by Paul Neuhaus
“Two guys in white coats came and got the dead guy. Then the detective left without asking any more questions.” She pulled the bundle out onto the floor and yanked at the remaining twine.
Molly shrugged. “So?”
“They came and picked up the body without any kind of C.S.I.,” Quinn said, pulling at a particularly stubborn binding. “I’m no expert but wouldn’t you think they’d do something? Dust for prints… Take some photos… Something.”
“Okay, yeah. That’s a little weird. We can ask Cam tomorrow.” Cameron Blank. L.A.P.D., retired.
“I was stupid. I should’ve gone out and taken a peek into the parking lot. I bet they didn’t even take that guy away in a coroner’s van.” The girl bundled the last of the twine and the newspaper and put it to the side. Unrolling the blanket, she put the object from inside the package onto the hardwood floor between herself and Molly. It was a statue. About one foot high. In the shape of a black bird. A falcon. Solid gold outlined each of its eyes with a swirl underneath. It wore a crown on its head shaped like a two liter bottle of Coke.
“What is it?” Molly Blank said, pulling her feet up underneath herself.
“I got no fucking idea,” Quinn replied.
“How do you know it’s for you?”
“The man called me ‘Aja’. It means ‘messiah’.”
“Well, la dee dah. Look at you.”
The next morning, Quinn went to the nearby bus terminal and deposited the rewrapped statue in a locker. She kept the key. She wasn’t worried about “detective” Matt Abrigo getting a search warrant, but she also didn’t want the black bird in her apartment. Not until she could find out what it was and where it came from. As she left the terminal, she saw a tiny man—almost as short as she was—leaning against a wall and watching her. His dress and demeanor were odd. He wasn’t American. Eastern European, Henaghan guessed. She walked by him deliberately and said a pleasant “hello”. The man flushed and looked away as if she’d shown him some rather explicit pornography. Quinn did a quick scan. As she suspected, the strange little man was a Channeler.
As she walked back to her car, Quinn passed a woman on the sidewalk. The woman was tall, blond and dressed all in white. She was also a knockout. As they walked by one another, they made eye contact and the lady smiled at Quinn. Quinn was stopped in her tracks by a sexual charge that shot through her body from head to toe. Regaining her composure, she continued to the Prius and got in. For a moment she sat there, watching the blond walk into the terminal. She realized she’d seen the woman before. At night. At the Santa Monica pier. The encounter had been almost identical. She’d passed the lady by, the lady had smiled and Quinn had been filled with a profound horniness.
Henaghan put the car in gear and looked at herself in the rearview mirror. “Face it girl,” she said to her reflection. “You’re turning into a full-on lesbian.”
3
Friends Old & New
The hills were green, shining with life in the morning sun. The little girl, wracked by fever, could see them, but she could not rise to venture out of her stone hut. Heat moved through her body in waves. Sweat glistened on her pale skin. Above her, her hair tied-back, was her mother, a woman much older-seeming than her twenty-five years. The men all stood at the foot of the girl’s bed. Her father had encouraged them to stand to the left so the view of the outside world would not be blocked.
Mother slid a wet cloth across her daughter’s forehead and ran comforting fingers through her bright red hair. Whenever the young girl was not asleep, Mother would be there, providing either food or comfort. Mother was exhausted. “How do you feel?” the woman said.
Daughter’s voice was hoarse. She tried to speak but could not. Mother turned at the waist and picked up a wooden cup. After a long drink of water, the girl could speak, but her voice was still quiet. “There’re things inside me,” she said. “Alive things.”
Mother gathered her cuff into her hand and used it to dab away the water that had flowed over the child’s lower lip. “Yes, I know.” She flashed an angry look toward the men, but, before she turned again to her offspring, her expression softened. “Are they hurting you? The alive things?”
Daughter shook her head. “No.” She paused, trying to find the right words. “They’re singing to me,” she said.
This drew a favorable reaction from the men who nodded and muttered to one another.
“And what song do they sing?” Mother said, her voice tender.
