Jeremy stopped in his tracks.
“You mean to say that all those unexplained noises you hear about—haunted houses and all that—are really Poltergeists? Crazy Angels?”
But then both men were startled by “Boom! Boom! Boom!” noises that rang through the house at irregular intervals.
“Shhhhh! Not so loud,” Einstein hissed. He walked on tiptoes, hugging up against the wall. “Yes. It’s much more difficult for them to make noise in newer buildings, because the plumbing is all encased. They have to be in direct contact with the pipes. There are other types of spirits as well. Electricity Poltergeists, for example, who like to mess up electrical currents. In the old days, they used to get a kick out of blowing out candles and leaving everybody in the dark. Now they play havoc with electricity meters, pop light bulbs, and short-circuit refrigerators, washing machines, televisions, and computers. They turn lights and stereos on and off. No one knows why they do these things, but it looks like they have a hell of a good time. And last but not least are the Ectoplasmic Poltergeists. They are able to project an image of themselves on the other side, and on rare occasions, the more perceptive humans can see them. But it requires such a great effort that these Angels can’t attempt the exercise again for several months after. Sometimes they even disappear. Some houses have more than one Poltergeist. Here again, no one knows why they pick certain places to reunite, and not others. They are almost always Reds, and they feed off the fear and uneasiness that they themselves create.”
“Why don’t you tell the new Angels all this stuff right away?” Jeremy snapped, hardly able to contain his anger. Allison was in danger and crucial information had been kept from him!
Einstein could sense his anger. He replied in a calm voice: “Because almost all the Newcomers like you normally have only one thing on their mind: eating. You truly are an exception, Jeremy. Life is hard on Earth. When the Angels arrive here, they’re tired. It’s such a relief for them to be able to just have some fun, sleep as long as they want, and spend time with others while they feed off the Mists. No fighting, no survival of the fittest, no competition. Only those who seek revenge, who have obsessions, or who are driven crazy by jealousy, love, or hate try to communicate with the living, or try to ‘warn’ them. The older Angels tend to avoid talking about these cases with the Newcomers, as we’d rather not have too many Poltergeists on our hands who lose control.”
Jeremy remembered that Tetisheri had talked about these kinds of Angels, the “Avenging Angels” she had called them.
Albert stopped in front of the door leading to the cellar.
“OK,” he said as he pulled the ropes of Mist out of his backpack and quickly transformed them into a strong net. “Now we’re going to pass through the door. Number 24 is sure to be there. And believe me, you’ll soon see for yourself why two of us are necessary!”
The two cohorts passed through the door and started making their way down the stairs to the cellar. Jeremy was really on edge now, and could feel the tension mounting with each step.
The red Angel was there, just like Einstein had said. He was too busy smashing away at the pipes to hear them approaching. It was very odd, because only some of the impacts seemed to have any effect. The Angel struck over and over again, but only about one out of every ten hits made any noise in the real world. He wasn’t all that big, not so fat and bloated as some of the other Reds Jeremy had seen. His hair was disheveled, and when he turned his head and looked at the two intruders, Jeremy shuddered. His eyes were like two bright lakes of blood.
“Aaaarg!” The Angel howled with rage and charged at them with the enormous bar of Mist that he’d fashioned for himself.
Jeremy attracted his attention by hopping around the cellar and gesticulating, while Albert got in position to throw the net over the enraged Angel. Jeremy had to jump quickly out of the way to avoid the big bar as the Angel brought it crashing down. He had no idea what would happen if the lunatic actually managed to land a blow, and had no intention of finding out. No. 24 finally passed beneath Einstein, who was floating in the air waiting to spring his trap, and he threw his net over the madman’s head.
The Poltergeist was so incensed that it took him some time to realize what had happened. He kept running after Jeremy, and Albert, who hadn’t been expecting him to lunge forward with such energy, realized too late that he probably should have released the net. He was dragged along behind the mad Angel like an unsuspecting fisherman who had hooked an enormous swordfish. The scientist couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds, and since Big No. 24 must have weighed more than double that, there was no way he could slow him down. He began to curse angrily in German, all the while being tossed about behind the Poltergeist like a rag doll.
