she meets in her present condition.”
“It’s a shame she can’t be reported as a missing person,” Father Preston said. “It would help to have her face posted all over town.”
Not if she’s dead like I know she is. Randy nodded in agreement anyway. “I guess we should go outside and start looking.”
“That’s the best idea I’ve heard since we got here,” Phil said as he started up the stairs.
Randy stood and let Father Preston go in front of him, and when the priest and Phil reached the top of the steps, he said, “Go ahead and start without me. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
“We’ll start in the back,” Phil said. “If you don’t see us when you come outside, give us a holler.”
The sound of their footsteps moved toward the door that Bobby entered the night before and faded as they left the house.
Randy turned from the stairs and looked over the basement once more in search of an explanation. Bodies did not rise from the dead, nor did they dissolve into nothingness overnight like a puff of smoke.
“Trish,” he whispered, “you’ve got to give me a hand here. God says I need to open my eyes. Can you tell me what I’m supposed to be looking at?”
The bed in the corner was just as messy as it had been last night since neither he nor Trish had been available to straighten the covers and fluff the pillows. The throw pillows on the couch sat in their usual places. The matching armchairs were undisturbed. The chair he had tied Trish to had not been moved. The cloth bindings—
Wait a minute.
He stepped closer to the strips of cloth that lay on the vinyl seat of the kitchen chair and picked one up. Both edges were frayed from when he had created the strips from cutting up an old sheet. They weren’t the best bindings in the world, but he’d had no desire to inflict additional suffering upon the possessed by tying them to a chair with rope.
He wished he didn’t have to tie them at all. It gave him the sick sense that he was the tormentor and they the prey, but it had to be done because sometimes the afflicted became violent.
He brought the cloth close to his face, gripped it tighter in his hand, and closed his eyes. His mind replayed the scene of Trish suddenly listing to one side in the chair. He had untied her as quickly as he could and laid her on the carpet between the couch and the coffee table so he could try to revive her.
The cloth strips had fallen on the floor. He’d had no need to pick them up.
He opened his eyes and set the strip back on the chair with the others.
As he started up the stairs to join Phil and Father Preston outside in what would be the most fruitless search in which he had ever participated, a rather disturbing thought filled his head.
If a stranger had come to take Trish’s body, he or she would have needed to break in since Randy had not returned the spare key to the mat outside.
Someone who knew him well could have simply made a copy of his key.
RANDY FOUND Phil and Father Preston standing beside the house, where footprints in the muddy grass indicated that someone with a man’s stature had slipped and staggered while walking from the driveway to the side door.
“These aren’t a woman’s footprints,” Phil said as he pointed to a particularly prominent one sunk about a quarter of an inch into the flattened grass. “Unless Trish was wearing a man’s shoes when she left.”
Father Preston had his hands folded in front of him and was doing a poor job of masking a troubled face. He remained silent.
Randy came up beside them. “Any progress?”
“Only if this counts.”
Randy bent over to examine one of the prints. He held his foot next to it, noting the print was slightly smaller than those his own shoes made. He would have to take note of Bobby’s shoe size when they returned to the safe house. “There isn’t anything else?”
“No. We checked around back and didn’t see a thing.”
Randy wasn’t surprised. “Then that settles it. Trish must have had enough of her own wits about her that she followed the driveway back out to the road.” He spoke only for the priest’s benefit and hoped his tone didn’t ring overly false. Fibbing wasn’t something he preferred to do.
Father Preston nodded. “Then it looks like my job here is finished.”
And that was that.
As soon as the priest left, Randy went to the bathroom medicine cabinet and swallowed three extra-strength Tylenol to quell the headache forming behind his eyes.
Phil appeared in the open bathroom doorway, hands in his pockets. “You alright?”
Randy wiped the sweat off his face with a damp cloth and eyed his reflection. A sleep-deprived stranger stared back at him with bloodshot eyes. “Yep. Let’s get back to the safe house and take Bobby home.”
He turned toward the bathroom door but Phil made no motion to leave. Phil had always looked young for his age, but right now every one of his thirty-eight years and then some were etched in lines upon his face.
Sometimes he forgot that Phil often shared the weight of the crosses Randy carried.
“Just stay here and get some sleep while I go get him,” Phil said. “There’s nothing else you can do today.”
It sounded like a wonderful idea, but he couldn’t do that just yet. “No. I need to talk to Bobby. I don’t think he really snuck in here after we left last night, but maybe he knows something else about Trish that we don’t.”
