“That’s true. I remember my mom dragging me to church. I never went to church before in my entire life. I had to wear a frickin’ dress. It was pink. I still hate you for that.”
“Thanks, Trish. From you, I take it as a compliment. At least you’re thinking of me.”
Trish glared at her. It was more than a pink dress that had her feathers ruffled.
***
As soon as the final bell rang, Jackie headed toward Ms. Guthrie’s classroom. Walking against the flow of traffic, she was knocked about by book bags and elbows and saturated with a hodge-podge of emotions—excitement, worry, passion. At Ms. Guthrie’s classroom door, she closed her eyes and tried to clear her head. Her heart was pounding, and her stomach was queasy.
“Jackie.”
She opened her eyes. Ms. Guthrie, dressed in a black smock and black stretch slacks, stared at her with a concerned look on her face. She held a whiteboard eraser as if she’d stopped moving the moment she saw Jackie.
“Hey, Ms. Guthrie,” Jackie said, out of breath.
“What brings you this way?” Her brow creased. Ms. Guthrie had always worried about her—ever since her freshman year when she saw her transform from a quiet girl with an odd past to a goth girl. She always looked at her with curiosity. Once, out of the blue, Ms. Guthrie told her that there was a scientific explanation to every phenomenon, and if there wasn’t, they just haven’t found it yet. Jackie knew she was saying there was a scientific explanation as to why she was such a freak.
Jackie entered the classroom, her heart thumping heavily. She covered her chest with her hand, trying to still it.
“Sit down,” Ms. Guthrie said.
Jackie slid into the first desk chair she saw and took a moment to catch her breath. There was no use beating around the bush. She had already wasted Ms. Guthrie’s time trying to control her emotions, so she got straight to the point. “This is going to sound crazy, but I was wondering, could a solar storm cause a person to commit suicide or act violently?”
Ms. Guthrie stepped closer to the desk. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay. I was just worried about a friend, and Zeta mentioned your lesson on solar storms affecting homing pigeons and stuff.”
“Hmm…” Ms. Guthrie studied her. “Well, scientists, like Professor Raymond Wheeler and Alexander Chizhevsky, have correlated major violent events to the sunspot cycle. I’m not sure how accurate their research was.” Her eyes beamed at Jackie as if she were reading deeper into her question. “You shouldn’t overlook the deeper problems of what may cause a person to do those things.”
“I know. And normally, I wouldn’t think anything of it. But, it’s just that a lot of crazy things happened last night.”
Her eyes softened, creased with pity. “I’m going to write down a few topics for you to research. You may find the answers to what you’re looking for.”
Ms. Guthrie scribbled onto a green Post-it and handed it to her. “You’re a good person, Jackie.”
“Thanks, Ms. Guthrie. It means a lot.”
In the hallway, she read the Post-it, which she had stuck on the tip of her index finger. It read, “Electromagnetic effects on the pineal gland” and “Mirror neurons.” She knew what mirror neurons were. They were the neurons in the brain that allowed people to feel empathy. Ms. Guthrie must have thought that she was the friend in trouble.
Chapter 7
Babu rolled dough for piroshki, her hands pressed flat against the wooden roller handles. Flour was sprinkled on the counter, the edge of the counter, the cabinet door, and Babu’s toes, which were poking out from her slippers.
Babu was eighty-eight years old and still insisted on cooking. Jackie couldn’t blame her. What else did she have to do? Sit around and wait to die? But Mom was afraid she was going to catch her sleeve on a lit burner and burn the house down.
Stephanie Yarrow, the housekeeper at Holy Resurrection, had caught her sleeve on a lit candle in front of the Virgin of Vladimir. It happened on a rainy, Saturday morning two weeks after Jackie had the vision. The fire burned the iconostasis, it burned the Virgin in the apse, and it burned Stephanie beyond recognition.
Her stomach shrank. “Let me,” she said to Babu, and gently placed her hands on top of hers. Babu’s hands were warm. Boney. Her light flowed from her hands into Jackie’s, making Jackie’s stomach muscles relax.