If the situation hadn’t been so desperate, Jeremy would have been tempted to laugh. But as the furious Red continued to thrash at him with his humongous bar, what he regretted most was that Albert had chosen such a bony little body for himself.
He stepped aside as the bar came crashing down yet again and yelled out: “Einstein! He won’t stop! What should we do now?”
His voice caught the Angel off guard, and he was tripped up by the net as it began tightening around his ankles. When he began to stagger, Albert quickly got to his feet and yanked sharply on the net, causing the Angel to tumble down like a wall of bricks in a thundering crash. He continued to fight like mad to get free, poking his bar of Mist at them all the while. Jeremy finally managed to pull it out of his hands when the Poltergeist jabbed his arms through the net, which was starting to weaken. But even without his weapon it took them quite a while to subdue the creature. Albert kept repairing the net as fast as the red Angel could pull it apart. Luckily for them, the Poltergeist could only jab out instinctively, and was no match for Albert, who patiently and methodically kept making repairs. Soon the battle was over.
Jeremy got to his feet and wiped the sweat from his brow.
“Oof! I thought he would never give up!”
“Oh, that was the easy part,” Albert grumbled as he too got to his feet and began wiping the dust off his clothes. “Now we have to find a way to get him to your girlfriend’s place!”
The red Angel, who was now bundled up as tight as a sausage, howled with rage. After about five minutes, Albert got sick of having to holler at Jeremy in order to make himself heard, and finally climbed the stairs, grabbed some Mist from the elderly couple upstairs, and made a gag. When he came back downstairs the red Angel tried to bite him, but Albert skillfully placed the gag over his maw, foaming with rage. The ensuing silence was pure heaven.
“I don’t know what’s worse,” Jeremy sighed. “The killer or this complete lunatic.”
“Don’t worry, you won’t have to put up with him for long. He’ll do his best to drive your girlfriend crazy: He’ll make all kinds of noise; then when she finally skedaddles, or if he just gets fed up with the whole thing, he’ll come back here. He always comes back here.”
Jeremy’s jaw dropped in surprise. It took him a while before he could finally speak: “You mean this isn’t the first time you’ve kidnapped him?”
“A little while back, we wanted to see if we could teach him Morse code,” Albert admitted a bit sheepishly. “We were nearly successful, but only a few of his hits managed to get through to the living, and the cadence was completely random. We tried everything, but it was impossible to send a coherent message. Some of the Ectoplasmics, especially the most ancient ones, have been able to return to the real world and take possession of a human. Of course, the Angels talked in their own languages, which for the most part were dead languages, which meant that the living couldn’t understand what they were saying, or else were astonished to hear a man or woman speaking a language that was unfamiliar to them.”
“You mean, all those stories about people being possessed … don’t tell me that those were actually Angels?”
“More or less. Crazy Angels, you might say. Which is why they never managed to say wh
at they wanted. It’s as if the fact that they were reincarnated only screwed up their heads even more.”
“And the living thought they were possessed by the Devil; is that it?”
“It’s always the red Angels that find a way to get through—usually the worst of the lot, and some were real demons. And very superstitious as well. No incense, prayers, or holy water could stop them, but they did act as if it burned them. We think it was purely a psychological reaction. It was usually old Angels from the dawn of humanity, when religions were in their infancy and people really believed that gods and demons roamed the Earth. Which is why they were also extremely receptive to holy objects. The phenomenon could last for years, and then the Ectoplasmic Poltergeist would eventually fade away. The incarnation could only last so long. Alas, in most cases the unwitting hosts also ended up losing their minds.”
“But why couldn’t we capture one of these Poltergeists and have it possess Allis—” Jeremy started to ask, but then immediately left off: Yeah great, then she would go crazy as well.
“Believe me, the best solution is to try and scare her.”