AS HE lay on the floor behind the front row of seats in Phil’s car, Randy fell into a light doze and dreamed about the day when Phil passed the mantle of Servitude on to him.
It was a dream he had often, and it never failed to fill him with peace.
He had been twenty then and eager to serve his Maker, but like all entering the fold for the first time, he didn’t quite know what to expect. He had been overcome with a terror that he couldn’t put into words even though Phil and the others assured him that all would be well.
They had been alone in Phil’s house and all the blinds had been drawn. They wore ordinary clothes. No candles and no incense perfumed the air.
“We don’t do big ceremonies,” Phil had said. “I’ve never been fond of pomp, anyway.”
Randy sat cross-legged on the floor. Phil stood before him, wearing an expression that seemed to convey both sadness and great joy. “Do you, Randy, accept this mantle and all that is associated with it?”
And Randy had said, “I do.”
“And do you vow to serve God the Father, Jesus Christ his son, and the Holy Spirit no matter the cost?”
Randy bowed his head. “Yes.”
Then, as if a great spotlight suddenly shined upon him, his soul lit up with the dazzling brightness of ten thousand suns, and he knew without a doubt this was no joke.
“We’re here,” the Phil of the present said, and Randy sat up with a groan.
JOANNA’S LAUGHTER brought a grin to Bobby’s face. “Just think of what everyone is going to say when I get home and show them I finally learned how to play ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’!” She plunked out the tune again with her right index finger and smiled as if she’d just won a million dollars. “Maybe someday I’ll even learn how to play it with more than one finger.”
Bobby couldn’t help but feel her enthusiasm. After he and Carly made amends, Joanna came downstairs to grab a drink, and since she’d been so emotional about his botched rendering of Pachelbel’s Canon (and since there was absolutely nothing else in the house that he could do), he’d offered to show her how to play some things if she was interested.
“I don’t know,” she’d said. “The only instrument I’ve ever played is a kazoo.”
“The piano’s a piece of cake,” he said. “I guarantee you’ll have learned something by dinnertime.”
That had been two hours ago. She sat down on his right at the piano bench, and he’d instinctively scooted as far to the left as he could without falling on the floor. Touching other people did not figure among his favorite things to do. Sitting hip to hip with a member of the opposite sex was even worse because he wasn’t used to being around women his age and he had the uncanny ability to always make an absolute fool of himself.
Fortunately Joanna didn’t seem to notice his discomfort—and Bobby became so engrossed in showing her how to play that he’d nearly forgotten about Randy and Phil’s prolonged absence.
Carly watched them for awhile from her place on the couch, but finally she left them, saying she needed to think about supper.
The latter word gave Bobby a jolt, and he’d whirled around to see the clock. It was after three. Either Carly planned to prepare a feast, or she’d just wanted to leave the two of them alone.
It wasn’t his job to understand the minds of women.
“That was great,” Bobby said when Joanna finished the song. “What did I tell you?”
Her cheeks turned pink. “You’re just saying that.”
“Fine. It’s great for your first day.”
“That’s better.”
“You’ve really never played the piano before?” Nearly everyone he’d known growing up had a piano in their house, though sometimes the instrument only served as a shelf on which the owners would sit their family photos. But what child wouldn’t be fascinated by the row of shiny black and white keys and prod at them to see what they would do?
She shrugged. “My grandparents had one, but when I was little they’d yell at me every time I’d touch it. Like I could break it with my bitty little fingers.”
“That’s mean.”
Her shoulders slumped, and Bobby suddenly had the impression that Joanna’s excitement at learning the song masked a much deeper, aching sadness. “Yeah. They’d yell at me about other things, too. They raised me until I was eight and my mom got out of prison. She’s clean now, though, my mom. She and I get along fairly well. I mean, we did for awhile.”
“Um, that’s good.” What was he supposed to say to someone who had been in Joanna’s situation? “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
“It’s okay.” She stood up and smoothed out the skirt of her summer dress. “Do you want to go outside? I hate being cooped up. Gives me cabin fever.”
“Sure.” Bobby could use a breath of fresh air, himself. “Where to?”
“The front porch. Didn’t you see the chairs out there when you first came in?”
He hadn’t because he had been too busy watching Joanna and Carly tossing the Frisbee, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. “I must have missed them. Let’s go.”
Joanna led the way out of the room. “Carly, we’ll be out on the porch,” she called into the kitchen.
Carly lifted her gaze from a recipe book she’d propped open on the island and gave them a knowing smile. “Have fun.”
