Revels Ending

by Vic Kerry

  The nightmare still toyed with her mind. The images and feelings of the heat and the blood running down her face stayed with her despite all her ruminations about Marianne. She needed Ashe for comfort, which seemed strange. Never had she needed a man or anyone to help her deal with emotions.

  “Ashe, are you in there?” she whispered into the crack between the spare bedroom’s door and the wall.

  No one answered. Cybil put her hand on the doorknob. It moved free from the lock. She cracked the door and peeked inside. Ashe sat in the middle of the small bed. He leaned against the back wall, reading from a small clothbound book. She eased her head inside.

  “Ashe?” she said, a little louder than a whisper.

  He looked up at her. His expression was stoic, nothing readable in it.

  “Is it okay if I come in?”

  Ashe waved her inside. She eased in, closing the door behind her as if someone might barge in. He returned to his reading. She made her way across the room dodging the boxes on the floor and sat down on the bed. He barely acknowledged her presence. His coolness bothered her. She thought that maybe she was still dreaming. Looking at all the boxes, she realized that he had been awake for a while. Several of the boxes were full of the flotsam of life.

  “How long have you been awake?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, a bit.”

  “What are you reading?” she asked.

  “I found Marianne’s diary that she’s been keeping since we started our relationship.”

  “Oh.”

  Cybil felt guilt tug at her. It was bad enough that she had violated Ashe and Marianne’s intimacy by moving in on him so soon after the death, but now she intruded on an even more personal level.

  “Would you believe that Erik harassed her nearly every time he saw her?” Ashe asked.

  “No. What kind of harassment are you talking about?”

  “Sexual. According to this, he propositioned her all the time.” Ashe dog-eared the page he was on and closed the book.

  Cybil felt uncomfortable. Rogers did almost the same thing to her. She wasn’t sure if Ashe knew that or not, but at that time, there was no reason to tell him.

  “How does that make you feel?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Erik isn’t really a friend. We wouldn’t have much to do with each other if we hadn’t worked on the emotional engram device. I think I’m more upset that she never told me.”

  “There are some things that people don’t feel comfortable doing at times.” She thought maybe she needed to tell him about Rogers’ advances toward her.

  “Why are you up? I figured you would still be sleeping it off.”

  “I wasn’t drunk,” Cybil said, “but I had a nightmare.”

  “So did I.”

  “Both of us on the same night. That’s kind of strange, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “Not really. We’ve been under stress, and that usually causes them. Plus the beers probably didn’t help.”

  Cybil knew that stress caused nightmares. She’d taken introductory psychology. Her transcript would show that for a while, she majored in psychology. When Rogers came on the faculty, she switched to math. He’d started making advances toward her almost as soon as he began teaching. Back then, he was pudgy and unattractive, but no less a letch.

  “I dreamt about that crazy man from the parade and Marianne,” Ashe said. “I decided to get up and start putting her to rest. Maybe I won’t have any more dreams like that.”

  He pointed to the boxes on the floor as if punctuating his sentence. She figured he’d found the diary while rummaging through the boxes.

  “I think I dreamed about Hell,” she said. “I’m not sure. It was hot and there was this man who appeared with Hortense. He cut her throat.”

  Ashe looked at her. His face became ashen. “You dreamt about Hortense having her throat slit?”

  “Yes, it was horrible. The blood splattered everywhere. It even hit my face.”

  “I dreamt that too. The blood hit me as well.”

  Cybil knew that stress brought on nightmares, and that they had both been under a lot of it, but shared dreams weren’t covered by the stress theory. Dual dreams that specific didn’t bode well. She put her arm under his and laid her head on his shoulder. The sun couldn’t come up soon enough. Only a light that powerful could ward off the uneasiness that settled deep inside of her.

  Security Camera: Parking Lot, Water Street, Mobile, AL, 1:00 a.m. CST

  Only two cars are parked in the large lot near the bayside railroad tracks. Light from the overhead lamps casts a circular glow over everything. Two people stand by the white car. One is the man in the dark hooded sweatshirt. The other person snuggles close to him. They kiss. The second person steps back.

  She tries to push the man’s hood off his head. He stops her, turns her toward the white car, and bends her over the trunk. Without much flare, her jerks her pants down and does the same to his. They begin having sex.

  She puts her hands flat on the trunk lid. They slide up and down the metal as they get deeper into their activity. Headlights flash on them as a car passes on the street. It does not faze them; they continue. She tosses her head back in ecstasy.

  As their sexual activity becomes more passionate, a hulking man ambles up from the street. They do not seem to notice him.

  The hooded man grasps the woman by the hair and pulls on it, making her back arch downward. Their efforts become harder. Both jar with the force of their actions. He lets her hair loose and grabs her hips as he gives hard thrusts. After a few moments of this, he pulls away.

  The hulking man steps up behind her as the hooded man pulls his pants up. He motions toward the woman who remains draped over the trunk of the car, her bare bottom half reared up. The hulking man pulls her to a standing position. She turns and looks at him. She tries to escape, but he pulls a buck knife from a holster on his belt. The blade slides along her neck.