The red Angel at their feet started thrashing about again, attracting both Angels’ attention.
“Moving this guy is going to be a nightmare!” Einstein sighed. “And all the worse since you don’t know how to create objects yet … All right then, you put him over your shoulder and carry him upstairs, while I get a platform ready.”
Without even trying to figure out what Einstein meant, Jeremy obeyed orders and started lugging the enraged Angel up the stairs. He weighed a ton, and to make matters worse kept wriggling about like a two-hundred-pound tub of Jell-O. As he heaved and hauled him from the basements one painful step at a time, Einstein was up on the roof pulling together the Mist emanating from the house’s elderly occupants and shaping it into a blue platform fitted out with straps. It floated on air above the house, and then Albert jumped on board and brought it down to the ground. They strapped in the red Angel, who was howling like a stuck pig beneath his gag and still trying with all his might to free himself.
Their prisoner continued to bellow for the entire trip back to New York, as if leaving that house was more than he could take. Albert and Jeremy decided it would be best to just take the bus: Carhopping would have been sheer madness. Jeremy was tempted to free Big No. 24 more than once, as the whole business was so exasperating, and even seemed downright cruel to him. But his great anxiety for Allison won out in the end. He told himself that at least the elderly couple back in New Jersey would have a few days of peace and calm.
Once they arrived at Allison’s place, Jeremy hurried upstairs to make sure that she was OK. He sighed with relief when he found her sleeping peacefully, with Frankenstein at her side.
To Jeremy’s great surprise, Einstein immediately freed the rogue Angel in her apartment.
“But … but why’d you do that?” he yelled, convinced that the Angel would immediately flee.
“Take it easy now; everything will be fine,” Einstein whispered gently. “He’ll start to walk around the apartment now, to see if he can find somewhere to start bang—ah, look! You see? He’s already found something!”
The Poltergeist had found a few bare pipes along the wall in the kitchen and began roaring again—but joyfully this time. He raised the bar that Einstein had returned to him above his head and began whacking at the pipe with all his might. Damn! Even though Jeremy was forced to plug his ears, the sound didn’t pass over to the living world. Not even a little. Not the slightest decibel.
“Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t,” Einstein yelled over the noise. “He’ll stay for a few days, and then, like I told you, he’ll want to go back home. I hope he can still be of some help to you.”
There was no Plan B. All Jeremy could do was nod, hoping with all his heart that the madman would be able to unsettle Allison, and make her leave the apartment. Her place was a deathtrap now. Jeremy hoped she would go stay with a friend—even if the friend was Clark the Pervert. As long as she wasn’t alone, he would be satisfied.
The two Angels talked for a couple hours as they watched the Poltergeist bang away on the pipes to no effect.
Allison eventually woke up and took the dog for a walk before eating breakfast.
“Do you realize,” asked Einstein as he watched the little Scottish Terrier yapping at Allison’s feet while she looked for his leash, “that if my parents had christened me Frank, I would have the same name as that dog: Frank Einstein!”
Jeremy couldn’t help but laugh. Albert had the gift of making light of even the most hopeless situations. But it was already getting late and Einstein had to go find his scientist friends. The two Angels said goodbye after having agreed to meet during the week at Rose’s & Blues, so that Jeremy could tell Albert how everything went.
Allison’s walk with Frankenstein didn’t take long. She quickly cleaned up her apartment after she got back and, with Jeremy right on her tail, went to campus to meet some friends. She told them about some problems she was having with the teacher overseeing her training, who was giving her a hard time. Then she went straight to the grade school. Jeremy stayed at her side all afternoon, on the lookout for the killer. He was nowhere to be seen. But Jeremy did notice one little thing that he couldn’t understand, and the only reason he noticed it was because the Mist coming off of Allison had surprising colors in it: Allison was afraid. Something in the classroom was frightening her. Something … or someone. There were no other adults in the room except for a second student teacher and the lady Allison had been complaining about: a sullen-looking woman with flabby cheeks and frazzled, gray hair. One by one, Jeremy studied all the little kids’ faces—attentive or distracted, happy or bored—and tried to figure out where the problem was.