A gust of wind rippled Bobby’s clothes when they stepped out onto the porch. Four wrought-iron chairs with cushions were lined up facing the driveway, and a barrel covered with a square piece of painted plywood served as a table.
Bobby sank into one of the chairs and Joanna took the one to his right. They sat in silence for a minute or two. Inside, the piano had given them something to talk about, but out here, there were only the trees and the sky.
“You’re quiet,” she finally said, glancing his way.
His face flushed, and he cursed himself for it. The majority of men his age had dated before (and gone much further than that, besides), and here he was acting like an awkward schoolboy who didn’t know the first thing about talking to a woman. “I don’t have much to say.”
“People lie when they say that. They have plenty to say but they’re just afraid to say it.”
“Is that it?”
“I’m positive. So just say whatever you want.”
Bobby locked his eyes on the point where the driveway vanished around the bottom of the hill. Talking didn’t appear on his list of favorite activities, either, but he decided that doing so might help cheer her up. “How did you meet Randy?”
“Oh.” Her voice faltered a bit. “I don’t know if you want to know that.”
He glanced over at her and saw that a frown had etched itself on her doe-like face. “I don’t want to upset you. I just want to understand what happened. I want to know why Randy does what he does and how he finds the people to do it to.”
A shadow crossed over her face. “I’m not so sure I understand, myself. Randy got it to speak when . . .” She shook her head and cleared her throat. “Sorry. I’ll try to start at the beginning so I don’t confuse you. I’m only twenty, so I haven’t been out of school for very long. My senior year of high school I started hanging out with some people my mom didn’t like. They were into drugs, and I tried them too because I thought if I did they’d think I was cool. It sounds so stupid now. I thought a lot of stupid things.”
She paused and stared down at her slender white hands. She wore a cheap silver ring with a heart-shaped pink jewel on one finger—the kind you could get out of the machine at the grocery store for a quarter.
“My friends were into the occult,” she continued, her face becoming increasingly pained. “They acted like it was a game. One of them was the son of a pastor, and it was his way of spiting his parents. They’d try to cast spells and hold séances, which I’m not even sure I believe in. The things we saw and heard were probably caused by the drugs.
“Finally I overdosed and had to be rushed to the hospital. If my mom hadn’t been home I probably would have died. After I got better I realized I needed to dump my friends before their lifestyle killed me. Once I was clean I never went back to them. I got a job at a grocery store and got my grades back up just in time for me to graduate.”
She paused to draw in a breath. “Are you bored yet?”
Bobby shook his head, his eyes wide. “Not
even close.”
She gave a shy smile. “About a month after graduation, I started getting really moody. These thoughts kept popping into my head out of nowhere. ‘Joanna, you’re no good,’ they’d say. Or, ‘Joanna, face it. You were so much better off with them because at least you could feel like you belonged.’ And then the images started coming. I could be sitting at home eating a bowl of cereal and all of a sudden I’d have this vivid image of picking up the spoon and jabbing it into my mom’s eye. And a voice would say, ‘Do it!’ and I knew that I would never do something so horrible because who in their right mind would ever try to kill their mother? And with a spoon! And I’d have horrible nightmares where I’d walk into a daycare and pour gasoline everywhere and light a match, and I would laugh and laugh as the kids burned, and I was burning too, but I couldn’t stop laughing.”
She stopped again. This time tears glistened in her eyes. “You can’t imagine how vivid it all was. I could see those things more clearly than I can see you sitting next to me.”
Bobby felt his head nod. “I think I can.”
“No. You really can’t. Not unless you’ve been there, too.”
He had nothing to say about that.
She went on. “It got so bad I couldn’t leave the house or even my bedroom. I quit my job. I barely ate. I told my mom to stay away from me because even though I knew I’d never try to hurt her, something inside of me wanted to do it really badly. This voice kept saying that everything bad that had happened in my life was her fault since she’d been in jail for so many years, and that if she died, my life would become so much better. It kept telling me that if Mom was gone, all the bad thoughts and nightmares would go away, too.”
“But you resisted it.”
“Yes!” Her cheeks flushed. “But the more I did, the worse it got. I didn’t know it could get any worse because it was so bad already. I would see things that weren’t there. Visions, you know. Only instead of staying in my head I could see them like they were happening right in front of me. Mom thought there might be something wrong in my head so she had me tested again and again only they couldn’t find one single thing in my brain that was out of whack. Then she started talking about taking me to a shrink and I flipped out. Because I knew I wasn’t crazy. I knew that whatever was wrong with me was something evil and that no therapy could fix it. I started wondering if fooling around with the occult had opened me up to something wicked.”