Again, the little girl shook her head. “Not a song. A poem. A poem of the world. Of all the worlds. But… this morning the poem has changed.”
“Yes?”
“The alive things say they’re ready to go.”
The menfolk became even more animated. Mother turned to them with a harsh “Sshhh!” and they quieted down.
Ignoring the men, Daughter said to Mother, “Will you hold my hand?”
Crying, Mother, took her child’s fragile fingers.
Daughter closed her eyes and, at first, it looked as though nothing further would happen. Then the little girl bent upward at the waist and her head dug deeper into her down pillow. She screamed and the adults in the room panicked. The men started to scatter and bump into one another. Again, Mother chastised them and quiet returned.
The girl remained bent for an unnaturally long time, every muscle in her tiny frame straining against the skeleton underneath. It seemed too, that she had stopped breathing. Every inch of her spoke of anticipation, of a force desperate for release. She rocked from side to side and moaned with a voice which was not her own.
Once more, the men grew terrified and Mother admonished them.
When everyone returned their attention to Daughter, they were shocked to see her emit multi-colored vapors. From her mouth, from her nostrils, and from her ears came wispy phantasms. These creatures—revealed as living entities by the deliberateness with which they moved—came together into a single strand and drifted upward through the small cracks in the thatch roof. When they were gone, the little girl’s body remained taut. Mother began to cry harder. Why isn’t this over? Why isn’t this over? Daughter dropped down onto her behind, her torso pivoted upwards, and she vomited.
Her vomit was made of fire.
The jet of super-heated air and flames shot through the window and dissipated over the perfect green grass.
Daughter fell down onto the bed, no longer a rigid child-shaped frame, but a little girl on the other side of a life-threatening fever.
One man whispered, “Aja”. Then another. Then another. Soon, they were saying the word over top of one another and Mother could do nothing to stop them.
Quinn awakened from a fitful sleep, irritated a troubling vision had spoiled her first opportunity for an easy night’s rest. Then she remembered this was the second such dream she’d had in less than a week. First the meeting on the island with the woman on her throne, and now this young girl recovering from a fever.
Only it wasn’t a simple fever.
The child had been given the same tincture Quinn got more than six months ago. The injection that catalyzed her magic powers. With that realization, it all came together for Henaghan. The girl in her sickbed, the woman on the throne—they were one and the same person.
It was Aisling, the long-ago liberator of mankind.
At first Quinn wondered why she was again having visions. They had stopped when the tincture ran its course. Indeed, she’d not had even one since she’d come into her powers. Was someone somewhere trying to tell her something? Did the visions have a purpose? Why had the visions returned now? Why was she seeing moments from the life of her mystical predecessor?
Grabbing one of Molly’s pillows, she hugged it to herself and realized she was both excited and afraid.
Cameron Blank came over every Tuesday night and his daughter made a fine meal. He was dying of cancer, but insisted upon coming to them rather than the other way around. “The day I can’t come to you,” he would say. “Is the
day I want you to pass me through the wood chipper.” Molly and Quinn both said they’d be more than happy to pass him through the wood chipper, and Cam took no offense.
The old man, bald and drawn from chemo, dropped his coat over the arm of one of the couches and sat down. Quinn joined him. “Is this the couch we’re using this week?” Cam said. “I don’t wanna violate any couch protocols.”
Quinn smiled. “This is a sit-on-whatever-goddam-couch you want kind of house.”
“I know,” he said. “That’s why I come here. You rug munchers are so open and free.”
Molly was passing by with a platter of scratch-made dinner rolls. She placed them on the table with one hand and swatted her father’s head with the other. “Daddy! What I’d say about the lesbian talk?”
The elder Blank adopted a wounded persona. “Hey, it’s not my fault you two moved to Isle of Lesbos.”
Molly groaned as she returned to the kitchen. Quinn laughed. “You’re like the opposite of woke.”
“I was a cop in the eighties and nineties. We didn’t know from woke.”
