Before I Wake

by Robert J. Wiersema

  “Come in. It’s easier to talk inside.”

  “I waited until the reporters left,” he said as I led him toward the family room. “I didn’t think there was any need for anyone to read about this in the morning paper.”

  “Read about what?” Mary asked.

  “And you are?”

  Mary glanced at me, then back at the policeman. “Mary Edwards,” she said, extending her hand.

  He shook it firmly. “You’re an attorney, right? You work with Mr. Barrett.”

  She nodded, then corrected both herself and him. “Until this morning.”

  He seemed surprised. “This morning?”

  “Simon was terminated by the firm this morning,” I explained.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Mrs. Barrett. I know your husband.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “He did some work for me a couple of years ago. Really helped me out. Did his dismissal have anything to do with the story in the paper?”

  “What do you think?”

  We all sat down. “Yeah. Well, unfortunately, that’s why I’m here.” He took a small notebook and pen from inside his jacket and opened to a fresh page.

  “Mrs. Barrett,” he started, “we’ve received some reports that are somewhat alarming, so we wanted to talk—”

  “Sergeant, is there a police investigation concerning Mr. and Mrs. Barrett?” Mary interrupted, her voice calm.

  He shook his head. “No, there isn’t an active investigation. We’ve received some reports and we wanted to look into them.”

  Mary nodded. “That’s fine, then. But if it turns out there is a criminal investigation, I think you’ll find this interview of little evidentiary value.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because Mrs. Barrett doesn’t have an attorney present.”

  “You mean you don’t represent Mrs. Barrett?” It was hard to tell, but it seemed like the Sergeant might be making a joke.

  “Sergeant Richards, I don’t represent Mrs. Barrett in any way whatsoever.”

  “Well, I can assure you, Miss Edwards, that there is no active criminal investigation. I’ve just got a few questions, starting with Donna and Jeffrey Kelly.”

  “That’s fine,” I said, leaning back into the cushions.

  “Do you believe that your daughter can heal the sick?”

  “I don’t know. There have been a few people—Sherry’s nurse, her sister—but we’ve never claimed that Sherry can…can do any of those things.”

  “Did you ever ask Donna Kelly for money, in exchange for using your daughter’s powers to heal her son?”

  “No.”

  “Yet Ms. Kelly claims you told her that unless she paid, you wouldn’t let Jeffrey see Sherry.”

  “Did she tell you that herself?”

  He looked up from his notebook.

  “Because we’ve tried calling her—”

  “That’s probably not the best idea.”

  “—and we haven’t been able to get in touch.”

  “Yeah. We’re responding to published reports.”

  “So you haven’t spoken to her either.”

  Richards shook his head. “So no money changed hands.”

  “No.”

  “Have you asked for money from any of the other people who have come to see your daughter?”

  “No. I wouldn’t have taken any if they had offered.”

  “And how many people would you say came through here today?”

  “I’d have to check. Between thirty and forty, I think. I’ve got a list of their names, addresses and everything if you need it.”

  He wrote the figure down in his notebook. “That would be handy.”

  I was about to stand up, to look for Jamie’s clipboard, when Mary cleared her throat.

  “Have you got a fax number where we can send the list, Sergeant? We’d like to keep our files complete.”

  “Sure.” Reaching into his pocket, he passed me a business card. “All my numbers are on there.”

  He closed his notebook and tucked it back into his pocket. “I think that’s everything,” he said. “I can’t…” He shook his head. “You might be hearing from someone else in the department in the next few days. Depending on if there are complaints or reports.” He seemed uncomfortable, shifting slightly from foot to foot.

  “Mrs. Barrett. Will you be talking to Simon?”

  I nodded.

  “Could you get him to give me a call the next time you’re talking to him?”

  “Sure. I’ll tell him.”

  “Thanks. And thanks for taking the time.” He extended his hand.

  After I saw him out I came back to the family room where Mary was still sitting on the couch.

  “That was strange,” I said.

  She nodded. “Yes, it was.”

  For some reason, I found Mary’s uncertainty disturbing.

  HENRY

  I was walking along the narrow corridor behind the children’s section, almost ready to give up my search for Tim, when I smelled a trace of cigar smoke. I pushed open the door to the women’s washroom.

  Tim was sitting on the counter, leaning against the tiled wall, watching the smoke from his cigar curl up toward the exhaust fan in the ceiling.

  “Someone told me to say hello to you,” I said.

  He looked almost unconcerned. “And?”

  “A priest. He said his name was Peter.”

  His eyebrows rose a little. “Really? Interesting.” He took another pull from his cigar and rolled it between his thumb and forefinger. “Where did you meet this man?”

  I felt almost embarrassed to tell him. “I was at the Barretts’ house this afternoon. I wanted to see what was going on.”

  “He was there?”

  I nodded. “When I got there everyone was leaving, except him. He was just standing there.”

  “Alone?”

  “I think so,” I answered guardedly. “I didn’t see anyone else.”

  He rolled the cigar thoughtfully. “That’s unusual,” he said quietly, more to himself than to me. “He’s rarely alone.”

  “So you know him?”

  He nodded. “What did the two of you talk about?”