  She bucks and convulses in his arms. The hulking man pushes her back onto the car. He and the hooded man walk away. The woman slides down the trunk and crumples to the pavement. Blood streaks across the white trunk.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Smalls laid an old tattered book on the table. His study was lit by a small lamp. He’d been up before sunrise. A nightmare woke him that early. He’d dreamed that Hell burst through the ground, opening the graves of the recently dead. Many of those corpses rose. Marianne walked the streets of Mobile, along with the woman from Birmingham. Francisco San Roman or the man who claimed to be San Roman led the resurrected through the streets. It ended with the sacrifice of the Goth Sox lead singer. Her throat was slit like a ceremonial goat. The blood from the wound splattered on him. He awoke after wiping it from his face, the stain on his palm forming a satanic pentagram.

  He had spent enough time researching paranormal phenomena to recognize a psychic dream, although he’d never had one himself. During research, however, he had recorded the dreams of some very reliable sources. The book in front of him was an old copy of an ancient treatise on psychic dreaming. He put on his glasses and began to read.

  The book had no index for easy reference, and the text was entirely in Latin. If the Church found out he had a copy of it, he could be excommunicated. A papal decree had made it blasphemous centuries before. The inquisitors used it to proclaim witches during the dark times of the Great Inquisitions. For the first time, Smalls definitely thought that everything going on around him concerning Ashe and the disappearance of bodies from the morgues was supernatural in nature, even bordering on satanic.

  He scanned the text. The best thing about the book was it had headings for different sections. After a search of these, he found the one listed as Hell Raised.

  The book detailed imagery in dreams related to prophecies of demonic invasion of the Earth. Smalls had seen many supposed psychoreligious
phenomena including possession, but things described within the text were foreign to even him.

  Dreams of the dead rising from the grave bodes ill not only for the dreamer but the world. Evil is at work. Oft times when Devils cannot enter people in a waking state, they haunt the dreams.

  Smalls picked up his pen and jotted this on a piece of paper. Something in the back of his mind wanted to surface. He knew somewhere he’d seen information related to demons not being able to completely possess the living. At the time, he found it a strange theory and little else, but the memory wouldn’t come. A nice walk in the crisp early morning air might help jar his memory.

  The wind off the bay gave the air an extra chill that Smalls hadn’t expected. His light jacket still hung on the coat hook near his front door. The Alabama Tech hooded sweatshirt he wore wasn’t quite enough to cut that damp cold, but he’d gone too far to justify going back for it.

  Nothing much moved downtown. Cars belonging to people who either lived in the low-rent apartments on the streets around the downtown or were too drunk to drive home after the parades lined the streets. Half strands of broken beads lay in the gutter as Smalls passed down Dauphin Street in front of random bars. He always felt that the lively nightlife area looked so different in the morning light. The old feel of the area was strong much like the Vieux Carré in New Orleans in the middle of the morning. All the good timers were gone, and the natural flow of an old French town could be seen.

  He turned up St. Joseph Street and walked north. The financial firms along this stretch of street were still empty. Morning business would not begin until much later. As he walked past the intersection of St. Louis, he spied Water Street several blocks away. Traffic moved along that thoroughfare between the interstate heading north and I-10 heading across the bay.

  Wind swept down between the tall buildings. The nip in it chilled Smalls deeply. He pulled the hood over his head and tugged the strings to tighten it around his face. Nothing made him feel worse than cold ears. His mind started to turn things over and over as he passed by the power company, which had been the site of an old slave auction before the Civil War. A plaque memorialized the historical significance of the location. The place always gave him the creeps. He thought about all the terrified souls that had been bought and sold at that very location. Some of them would have just been off the boats from Africa, jerked from everything they had known to be put on the block. The negative psychic energy felt overwhelming. He was surprised no one had ever reported some kind of paranormal phenomenon at that location.

  St. Anthony Street intersected St. Joseph just past the old slave auction. Smalls decided that the morning air had done its job. He turned down the street heading toward the bay. A walk south on Water Street would bring him back to Dauphin and his circle would be complete. He remembered where he had read about demon possession that had plagued his memory. The only problem now would be finding it down in the basement of the church with all the other books he’d put into storage.

  He’d been walking much faster than he usually did, and he could feel the effects. His leg muscles burned a little. Smalls stopped when he reached Water Street. Across the street in a large parking lot on the bay, numerous police cars idled with lights flashing. Yellow tape cordoned off the entrance to the lot, and uniformed and plainclothes officers milled around. He thought of poor Detective Semmes who ended up dead and abandoned at the conference center. Butterflies flurried in his stomach. He began to worry about Ashe and Cybil and even Rogers. With all the craziness surrounding his friends, something very bad and very strange could have happened to one of them.

  Smalls made sure that nothing sped down the street. He crossed the first two lanes then the next and entered the parking lot. A uniformed officer trotted over to him with his hand held up.

  “Excuse me this is a restricted area,” the officer said.

  “I understand, but I live nearby and thought I might be able to help with the investigation,” Smalls said. “I’m a priest at St. Mary’s-by-the-Bay.”

