by Mary Eicher
She gave Angie a kiss goodbye.
Angie threw her arms around Artemis’s neck. “Will you come back for Halloween? Mommy says I shouldn’t trick or treat. But I can walk a little, and you could carry me when I get too tired.”
Lucy was not pleased with the request. “Angie, honey, Temmie is probably busy.”
Artemis winked at Angie and whispered. “I will be here. I promise.”
*
The next morning, Artemis awoke to a call from Wolfgang Strang. Willa was holding her own, she was relieved to hear, and Wolf wanted to talk more about his theory. He rambled on in his ebullient way, giving example after example of what he believed were times when the heavens had intervened in human events. He spoke of a cross in the sky that portended a victory in battle and the star of the Magi and comet omens. He had dozens of stories, and she listened politely. Then, sensing he had left her behind, he got to the original purpose of the call.
“I’ve discovered something.” His voice was suddenly serious and professorial. “It was Willa who opened my eyes. She was practicing a pretty melody. Brahms, I think. That’s not important.” He resisted the urge to go off on a new tangent. “Listening to her play, I could see the notes in my head. And they seemed to glow like stars lilting past me.” He got lost in the memory for a moment. “She plays so beautifully, my Willa.”
Artemis knew how much he loved his wife and felt his sadness. She heard him clear his throat.
“I was struck by the arrangement of the notes that produced the lovely melody Willa was playing. I examined the image of the Great Rift which was in front of me like it always is these days and realized I was looking at music. It was singing to me. It was a melody written in the stars. I could see it so clearly.”
She heard him take a few breaths. “What is the melody, Wolf? Can you play it for me?”
“Alas, I am not a musician, Temmie. So, I wrote down the configuration of the stars on a piece of sheet music and gave it to Willa. She worked with it, trying one starting note and then another. She played the twenty notes one at a time and it was just a random assortment of sounds. She suggested that we ask you to work with them.”
Strang returned to the ebullient, rambling speaker she knew. Ideas and explanations tumbled out of him as he talked about music being mathematics, the rhapsody of the universe, the continuum of dark matter he believed moved with rhythm and purpose. Listening to him was like being carried on a swift current that tumbled over precipices and eddied in passing shallows.
She felt he was trying to pour the whole of his knowledge into her. She listened, writing down the notes Willa had thought most likely. Then he asked her to do something for him.
“I want to hear it from you, Temmie. I want you to put it all together for me,” he explained. “I am so damn used to hearing these ideas in my voice it has become a cacophony in my brain. I want you to tell it to me. I want to hear it sung by a goddess.”
She took a breath and tried to formulate a response. “All right, Wolf. Just let me gather my thoughts.”
“No. No, my dear girl. Not right now.” She could hear him chuckling. “This will take you some time. I want you to think about it. Submerge yourself in dark matter and consciousness and all such. When you know you are ready, and you will know when you are, I want you to come back and tell me what it means. Now this is extraordinarily important, Temmie. Do not write anything down. Leave all those glorious ideas in your conscious mind. That is where the answers are. Written words are not capable of containing these concepts. Only the mind is. Only that brilliant consciousness of yours.”
She envisioned him throwing his arms in the air and gyrating with excitement while he spoke. “Will you do it? Will the victorious Goddess of the Hunt do this for me?”
She smiled, unable to refuse. “Yes.”
“That is the answer I wanted to hear!” He sounded ecstatic. “A simple yes without qualifiers like ‘I think so’ or the dreadful phrase ‘I’ll do my best.’ And thank the gods you didn’t say ‘I’ll try.’ My darling girl, I cannot thank you enough.” He paused to cough. “I am sending you thoughts of happiness. May the burden on your heart be eased, Temmie. We send you our love. Goodbye.” And he was gone.
It was then Artemis realized the true purpose behind the call. Willa was not holding her own. She was getting worse. Wolf needed to be with his wife. He wouldn’t have time to pursue the information and he had given it to Artemis for safe keeping. She was honored but it didn’t help with the sadness she felt for them both. She knew all too well what lay before them. Change.