  Isolated images, of his cold eyes, his uneven teeth behind his thin lips. “Well, he, he knew who I was. Then he asked—Tim, how did he know who I was?”

  “Your picture has been in the paper—”

  “No, how did he see me?”

  Sighing, Tim shifted his weight around so he was looking at me full on. “His name’s not actually Peter.”

  “I didn’t think so. And your name’s not really Tim.”

  He shrugged. “He’s a very old man who made a bad choice a long time ago and has been trying to make amends ever since.”

  “And you?”

  “The same could be said about me. Just another old man who made a bad choice.”

  “There’s more to it than that,” I said, my voice loud in the tiled room. “There has to be.”

  “You’ll find, Henry, that there’s always more to it—”

  “Oh, cut the old sage stuff, man. Who is he and what does he want?”

  Tim shook his head at my anger. “I don’t know what he wants, or what he has planned. I will say this, though.” He leaned forward, dangling the hand holding his cigar between his knees. “He’s done terrible things in the past. Or convinced others to do them.”

  “And what have you done?”

  “Many things, Henry,” he said. “Time is long. And old men forget…”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “No, it’s Shakespeare.”

  Raising the cigar to his lips, he took a gentle tug. Then another, longer. Finally, he took the cigar from his mouth and studied the cold, gray-black tip.

  He was trying to relight it as I left the ladies’ room.

  MARY

  I looked down at my plate: potatoes, grilled chicken, carrots and garlic almond beans, with a bowl of lettuce and end
ive salad on one side. “This all looks so good,” I said.

  Karen smiled a little at the compliment, but I could feel a bit of the chill returning. “Thank you for your help with it,” she said politely. “Do you cook much yourself?”

  “No, not too much. I’ve usually got so much going on, with work, and…” I realized suddenly how all of this might be taken by Karen, forced to stay at home with Sherry. I trailed off.

  “Do you enjoy it?”

  “Enjoy what?” I took a sip of my wine.

  “Being a lawyer. I know that Simon loves it, but I’ve never really understood why.” She seemed to be trying to minimize any offense I might take.

  I nodded. “I love it,” I said. “It’s all I ever wanted to do.”

  “Really? It wasn’t something your parents pushed you into?”

  “God, no,” I said. “I was born in a VW microbus in North Africa somewhere. My parents have never even been sure what country they were in when it happened. They were in one of those mobile communes, going wherever the wind took them.” I shrugged. “We lived in Ireland for a few years when I was little, then came back to Canada. They opened up an organic foods store up-island. They flipped when I told them I wanted to be a lawyer. God, I might as well have told them that I wanted to be an air force pilot dropping napalm on some village somewhere.”

  Karen laughed. “So I guess you could say they discouraged you?”

  “You could say that. They thought that I should be an artist—maybe write poetry, edit a little magazine, do raku. But I liked the stability of the law, the order.” I chuckled, taking another sip of my wine, risked a joke. “I was rebellious. Started shaving my legs and everything.”

  Karen smiled and shook her head. “Did they ever forgive you?”

  I nodded. “Oh yeah. Christmas is hard though. It’s like ‘This is Bob, my cross-dressing son, and this is Sparkle, she paints rocks and this is Mary—’” I dropped my voice to a dramatic whisper. “‘She’s a lawyer.’”

  We both laughed for a long time.

  “I’m just kidding,” I finally gasped. “I don’t really have any brothers or sisters.”

  This just started us off laughing again, and it was a long time before either of us was able to speak. The sense that there might be anything strange in the two of us sitting there over dinner had completely disappeared.

  “I always wanted to write,” Karen said, the smile vanishing from her face.

  “I thought you wrote for the Sentinel, before Sherry was born?” I took a small bite of my salad.

  “I did.” She shook her head. “I got the job at the paper to make ends meet while Simon was in law school.” She toyed with her fork. “No, I always wanted to be a Writer. You know, capital W. Short stories, fiction, maybe a novel.” She shrugged, as if that part of her no longer existed.

  “Why don’t you? Write, I mean.”

  “I did, for a while. Well, all through school I did. I did an English degree, took courses in creative writing. I spent as much time writing stories as I did writing papers.”

  “Did you get anything published?”

  “A few things here and there. I never really sent stuff out.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not sure. I guess it seems pretty stupid now that I didn’t.”

  “That’s okay,” I said.

  She shook her head, staring at me. “No. No, it’s not. I see you, I look at you and I realize how, how…jealous I am. Beginning your career. Doing what you want. So many options.”

  I braced myself.

  “I look at you and I realize that somewhere I got off track, I guess.”

  “So get back on.”

  She gave a single, sharp laugh. “Right. In my spare time.”

  My turn to shrug and take another bite.

  “You’re really something, you know that?”

  I looked up and she was smiling. I didn’t speak, uncertain what she meant, what to say.

  “I can see why Simon loves you,” she said.

  “Karen, I—”

  She shook her head. “No, don’t. Please don’t. I know. I know it goes deeper than my husband having an affair with someone at his office. I know that there’s more to it than sex, than staying late after work, lying to me on the telephone.” She smiled a little at my expression. “I think I knew, even before the accident, that something was going on.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “What’s he like when he’s with you?” She shifted in her chair.