  “It doesn’t matter if you’re Moses,” the officer said. “This is a secure murder investigation area. You need to go back to your church, Father.”

  Smalls could see beyond the police cars. A few cops poked around a white sedan. Long streaks of blood covered the rear section of the car. A lump underneath a plastic tarp lay at the back of the car. He couldn’t tell anything about it.

  “I am worried about my friends,” Smalls said. “I knew Detective Semmes who was murder a few days ago. I was assisting him in an investigation into the missing bodies from the morgue.”

  The officer looked him up and down. Then he turned toward some of the plainclothes officers behind him. “Chief, I need you over here.”

  Smalls recognized the man who walked over to him as the police chief. The county sheriff came with him. They both looked the priest over. Neither of them gave away any thoughts through their expressions.

  “Who are you?” the chief asked.

  “I’m Father Smalls from St. Mary’s-by-the-Bay. I was helping Detective Semmes on his investigation into the missing the bodies from the morgue. I was taking a walk this morning and saw the commotion.”

  “And just decided to wander on over?” the sheriff asked.

  “I was concerned for some friends of mine. There have been some very strange things occurring around here. I was afraid that one of them may have fallen victim to the goings on.”

  “Do you live over at St. Mary’s?” the chief asked.

  “In an apartment near it,” Smalls said.

  “So you know a lot of the folks that live and work around downtown?” the chief asked.

  “I suppose, even if it’s just seeing them in passing.”

  The chief of police and sheriff looked at each other and nodded. The sheriff put his hand on Smalls’ shoulder and pointed toward the body.

  “We found the victim earlier this morning. She had no ID on her. Maybe you’ll recognize her,” the sheriff said.

  “I’d be happy to try.”

  Smalls and the two high-ranking police officials walked past the police cars to the body under the tarp. A few of the forensic techs swiped samples of the blood from the car. A photographer snapped pictures. The chief pointed to one of the techs and made a gesture to uncover the body.

  When the cover was lifted, Smalls recognized the face immediately despite the ashen complexion and gory gash in the throat. Hortense stared up at him with dead, fish scale eyes. He crossed himself.

  “Do you recognize her?” the chief said.

  “Yes.”

  “Who is she?” the sheriff continued.

  “All I know her by is Hortense. I’ve got no idea what her last name is, but I do know that she was lead singer in a local band called the Goth Sox.”

  “I’ve heard them,” the tech said. “They suck. She looks a little bit different though.”

  “Maybe it’s because she’s dead,” the chief said.

  “I think that we should be more respectful,” Smalls said. He never liked people making comments about the recently deceased. He found it distasteful. A worse feeling than distaste came over him though. She had died just like in his dream, a slit throat over an altar, even if it was a car. “Do you know how she died?”

  “By the looks of it, heart attack,” the sheriff said with a large dose of sarcasm. “Her throat was cut.”

  “I know that, but do you know who did it or how? Was she raped or kidnapped?”

  “According to our brief investigation, it looks like she may have had some kind of intercourse. Her pants are down around her ankles,” the chief said. “We also have video surveillance showing her murderer and his accomplice.”

  The sheriff pointed to a security camera mounted just overhead. Smalls looked up at it. A hard wind blew and ruffled his hood. If he hadn’t tied it on so tightly, it would have blown off.
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br />   “It also showed that she had sex with the accomplice who allowed her to be murdered,” the sheriff said.

  “So you’ve got faces. That is great. Maybe everything can get worked out,” Smalls said.

  “I think we’ve pretty much got it wrapped up,” the chief said. He pulled a small snub-nosed pistol from a clamshell holster and pointed it at Smalls. “You’re under arrest for the murder of this girl.”

  “What do you mean?” Smalls said. “I’m a priest.”

  “That surveillance camera shows a man wearing a shirt, just like yours, with the hood up, just like you’ve got on, having sex with her before she got it. He’s even got your build, and you know the victim,” the chief said.

  “If the glove fits,” the sheriff said.

  “It doesn’t fit. I’m a priest and a professor at Alabama Tech. That’s why I have a sweatshirt from there,” Smalls said.

  “Okay, so where were you last night about one a.m.?” the chief asked.

  Smalls looked down at the ground. He was dreaming about Hortense’s bloody death, but they weren’t going to hear about that until he had a lawyer. “At home asleep.”

  “You live with any other priests?” the sheriff asked.

  “I live alone.”

  “No alibi and you match the video evidence,” the chief said. “You have the right to remain silent.”

  The chief continued the Miranda rights as a uniformed police officer put handcuffs on Smalls. He breathed in deeply and tried not to sigh. Now he knew something beyond the normal was at work, something that dealt death and despair to anyone who interfered.

  Cybil pushed a cart piled with reams of paper out of the engineering department’s copy room. For some reason, the adjunct professor who had taken over Ashe’s class decided that the textbook being used didn’t cut it. He had her copy every page out of another textbook for the entire class. This was the third trip she’d made with the overloaded cart. As she walked down the hall, a group of undergraduates stood around the announcement bulletin board. They were talking louder than usual, especially when classes were still being held on that hall. She stopped.