Babu slipped her hands from beneath hers. Jackie pressed her palms against the wooden handles and rolled forward, backward, to the sides. The edges of the dough stretched and retracted with each pass of the roller.
Babu babbled in Russian as she mixed fried onions and mushrooms into day-old mashed potatoes.
When Jackie finished rolling, she cut circles in the dough and placed them on a baking sheet. Babu spooned filling onto each circle, and Jackie folded them over and pinched the edges together. She loved cooking with Babu.
Mom hadn’t come home from work yet. She was already an hour late. So, since she and Babu needed their strength, as soon as the piroshki were done baking, they went ahead and ate.
Jackie was washing dishes when Mom walked in. Mom had this spacey expression on her face and didn’t seem to notice that Jackie was cleaning up dinner dishes and that she was late.
“Where’ve you been?” Jackie asked, trying to cut Mom’s fog.
“Me?”
“Well, yeah. You’re the only other person in this room.”
She hung her coat on a hook and then looked at Jackie like she was contemplating whether or not to tell her why she was late. Finally, she threw up her hands and spouted, “I went to see Madam Sophie.”
Jackie’s mouth dropped open. She felt betrayed and at the same time confused. Mom was one of those who signed a petition against Madam Sophie, who picketed in front of her place of business. “Did she recognize you?”
“If she did, she’s forgiven me. She was overly generous and kind.”
Jackie wiped a soapy arm across her forehead. As the bubbles on her skin popped, she imagined Madam Sophie in her head, sucking out her thoughts.
Mom opened the cabinet door. “Where’s my glass?”
“In the rack, drying.”
Mom ripped two paper towels from the roll and dried the king-sized rock glass she had gotten from a Florida vacation.
“So what’d she tell you?” Jackie asked. “Some tall, dark, handsome guy is going to sweep you off your feet and make your life all better?”
“No,” she snapped, as if pissed that she had guessed it.
“So what possessed you to go?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Things around town have gotten kind of freaky. Maybe I just wanted to know if anything terrible was going to happen to me. It’s scary when you see your peers dropping dead around you. It makes you realize how mortal you are.”
“Mom, it was just one peer, and he didn’t just drop dead. He killed himself.”
“Still, it’s freaky.”
She hosed the inside of the pot with scalding water and watched the opaque, pink skim of soap spread from the pot’s surface and turn it to steely blue. Mom was always so extreme. Once she got a notion in her head, she obsessed with it. Like the time the residents of Ravenwood were signing petitions against Madam Sophie, trying to run her out of town. Jackie didn’t know why Mom jumped on that bandwagon. Mom threw her horoscope and yoga books away. Jackie wondered what had caused this obsessive swing now. Her intuition told her it was something deeper than George Hanson hanging himself.
“So what did Madam Sophie say?”
“Well, really, it was kind of weird. Her hands locked on mine, and it felt like she was reading more than she told me because she was quiet for the longest time.”
“So what’d she tell you?”
“Oh, you know, the usual. That I’d live to a ripe old age.”
She rolled her eyes. “How corny. There’s a fifty-fifty chance of that. If I had to guess, I’d go the other way on that one. All I have to do is count empty gin bottles.�
��
“She said other stuff too, but it’s kind of personal.”
“Personal?” Jackie laughed.
Mom will pop, eventually. She always did, sometimes telling Jackie more than she cared to hear.
“Hungry?”
Mom filled her rock glass with crushed ice and then poured it full of gin. “Not right now.”
“How old did she say you were going to live to?” she rinsed the sudsy plates.
Mom sipped her martini and then leaned against the kitchen counter, cupping the icy glass in her hands. “She asked about you.”
Jackie released the handle on the hose. The spray of water abruptly cut off.
“She wanted to know what you were doing with your gift,” Mom said.
“Did you tell her I returned it?”
“I didn’t know what to tell her. You never talk to me. I mean, really talk to me. I don’t know what’s going on inside your head.”