  Stalling, I set my knife and fork on the edge of the plate, dabbed the corners of my mouth with the napkin and picked up my wineglass. I really didn’t want to talk about Simon with his wife, but I couldn’t see any way to avoid it. “He’s, I mean, he’s, well, he’s just Simon, I guess…”

  Karen leaned across the table and took my hand, squeezing it.

  I took a deep breath. “It’s hard to describe. I mean, I don’t know what he’s like with you. How that compares. With me, he’s gentle, I guess. I mean, he never raises his voice. Never seems to get upset. I’ve seen him in court: I know how he can get. You know, how cold. How precise. How vicious. I’ve never seen that, except in court.”

  She looked at me like I was describing a stranger. I tried again. “He listens. And he talks to me. I feel like we’ve got…like we had…a real connection.” I shook my head. “I’m sorry.”

  “You got him playing his guitar again.”

  “Guitar?”

  “Yeah. The other day he went up to the attic and got his old guitar down. I hadn’t heard him play since university.”

  “I didn’t even know he played,” I said.

  “He’s a man with a lot of secrets,” she said, almost without bitterness.

  “I never used to think so. I always thought that we were really open. With one another, I mean. The problem, I think, is that Simon doesn’t really know himself.”

  She shook her head.

  “That’s what I told him this morning. I told him—” I braced myself. “I told him that I loved him, but that I didn’t really think that he knew what he wanted, and that I didn’t want to…”

  I couldn’t finish the sentence. Instead, I reached for the bottle of wine in the center of the table and filled my glass, carefully looking away from Karen.

  When I looked back, her eyes were focused on my face. I couldn’t even guess what she might have been thinking.

  LEO

  I sat in the van in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven where Father Peter had told me to wait, trying to remember everything he had said. I tried to think it through. It all made so much sense when he was talking. All that stuff about people attacking our faith, about the forces of darkness being loosed upon the earth. You just needed to watch the news at dinnertime to know that he was telling the truth.

  But that little girl…

  I kept the picture of Sherilyn Barrett from the newspaper under the work orders on my clipboard so I could look at it, look at her beautiful sweet face. How could she could be evil?

  That sweet little girl…

  But no. Father Peter said she wasn’t a little girl anymore, not since the accident. That was when the Beast took her, deceiving people with these false healings, luring them away from the truth and finding a home in the darkness within them.

  Evil can wear so many different faces.

  Somebody knocked on the window and I jumped. I thought for a second it might be the Dark One, called by my thoughts of him.

  It was Father Peter. He waved for me to follow him.

  I locked the door and had to hustle to catch up. Hustle hustle hustle, don’t be late.

  He led me up the street and into an alley. Piles of garbage leaned against the walls of an old church. The windows were all boarded up. When I caught up to him, he was unlocking a door with a ring of keys.

  “A donation,” he said, as he pulled the door open. “From a true believer.”

  The basement was as full of garbage and mess as the all
ey. It looked like a bookstore or something. There were boxes of books everywhere, stacks of records and magazines falling on the floor. The air stunk like cat pee and rotting meat. I coughed a little to keep from throwing up, and Father Peter looked at me.

  Something slithered through the garbage. A rat, maybe? A serpent?

  “Look at this place.” He shook his head. He touched a stack of books and scrunched up his face. “How could anyone who claimed to truly love God allow this to happen to one of His holy places?”

  I didn’t know the answer.

  “One of the oldest buildings in the city, a house of God, now no better than a dung heap. There’s no history here. No legacy.” He shook his head. “Even the Romans left the temples alone, and we do this to ourselves.”

  I didn’t understand what he meant, and I think he could tell.

  “Someone told me that there used to be a fitness club in this building. They did aerobics where people used to come to worship. Looking for salvation in the flesh, in the sin. Vanity. And now this. Somebody selling this smut, this sleaze, in the basement of a church.”

  He struck a match on the wall and lit a candle. He held it high as we went farther into the basement. It smelled even worse. The candle made long shadows on the piles of garbage.

  “But that’s all right,” he said, as if he was talking to himself. “We’ll clean it out. I’ve known places like this before. Basements and sewers. Caves and catacombs. Sometimes what we have to do is best done in darkness, where no one can see us, don’t you think, Leo?”

  “I guess so.” I had no idea what he was talking about.

  He turned toward me, holding the candle between us. In the candlelight, his face looked even more like a skull.

  “You do know what I’m talking about, don’t you, Leo?” he asked, his teeth sharp and shiny. “You’re a part of this now.”

  I nodded. I knew it. I was part of it. He trusted me.

  “That’s good, that’s good.” He seemed to look into me, without blinking. “Because there is going to come a time when I call on you, Leo. When I will have need of you. And I need to know that when that time comes, I’ll be able to rely on you to do what needs to be done. I can rely on you, can’t I, Leo?”

  I thought of the photo of the little girl from the newspaper, of the evil that was hidden inside her, just waiting to get hold of anyone who touched her, anyone fooled by her innocence. The mask of the Beast.