by Edward Lee
She grabbed the rail and very slowly descended.
At once an unpleasant shiver rippled her skin. The old moldy smell reminded her of the basement at the foster house, where the execrable Andre and Helga Goldfarb had regularly locked her, Britt, and their foster brother after drugging them. Don’t think about it, she warned herself. Remember what Britt said, the past is just junk that can’t hurt me.
The warning sufficed; when she made it to the bottom of the stairs, the basement’s clutter, cobwebs, and wide brick walls made her forget about the reminiscent odor. Pretty big, she detected even in the wan light. She couldn’t find any more switches. The only other light edging the long room came from the sodium lights in the alley, which filtered in through the low windows. The security bars drew black slats across the floor.
But there must be another light somewhere.
She waded deeper through the murk. Old rounded cobblestones formed the floor; she could feel the border of each stone on the bottoms of her feet. They felt warm, almost glossy; however—
She stopped. The rounded squares had changed to something wide and rough. What—
She looked down but could barely see. Damn it. What IS that? She could only make out a perimeter that seemed lighter than the rest of the floor and not composed of stones at all. She steadied herself again, then slowly got down on her knees, though she couldn’t imagine why.
Now, however, she could discern the mysterious perimeter’s dimensions just as her stomach clenched.
An oblong perimeter, about the same size of a coffin lid.
Don’t be ridiculous. Of course, she was overreacting, and all that alcohol in her blood didn’t help. It’s not a grave, for God’s sake. Probably just some patchwork on the floor …
She pressed her palms down and, indeed, found just a plane of rough cement. It seemed cooler than the cobblestones. A pipe probably broke fifty years ago so they dug here to fix it, she speculated.
But…why should she care?
Then she tried to rise but couldn’t.
It must be the champagne, packing its final wallop, but for a stricken moment she had the oddest impression: that it was the cement patch that was drawing her down.
Stupid …
She attempted to rise again but this time got so dizzy, her knees thunked back down hard and she fell over on her side. Oh, God, I can’t believe I’m this crocked …The dizziness distilled; she decided to lay back and rest for a little while. She took deep breaths, hoping to clear her head but then…
Had she been in bed, it would have been the bed that was spinning, but in this case?
It was the floor.
She seemed to be revolving, the queasiness in her belly compounding to outright nausea. With little warning from her metabolism, she quickly turned her head and vomited. She huffed, breaking out into a sweat. I don’t think I’ve been this sick ever. Her vantage point continued to revolve as if she lay on a bearing’d platform; the dizziness thickened. When she pressed her hand out to try to sit up, she felt something against her palm. A stick, maybe, or a pen. Her heart lurched a moment before she passed out, when at the furthest fringe of her vision, she thought she saw a figure standing in the corner.
“Singele lui traieste,” she hears, lying prone and nude and seemingly paralyzed. But she’s not in the basement, she’s in the grotto of her nightmare, the furious backdrop of black, green, and red ribbons weaving back and forth and the sound of water dripping and a dog barking and excited chatter that seems female but not in any language she’s familiar with. In fact, she’s not even familiar with her own name …
Soft hands smooth up and down her glistening skin, drawing sensations that are as erotic as they are inexplicable.
The whispers of other voices seem to halo about her head: “Kanesae …”
Hands cosset her flesh more fervently. Six? Eight? A dozen hands? She senses that they’re the hands of women, judging by the knowing way they touch her. Her muscles flex at the forbidden plea sure being kindled in this dark place. Several of the hands slide around between her legs now, and—
Her back arches; she sighs through gritted teeth.
—a hot, wet mouth finds each nipple.
The impossible light in the room deepens: black, green, and red. Now a desperate tongue licks up the slope of her neck, and she turns her head as the plea sure keeps mounting, and she sees …
What?
A man lying prone on a stone slab?
She’s not sure. The cryptic mouths and hands squirm over her skin like a living gown; she’s so distracted, so tempted to give in even though she knows this is all wrong.
But that’s what she thinks she sees, if only for a moment, in the weird dices of light …
Yes.
A man lying prone on a stone slab. At the top of the slab sits…an object. She thinks first of a dark-glassed vase, then a wine decanter. A mongrel dog with matted fur snuffles bored about the slab …
When one mouth finds her sex, she shrieks and orgasms simultaneously, and then her head whips over to the other side. Her eyes go wide because, now, she sees her.
The nun.
“Kanesae, Kanesae, Kanesae,” a tiny chant rises.
The nun stands naked save for her white wimple and black hood, the perfect breasts jutting as her back bows to raise the bowl. Then she looks down, and grins.
The pair of long thin fangs seems to sparkle.
Then the nun dons her black habit and retreats into the shadows.
