Mazey survived, but only just, and it took her weeks to fully recover. She was only just well enough to come with Dazey and me to Rick’s funeral. It was a hot day, too hot to wear black, and I stayed out of earshot of the priest’s valedictory prayers. Dazey cried all the way through it, a thin howl that reminded me uncomfortably of Megedagik’s howling.
After two weeks I flew back to New York. I would have preferred to go back to Florida, where the rich old ladies lived, but I guessed that Detective Blezard still had my card marked. As for my own cards, they stayed black, and the pictures never returned, so I had to buy a new deck. I put it down as business expenses.
On the way back to New York I stopped off in St Louis and went to see Anna at her laboratory at SLU. Epiphany was there, too, and we all went out to lunch together at an Italian restaurant called Joseph’s, on North Sixth Street. None of us were very hungry, because we still had a strange and sickening experience to talk about, but the place was bustling and cheerful, which was what we needed.
I was pleased to see Epiphany again, too. You know when you sometimes meet people and immediately get along with them, as if you had known them practically all your life? She and me were like that. By the time we had finished our meal I was sorely tempted to stay in St Louis so that I could get to know her better. After all, I thought, all I ever need to set up shop is a deck of cards and a steady supply of wealthy old biddies who needed to hear if they were ever going to find themselves a gigolo.
Anna said, ‘We’re making very good progress with the Meramac School virus. I’ll almost be sorry when we find a way to make it destroy itself. God knows what would have happened if we hadn’t been able to kill BV-1.’
‘So how about BV-1?’ I asked her. ‘Have you found out any more about that?’
She nodded. ‘We’ve done hundreds of tests on those samples I took from Cedars-Sinai, and we have some theories, although I have to admit that they’re only theories. BV-1 is a very old-fashioned virus, even when you compare it with the virus that caused the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918. We believe it was Grandier’s influence that made it so deadly – or should I say Gressil’s? I don’t know. Maybe I should say Satan’s.’
‘Gressil himself was the virus,’ said Epiphany. ‘We think that he impregnated Jeanne des Anges with those infected bedbugs, and that when she had given birth to them they somehow combined together to form those giant bedbugs. There are plenty of other creatures in nature which combine together to form one larger creature, just like amoebas splitting, but in reverse.’
‘You were so right about Urbain Grandier and those two wonder-workers being behind the times, though,’ said Anna. ‘Only certain people caught the BV-1 virus, and at first we couldn’t understand why. I did some genealogical research on them, though. We’re still not one hundred percent sure of it, but it seems as if they were the direct descendants of the colonists who landed in America in the 1600s, when those three were first alive.’
‘But the virus itself,’ I said. ‘How did it make people have fits like that and bring up so much blood?’
‘Again, we can’t be completely sure. But what Gressil seemed to do was invade your body and your mind with his own personality. He made you vomit out all of your blood, which contained any antibodies that might have prevented him from taking you over, and then he pushed your own personality out of your brain, which made you convulse. That was why its victims kept saying, “Get it out of me!” And that’s why they appeared to come alive again, after they had died.’
She toyed with the wild mushroom risotto that she had ordered, and then laid her fork down. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t eat this. I keep thinking of David and what he must have suffered. And your friend Rick. And all of those other poor people who died.’
Her eyes filled with tears, and she wiped them with her napkin. Epiphany reached across the table and held her hand.
‘Hey – it’s going to take all three of us a long time to get over this,’ I told them. ‘Apart from that, nobody will ever understand what we did, although it’s probably better that they don’t. Knowing what’s really out there, you know – knowing what they really need to be afraid of – that’s more than most people could take without going doolally.’
It started to rain as I left Anna and Epiphany at the entrance to SLU. An ambulance was turning in, with its siren shrieking, and I didn’t hear what it was that Epiphany said to me. I kissed them both, and then I hailed a cab and asked the driver to take me to Lambert. I could still taste Epiphany’s perfume on my lips.
When we were halfway to the airport, my cell buzzed, and I saw that I had received a text message. It said simply: One day can you tell my fortune? E.
Plague of the Manitou Page 33