“Good.” She really didn’t mean it as cruelly as it sounded. She just didn’t want Mom wrapped up in her problems, obsessing over her. She destroyed Mom’s marriage with Dad. She didn’t want to ruin Mom’s life anymore. “Mom, I think it’s really neat you went to a fortune-teller. I mean, I want you to be happy. To do whatever makes you happy. Even if my friends think you are crazy.”
Her eyes creased with dread.
“Mom, I was just kidding. They never said anything about you. Well, Zeta did say that she wished when she’s your age,”—actually she had used the word old, but Mom didn’t need that piece of information—“that she’ll act as young as you.”
Mom’s eyes grew wide with delight. “She did?”
Jackie nodded and left Mom on that note to research electromagnetic effects on the pineal gland. From what she read, she learned that electromagnetism can affect the pineal gland, which in turn affects the circadian production rhythm of melatonin. In short, a decreased level of melatonin could cause, among other things, loss of sleep, depression, and bipolar disorder.
She came to the conclusion that Jason’s dad going berserk could or could not have been caused by the solar storm. In fact, all the violent events occurring in the same night could have just been a coincidence, and maybe Jason’s dad just happened to return to his old ways of being an abusive dickhead.
Worried even more about Jason, she called him and let the phone ring until the call cut out. It occurred to her that maybe Jason’s dad was being a dick and had taken away Jason’s phone. She texted him just in case he didn’t.
Miss you. Please call.
Chapter 8
Jackie spent the evening with Babu doing needlepoint. Her light had already washed the negative emotions away and eased Jackie’s worry over Jason.
Babu patted Jackie’s thigh and smiled. “Ochen’ khorosho.”
This, Jackie knew, meant very good. “Thanks, Babu.”
The doorbell rang. The loud and boisterous sound of the bell annihilated the silence, splintered the peace. Jackie wove her needle through the canvas squares and set the tiny canvas on the couch.
Through the etched glass of the door window, all she could make out were fragments of someone dressed in dark clothing. Every time she moved her head to get a better look, the fragments shifted, and she couldn’t assemble the whole person. Whoever it was, looked too tall to be Jason.
She unlocked the door, but left the chain connected. Her eyes locked on the black cassock. Tiny pins prickled her nerves, and perspiration rose beneath her eyes.
“Good evening,” said the young man dressed like a priest. His eyes were deep-set and downturned, and his cheeks were flushed from the cool evening air. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-five. “I am David Davidovich.” His accent was foreign. Russian?
She studied his cassock and wondered why he wasn’t addressing himself as Father.
He smoothed down the breast of his garment. “You are confused,” he said. “I am a seminarian, not an ordained priest.” The sides of his mouth dimpled when he spoke. “We must wear a cassock when on official business.”
Official business? What could be official about this visit? Had the church finally come to burn her at the stake? She squeezed the door handle.
“Please.” He passed her a business card through the crack.
She glanced at the card and read, “Holy Resurrection Russian Orthodox Church.” Her muscles hardened.
He wrinkled his nose and brushed his fingers through his closely-clipped sandy-colored hair. “I am looking for Jackie Turov.”
“She’s not home.” She wanted to shut the door in his face, but he was looking at her with those dreamy, mesmerizing eyes. She pressed her fingers to the business card. She was having a hard time reading him. She only got a feeling of him being hung in a balance, but maybe that was her.
“Do you know when she will be home?”
Hmm… He doesn’t know who I am. “She works late at the soup kitchen,” she lied, figuring it was what he’d like to hear about someone who supposedly saw the Virgin.
“It is important she contact me.”
“Why?”
“I would rather tell her myself. She would understand. You will give her my card, yes?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“I am sorry. I did not ask your name.”
“Fiona,” she spouted. “Jackie’s evil twin.” She raised the corner of her mouth in a sinister smile.
He smiled humbly and nodded. “Thank you, Fiona. May the blessing and the mercy of the Lord be with you.”
“And with your spirit,” she automatically said and quickly closed the door. Heat rushed to her cheeks. Her heart raced. “Dork! Why did I say that?”