Chapter Sixteen
Election day was the best of days and the worst of times for Samuel Hemsley. He had always spent it in private with his wife and a few very close friends. This election he preferred to spend the day alone. He walked along the beach in Carmel, California, wearing an old pair of slacks, a sweater, and a windbreaker. The wind made a hat unwieldy, but he tied a bandana around his head and wore sunglasses to complete the anonymous look he intended.
He’d picked Carmel because, despite all the venues where they had spent time during their marriage, he and Sarah had loved walking this expanse of beach most. The wind buffeted him with sand as he walked, and he grieved for his wife. His sense of loss grew as the days passed. He grieved for the woman he had always thought he knew and for the woman he had never suspected existed. His chief of staff had briefed him on many clandestine endeavors Sharon had engaged in through the years. The effects of which, he knew, could never be fully tallied. At least one foray into the “black arts,” as Jim had nicknamed Sarah’s activities, had brought her into direct contact with Jamil Uberdorf.
Out of respect Hemsley had not asked for more details. He wanted the whole thing to remain lost in the past. The way Sarah would no doubt have wanted it. So, he asked Jim to do what he could to destroy any evidence, eliminating even the remote possibility of exposure. Jim dubbed it the “bleach-bit campaign.”
Hemsley meandered along the beach avoiding contact with the other beachcombers, who occasionally happened by, until he came upon an elderly man sitting at the base of a bluff and sipping from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. The man waved at him and persisted in calling to him, so Hemsley strolled toward the bluff.
“Drink?” The man held up his bottle, offering it to him.
“Ah, no thank you.”
“Suit yourself.” The man took a healthy drink before setting the bottle in the sand. “Hell of a day, isn’t it?”
Hemsley nodded. He regretted having approached the man and started to back away.
“I was hoping you would sit with me a while,” the man said, pulling wisps of white hair from in front of his eyes. “I don’t have anybody else. I saw you walking alone, and I thought, well, I hoped you might sit with me a spell.”
“Are you ill? Should I get you some help?” Hemsley pulled out his cell.
“Yes. I mean no. I take pills for my ticker, but that’s not new.” He gave Hemsley a slap on his pant leg. “Come on, sit down. I’m getting a crick in my neck staring up at you. I’d like to talk a while.”
Hemsley stepped forward and sat in the sand about three feet from the fragile looking man who, having declared he wanted to talk, stubbornly fell silent. Hemsley looked out at the ocean to see what the man was staring at.
“I’ve seen this ocean near every day of my eighty-seven years,” the man finally said. “And not once did it ever look just the same. But somehow I think it knew I was here.” He took another drink from the bottle and wiped his mouth with his hand. “It’s saying so long to me today. I can hear it.”
“Are you going somewhere?” Hemsley asked.
“Yes.” The man tried to contain his wind-whipped hair again. “I’m dying today.”
Hemsley leaned forward and examined the man’s face. He looked tired, but there was no trace of pain. “I really should get someone to help you.”
“There is no one to help me,” the man told him with a small smile. “This is my
third day. My last day. I’m just sitting here with my old friend, the sea, and waiting to find out how it happens.”
Hemsley put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Some say the Harbinger is a myth, sir. You’ll probably find that out and go home and sleep in your bed tonight.”
The man offered him the bottle one more time. “You are mighty misinformed for a politician. Come to think of it, being misinformed is a requirement for a politician, isn’t it? Otherwise you fellows might actually do something right.” He chuckled at the distress on Hemsley’s face. “You’ve been front page on the papers for near two weeks, and there’s those two guys in suits keeping their distance but following you sure enough.”
“What makes you think you’ve been infected by the Harbinger?” Hemsley asked.
“Infected? That’s another wrong idea you’ve got. It’s a visit. And it’s not the kind you mistake. Your head damn near explodes, and you hear the bells like your head was inside one of them big church bells while it’s ringing.” He took a drink. “I heard the Harbinger at precisely 3:52 in the afternoon three days ago.”