Molly reentered carrying a roast chicken. She was in time to hear her father say, “Hey, seriously though, I don’t care about any of that shit. If you guys are happy, who’m I to bitch about all the pillow biting?”
Quinn laughed again. Molly said, “Fucking hell.” Both girls knew that Cam loved taking the piss out of people. He teased them both relentlessly but there wasn’t a mean bone in his body.
The younger Blank picked up a little bell and rang it. An affectation. She preferred it to saying “come and eat” to the two people barely three feet away. Quinn watched her girlfriend with bemusement and affection. Molly had her weird side.
As Henaghan rounded the couch to the table, she said, “Hey, Cam, I got something I wanna ask you about…”
“Okay,” Cameron said. “But first I gotta say hello to my one true love.” He rose off the couch and walked over to Annabelle’s cage. Annabelle adored the ex-cop. Whenever he approached her cage, she would coo. If he stuck his finger through the bars, she would happily perch on it. She showed no one else the same level of affection, not even Quinn. “How’s my girl?” the elder Blank said to the little bird, and Annabelle cheeped at him enthusiastically. He reached through the bars and stroked her feathers. She leaned into his caresses. After a moment, he turned his attention back to his hosts. “I’m gonna marry that bird,” he said.
“Blech,” the redhead said. “Why don’t you guys get a room?”
Molly sat down next to Quinn. “Go ahead. Marry the bird. Just wash your hands before dinner.”
Cam shrugged off his daughter’s request. “Molly m’dear, I am going to die. If, before that happens, I get some kinda weird bird sickness, you can give me hell. For now, don’t come between me and my girlfriend. Now then,” he said, picking up the platter of rolls, taking one and passing it on. “What can I do you for, Miss Henaghan?”
Quinn said, “Well, as you know, we had a guy croak here yesterday.”
The elder Blank nodded. “Molly said as much. I’ve always thought it was bad form to bring up stiffs before a meal.”
Henaghan looked sheepish. “Sorry. I didn’t realize I was violating stiff etiquette. But hear me out… This guy shows up. He dies almost immediately then a detective appears like a second and a half later. Says he’s been tailing the deceased. He talks to us for a minute then some flunkies show up to take the body away.”
“Did he show you I.D.?”
Quinn nodded.
“What’d it say at the top of his badge?”
“I don’t think it said anything at the top of the badge.”
“Mmm. And you say the flunkies came in and took the body away just like that?”
Again, Quinn nodded.
“Yeah,” Cam said. “That wasn’t a real cop.”
Molly dropped her fork on her plate with a ding. “You can tell just from that?”
Cameron looked at his only child. “I was L.A.P.D. for thirty-two years. It should’ve said ‘Detective’ across the top of that shield. Mine said ‘Police Officer’. The forgeries always miss that part. Plus there ain’t no way in hell a good investigator’s letting the M.E. anywhere near a body until he’s scrutinized and documented his crime scene. He wasn’t a cop.” Then he grinned. “Elementary, my dear lezzies.” The old man took a bite out of his roll and chewed good-naturedly. Before he finished, he returned his attention to his daughter. “So,” he said, his mouth full of white glop. “You still pissing the bed?”
Both women made noises of protest. Quinn came to her partner’s defense. “She’s not pissing the bed.”
“Isn’t that what we mean when we say ‘night terrors’?” Cam said, looking back and forth between the two women.
Henaghan rolled her eyes. Across the table, Molly’s head was sinking into her shoulders. She looked like a turtle. “She’s not pissing the bed. Otherwise we’d have to buy rubber sheets. Do you have any idea how expensive rubber sheets’d be for a California King?”
“Okay, okay,” Cam said, raising his hands in protest. “What do I know?” He picked up his cloth napkin from his lap and dabbed at the edges of his mouth. “You want my advice?” he said to the junior Blank. “I think you should talk to somebody about it.”
Molly’s blue eyes grew huge. “What?! Didn’t you once say you’d eat a bullet before you a let a skull cracker anywhere near you?”