Through the front room window, she watched him put on his helmet and mount his motorcycle.
“Kto byl?” Babu asked.
“It’s no one Babu. He had the wrong house.”
In the kitchen, Jackie stepped on the garbage can pedal and held David’s business card above the opened can, but for some reason she couldn’t let go. She took her foot off the pedal. The garbage can lid snapped shut. She read David’s name, which was written in blue ink. There was a line through Father Dmitriev’s name. She wished it meant that Father Dmitriev was no longer the rector of Holy Resurrection, but she knew it most likely meant the church was saving money on new business cards. She stuffed the card in her jeans pocket and rejoined Babu in the front room. As she sat down, the business card bent in her front pocket.
She picked up where she left off on her needlepoint. Her heartbeat had slowed to a normal pace, but she couldn’t concentrate. What did David Davidovich want? What would the church want with her? To the congregation, she was just a vague memory, “that girl” who had “the vision,” who slipped away from God and into the folds of society. She didn’t think any of them could pick her out in a crowd. With that thought, she relaxed. But soon, the curiosity of why David Davidovich was looking for her ate at her again. Was there an investigation or something?
The thought of going back to Holy Resurrection Church or having any kind of connection with it made her stomach sour. Her fingers trembled so much, she couldn’t get the needle through the tiny holes in the canvas. She dropped the needlework to her lap and sighed.
Babu looked worried, like she sensed something was wrong. “Chto ne tak?”
“I don’t feel well, Babu. I’m going to go lay down.” She tilted her head onto pillowed hands so Babu would understand.
Babu shooed her with a flick of her hand. “Idi, idi.”
Wanting to wash away the dread that had saturated her, she filled the claw-foot tub with hot water and immersed herself in its warmth. Cold porcelain cooled her neck, and the water gently rocked her shoulders. She closed her eyes and listened to the slow rhythm of water dripping from the spout.
Her thoughts drifted to when Father Dmitriev had tried to cleanse her with holy water. He had stood before her in front of the iconostasis with an open prayer book in his hand. “Did the vision come from God or Satan?�
��
She froze. Grandma warned her that whatever Father told her to do, to go along with the program. Jackie considered telling Father what he wanted to hear as going along with it.
“From God,” she said. “I mean, from the Virgin. She showed me the fire.” She lowered her head. Her thoughts and lies were as entangled as the pattern of vines in the Oriental carpet beneath her feet. She knew in her heart that what she saw in the church wasn’t a heavenly vision. The Virgin didn’t appear in a bright light before her. She didn’t appear at all. There were no cherubs with trumpets or holy beings in white light.
Father Dmitriev leaned forward, lifted her chin, and pinned his eyes on her. “What else did you see?”
Her knees trembled. “Nothing. Just the flames burning the iconostasis.”
His brow lifted. “Even the devil can appear as an angel.”
“The girl said it was from God,” Grandma snapped.
It surprised her that Grandma would speak to Father that way.
Father locked his hand around Jackie’s wrist, his stern eyes searing whatever was left of her innocence. Her wrist grew hot. She tried to free herself from his grip, but his fingers were strong.
“You know it’s against the law of God to divine. Have you been playing with a Ouija board or tarot cards or having séances?”
She shook her head. His accusations did not sting as hot as his hand on her wrist. It hurt like sitting on a hot car seat in her shorts. She gritted her teeth to keep from screaming and tried to pull her arm away, but Father wouldn’t let go.
Her sleeve caught fire. The fabric curled and dropped like hot embers to her feet. She took it as a sign that she was going to burn in hell. She screamed and twisted her arm, finally freeing herself.
Babu wrapped her arms around her, and the burning stopped.
Father Dmitriev raised the open book. “O God of gods and Lord of lords,” he read. “Grant that this my exorcism being performed in Your awesome name, be terrible to the Master of evil and to all his minions who had fallen with him from the height of brightness.”
Possessed (Pagan Light Book 1) Page 4