Hemsley caught himself looking at his wristwatch. “It’s 3:25.”
“That gives me a little more time, enough to finish the bottle. I don’t know if the minute is that important.” He glanced at Hemsley and grinned. “I guess I’ll find out. If you want to find out, you know, educate yourself a little, you are welcome to sit with me until then.” He smiled again. “I’d welcome the company.”
Hemsley decided to stay. Years in the future he would mark this as the event that made him the man he ought to have been long before. Reality stepped in and dispelled the bottomless ambition that had driven him. All the lies and deceits ran away as he stared at them. He was left with a naked, unforgiving truth. He would be that old man on a beach one day. And he would have to change if he was to experience peace at the end like the stranger sitting beside him.
The two men sat listening to the waves climb the shore and retreat like the beat of a heart. Then, just before four o’clock, the old man silently slipped to one side and let out a final breath.
Hemsley stood up, took off his windbreaker, and covered the man. He motioned to the two security guards who came sliding down the sandy bluff. Hemsley loitered the hours it took for the man’s body to be taken away. It was starting to get dark when he decided to leave, and he wondered briefly if the polls had closed and if he had been reelected in the predicted landslide. But it didn’t seem all that important anymore.
*
Uberdorf went to Hemsley’s campaign celebration at the Ayres Hotel in an upscale section of Ontario, California, Hemsley’s hometown, to watch the election returns with the people he was eager to make his new “dearest friends.” He paid passing interest to the results flashing on the screen, preferring instead to spend his time working the crowd. He focused on the members of the state legislature to whom he had donated in the name of the Servants of the Harbinger. He wore his brown monk’s robe and got a little thrill whenever he was recognized. His mentor had known how to manage politicians. Uberdorf was learning.
The party was a happy place full of happy people. After his wife’s dramatic death, Hemsley’s reelection was a certainty. And the Servants of the Harbinger were positioned to help. Uberdorf saw nothing but upward potential.
He made a plate of food for himself at the buffet and waited for the call he was expecting. Now that the election was finally over, it was time for a new escalation.
“Reverend Uberdorf! What luck to finally meet you.” The speaker was a buxom blonde who happened to represent the district where the Servants were headquartered. She was three inches taller than him and dressed in a clingy, dark-green knit dress that accentuated the parts he enjoyed assessing.
He bowed and took her hand. “Assemblywoman Stone, my dearest friend, the pleasure is mine. How might I be of assistance?”
“I want you to testify before my committee,” she said, causing him to smile broadly. “We’re going to put this Harbinger business to rest.” His smile faded. “I want you to explain how you have the balls to claim that you can save people from this boogeyman you pretend to worship.” She gave him a withering stare. “And be sure and answer our subpoena for your financial records, Jamil. Being from the southside you might not realize how important that is. I’m going to nail your psychotic ass, Reverend.”
His cell phone chirped. She left him to answer it.
“What?” he barked. The men were in place, and all they needed was the command to go. “Never mind,” he said, feeling uneasy about his situation. “Send the men home. It’s not a good time.”
He stepped outside for some air and lit a cigarette. He had become accustomed to the silence that embraced the city, but it did nothing to quell the sense of danger shouting in his head. When his mentor had taken care of the authorities, he had felt invulnerable. Now he was alone and exposed. He stamped out the butt of his cigarette and started walking. He saw a coffee shop down the street that looked like it was still open, so he headed in its direction.
A motorcycle went by, and the driver parked in front of the coffee shop. He watched a tall woman climb off the bike and remove her helmet. Long black hair fell well past her shoulders as she placed the helmet on the seat of the bike. She tossed her hair back and unzipped the top of her jacket. She was stunning; lithe, lean, and graceful in the way she moved. He picked up his gait, eager to get a close look at her.