Cam grinned. “Yeah, but I was still a cop then. You’re supposed to say macho shit like that. We had to be better than the sissified civilians we served and protected. Seriously though, go talk to somebody. What’s it gonna hurt?”
Molly turned to Quinn, her eyes flashing. “You put him up to this, didn’t you?”
Henaghan raised her palms. “I did no such thing.” She turned to Cam. “Tell her.”
Cam turned to Molly and whispered conspiratorially, “Just between us two, she’s been lobbying me to tell you to get your head shrunk for weeks. You know I could never resist the charms of an Irishwoman.”
Molly glared at Quinn with fresh venom. Quinn repeatedly swatted at Cam’s shoulder. “You old son of a bitch!” she said.
“Look at this, would you?” the elder Blank said to the younger. “Is this what goes on around here? Abusing terminal cases?”
Molly put down her fork and knife and folded her arms in front of her breasts.
Cam finally had enough of the swatting and he shooed Quinn away with his napkin. “Alright, alright.” He turned back to his offspring. “She didn’t put me up to it. I do think you should talk to someone. And that oughta mean something to you considering how against psychiatry I’ve always been.”
Both Quinn and Cam looked at Molly for a long moment. As much to get out from under their scrutiny as anything, Molly said, “I’ll take it under advisement.”
After Cam left for the evening (which wasn’t late considering his age and condition), Molly retreated to the bedroom and shut the door. Quinn thought that odd, but decided not to investigate right away. Her partner was probably writing in her journal. (Dear Diary, Quinn and my dad are both dicks.) After surfing the internet for a while, Henaghan poked her head in to see Blank sitting up in bed, staring straight ahead with the comforter up to her chin. “Have you been like this this whole time?”
The older woman’s eyes focused and pointed toward the younger. “Like what?”
“Looking forward with your eyes all out of whack? I thought you’d be writing or reading a book or something.”
“No,” Molly said, sitting up. She pushed the comforter down around her waist and her demeanor seemed to invite Quinn to sit down next to her. Quinn took the implicit invitation, sitting on top of the blanket with her legs curled up underneath her. “I was thinking.”
“Thinking about what?”
“You never met my mom. She died four years ago. Cancer. The same cancer that’s got a hold of Cam. Life can be a pretty fucked-up thing. Anyway, you’ve seen the movies and
TV shows. What it’s like to be the wife of a cop. That’s one of the things they almost always get right. Even though the details about procedure and whatnot are way off. A word of advice: don’t ever watch a police show with my dad. He’s a fountain of bullshit-calling. My mom… Sheila… She was the Worried Wife. Her entire adult life was spent white-knuckled while Cam did what he did. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if it was all those decades of worry that opened the door to the cancer. Now, after almost being murdered, having a guy croak in my vestibule, and knowing about your powers, I’m afraid I’m turning into my mom. Just this creature that’s completely made of worry. She eased into it. She married my dad when she was nineteen. Me, I’m coming to it late. And it’s coming out of me as these night terrors.”
“What should we do?” Quinn said.
“Well, there’s one thing we could do, and it wouldn’t even involve me getting therapy… “
“I can’t wait to hear it,” Henaghan said.
“If you could quit being some kind of fucked-up wizard policeman, that’d be great.”
The redhead smiled. “‘Wizard policeman’?” She’d never thought of herself in those terms. Although, since she had role-played as Batman a time or two, she couldn’t say Blank was completely off the mark.
“What else would you call it? You’re a wizard policeman. And it’s not like that’s gonna stop anytime soon. You killed those monsters that were running L.A. Hasn’t that left some kind of power vacuum?”
Quinn’s smile faded. Her brow furrowed. “You would think. But it’s been quiet. Weirdly quiet.”
“The calm before the storm?”
Henaghan shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“Well, anybody who’s ever watched the History Channel knows power vacuums don’t last. People are dicks. I’m assuming supernatural people are doubly dicks.”
“Hey,” Henaghan said, feigning injury. “I’m a supernatural person.”