It took him a while because the source of the problem was so hard to pinpoint. He could tell that Allison was doing her best to overcome her fear. Finally, when the kids were coming back to class after recess, it hit him.
It wasn’t an adult.
It was one of the kids! A young boy with hair as blond as Allison’s, big brown eyes and a big smile on his face, who was completely unaware of Allison’s uneasiness. He even looked to be on friendly terms with her, as if he knew her better than the others.
Jeremy frowned in concentration and took a closer look at the boy. He didn’t see anything different about him. Judging by his Mist, he was neither mean nor malicious. On the contrary—he looked like a happy, straightforward little kid who enjoyed life. Jeremy took a look at his name on the class register: Peter Ventousi. It meant nothing to Jeremy.
Class was finally over and Allison dismissed the children. The regular teacher asked her to straighten up the room and wipe clean the blackboard, then Allison collected all her affairs. Jeremy felt a pang when he suddenly realized how tired she was. She looked worried and stressed, and her face was inscrutable during the whole ride back to her apartment.
As he followed her along to the front door of her apartment building, he was too busy trying to read her face to notice that two men were waiting for her by the entrance. When he saw her slow down, it was already too late. Standing behind the two strangers he could see Clark, looking as impeccable as ever, accompanied by his two Angels.
“Dammit!” Jeremy couldn’t help but exclaiming. “Just what we needed—the sex fiend! What the hell is he doing here anyway?”
The two Angels floating over his head looked embarrassed.
“Well, you might say that we were a bit too successful,” the red Angel said sheepishly.
“We kept whispering in his ear that he should go talk to the police, and he must have heard us,” added the Blue. “He doesn’t think the murder has anything to do with the miracle drug or any cure for cancer, but that it was the work of a hit man hired by the mafia. Of course, we don’t have a clue, but I think that your little friend is going to be absolutely furious with him. Instead of quietly asking around, he panicked. I think he’s seen too ma
ny movies on TV.”
“I hope she reads him the riot act!” Jeremy snapped. “Because if the killer realizes that the cops are involved, he’ll get rid of her in no time! She can’t let them up into her apartment! It’s bugged and the killer will hear her talking to the police!”
Beneath the Angels, Allison looked worriedly at the badges the two inspectors showed her.
“Yes?” she asked in a small voice, after having glowered at Clark. “What can I do for you?”
“Hello Miss, I’m Detective Bonham and this is Detective Vrick,” one of the officers said, smiling. “Well, for a start, you might be kind enough to invite us inside.”
“To my apartment?” Allison stuttered. “But …”
The man’s smile hardened, and so did his eyes.
“And then you might want to tell us a little bit about the man you saw murdered in cold blood,” he added sharply. “One Jeremy Galveaux.”
9
The Taste of Futility
At first, Allison was so shaken up she could only stare at the two officers. Inspector Bonham, the first one who had spoken to her, had a large, bald forehead and the imposing paunch of a man who enjoyed his beer and whose idea of exercise was lifting the bottle to his mouth as he relaxed in his recliner in front of the TV. His partner, Inspector Vrick, was just the opposite: thin, with sharp features and an extremely penetrating look in his eyes that made Allison shudder. Vrick was much younger and actually not bad looking. But there was something menacing about him, in contrast to Bonham’s manners, which were more like those of a genial grandfather. Allison quickly decided to stop sizing the two men up. It didn’t matter: They were cops. They wanted to know the truth. And neither one would show her any pity.
The only unknown in the equation was Jeremy Galveaux. If, as Clark had supposed, the two murders had been linked to the shady dealings of some mafia family, then Allison really was in grave danger. Of course, even if that wasn’t the case she was still in danger. Any way you looked at it, she was in dire straits. She firmly stood her ground, determined not to move an inch from the sidewalk, took a deep breath and decided to give it a shot.
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