She was standing at the counter waiting for her order when he entered the shop. He stepped behind her, close enough to smell the leather jacket and a trace of the perfume she was wearing. When she turned to leave, he hesitated to step to the side and let her pass. He let his eyes travel the generous mounds at her chest where the jacket was half unzipped and moved up to study her face. She was flawless, the most gorgeous woman he had ever encountered. He stared, reveling in her proximity.
The woman lowered crystal-blue eyes at him, and her perfect mouth twisted in a frown.
“Excuse me!” she said.
He didn’t move. She stepped to the side and went around him.
“Wait!” Uberdorf shouted, stepping after her. “I want to know your name.”
Artemis turned to use her hip to open the door and gave him a dazzling smile. “You don’t always get what you want.”
He stood there watching her mount the bike and drive off. He took out his cell and called the Servant who was the closest. He described the woman and gave what he had seen of her license plate.
“Follow her,” he instructed his minion. “I want to know where she lives.” He ordered a coffee and sat at a table to drink it, waiting for the Servant to call him back. He hoped she lived nearby. He hoped this wretched evening would have a happy ending.
*
Artemis changed into silky black pajama pants and the T-shirt Willa had given her. She turned on the television to check the election results and sat cross-legged on the sofa to indulge in the Danish she had bought on her way back from a long ride. She started thinking about what Strang had asked. It was incredibly difficult to gather everything he had said into a cogent description. She understood what he meant by not writing it down. The ideas got stunted when she put them on paper. They had to roam freely in her head to retain their full meaning but slipped away when she tried to bring them together.
Surrendering to her inability to solve the matter, Artemis turned her thoughts back a week to Halloween. The visit with Angie had gone better than she’d hoped. Lucy had relented and permitted Angie to trick or treat after all. Artemis had carried Angie from house to house and offered to take her further on the motorcycle, but Lucy put her foot down at that. She and Angie had cuddled and whispered like coconspirators for an hour, gathering candy and enjoying the costumes of the other children on similar quests. After an hour, Lucy insisted that Angie needed to go home before she got overly tired. They’d sorted through the booty until Lucy’s mother had said it was time to put Angie to bed.
“That was fun,” Artemis had said when she and Lucy were left alone. She’d stepped close to Lucy and reached out to touch her arm.
Lucy had flinched. “Don’t! If you touch me, Temmie, I’ll fall apart.”
Artemis had enfolded her in an embrace anyway and held her close. “I won’t let you fall apart, Lucy.”
They had almost kissed right then. But Lucy had turned away at the last moment. Wondering if she had truly seen desire in Lucy’s eyes, Artemis had left shortly after. Still, her heart was convinced of what her head was leery to believe. Lucy still loved her.
*
Just before ten, the sound of a car pulling up to her driveway stirred Artemis from her musings. She listened to the heavy footsteps of a person walking toward the house and realized she had forgotten to lock the gate. Then there was a knock at the door. Curious at having a guest at such a late hour, she opened the front door without first checking who was there. The man from the coffee shop stood leering at her. He was no longer wearing his monk’s robe, but his face was unmistakable.
“I believe you left something at Starbucks earlier,” he said.
“What?”
“Me!” Uberdorf said, flashing a grin and moving to enter her house.
She jammed her hand against his chest.
He took her hand and held it between his. “My dearest friend, I saw something in you at the coffee shop. I felt God tell me to go to you and bring you peace.”
“Not interested.” She yanked her hand free and stepped back to shut the door, giving him a dismissive look.
If she hadn’t given him that you’re-a-piece-of-shit look, he’d probably have left. But he was no longer tolerant of being dismissed, and that assemblywoman bitch had him completely pissed off. He was not going to let this rebuff slide. This woman might think she played hard to get—that she was too good for him—well, too bad for her. He wasn’t taking no for an answer.
“Now, now, miss.” Uberdorf shook his head. “I am a Servant of the Harbinger. I’ve come to talk with you. What’s the harm in that?” His words were pleasant, but his face revealed a sinister intent.