“Oise pla’cute,” one voice flutters.
Then another, “Oise pla’cute…”
And one more, “Oise pla’cute…”
“Pleasant dreams,” someone else says beyond her impassioned paralysis. A round of giggles disperse above her, like bats.
And the mouths descend on her again, finding every private place. One climax after the next racks her body until she fears she might die, and then the final voice issues the disquieted words she’s heard before …
“Singele lui traieste.”
(III)
Father Rollin couldn’t sleep; he tossed in his upper bed chamber, sheets entwined about his legs like a serpent. When his eyes came into focus, a shadow seemed to be splayed on the moonlit wall.
A figure? A nun?
He jerked up and nearly yelled as he switched on the light. God Almighty!
Then he shook his head at himself.
The shadow was nothing but that from a piece of cresting on the outside windowsill.
I am not in a good way tonight, the priest admitted.
He pulled on a robe, trudged to an armoire and began to withdraw a bottle of Medoc. I shouldn’t do this, but …He took a long pull of the bitter red Bordeaux, then let out a stifled breath.
He switched the light back off, then lit a candle. Back to this again, he thought, bringing the binoculars to his eyes. The annex house stood sedate, frosted in the phosphoric street light. One of the lights continued to buzz from bright to dim. Down the street, he thought he spied several lanky figures turn into the alley.
He turned the binoculars back to the house, zooming in. A dim light shone between the slats of the kitchen louvers but that was all. Then, higher, his heart tensed a moment when he thought he saw a wan face in a second-story window, but when he zoomed even closer…
No. It must’ve been the curtain …
He put the binoculars down, at least in part disgusted with himself. What was he looking for anyway? And how much of this might really be geared in some deeper and more desperate channel of his psyche? Celibate priest, came the grim admission. Old, atrophied, like fruit turning brown on the vine.
Yes, the image depressed him. But the question remained, like a crow looking down from a wire. Was I really searching for clues? Or was I hoping to see Cristina Nichols’s body in the nude?
“Give me strength…”
He kept it dark; he liked it dark. Perhaps it was because he could see less of himself, and the world and all the life in it. Who knows?
; All he could ever think to do was answer his calling.
He considered going downstairs to the main chancel, but more and more he felt alienated in it. No congregation for years. I’m the house sitter for the church, too old and too eccentric for clerical duties. It infuriated him sometimes, for he knew he could still say a spectacular Mass. They don’t WANT me anymore, so they merely KEEP me.
It was all right by him.
He did know that God still wanted him, flaws and all.
He knelt at the small prayer bench in his room, beseeching the meager altar on which sat a simple crucifix given to him in Bucharest by a priest from the Holy Office. Lately, Rollin prayed here more than anywhere else, alone.
Before the crucifix’s olive-wood base, he took up the chain and pendant. He kissed it as he would a Cross.
The emblem stared back at him, medieval in its scary crudity: a dead dragon strangled by its own tail, a great red cross branded on its back.
Rollin stared at the ancient totem for many minutes, while fingering the ring on his hand with the same insignia. Both read below the crest, O QUAM MAGNIFICUM, O DOMNUL.
Then he put the pendant around his neck and began to pray…
“O quam magnificum, o domnul …”
CHAPTER SEVEN
(I)
Sunlight from the windows cut across her eyes like a guillotine blade. Oh my God …When Cristina tried to rise from the basement floor, the flare of her life’s worst headache sent her right back down on her back. She looked around in mental chaos as aching vision showed her the dank, cluttered basement. What did I …
Then she remembered, the twisted memories interlacing with her hangover. The celebration with Bruno last night, her drunkenness, then passing out down here of all places. And the dream…
She remained on her back, nude and shivering. The same dream as always…but with new details …God.
A dead man on a stone slab? A strange decanter of some kind? And those women …Not just the nun this time, but other strange, faceless women.
Cristina gulped when she remembered what the women were doing to her…
Jeez, what would Britt say about that? Latent lesbian tendencies carrying over from the Goldfarb house? It was just a dream—made more odd, no doubt, from all the alcohol she’d drunk.
She recalled the disturbing intonation: Singele lui traieste. But why should it actually disturb her? Just meaningless gibberish from a dream. It couldn’t be another language since she didn’t know any.
An alarm blared in her head. What time is it? And …where’s Paul? She groaned, dragging herself up off the dust-and grit-caked floor. He’ll think I’m really out of my head if he finds out I passed out NUDE in the friggin’ BASEMENT! She was about to head up, but then the floor snagged her vision.
That patchwork, she remembered now.
She peered down. Yes, an oblong patch of new cement set into the stonework of the floor. How odd, but…In the better light she saw…something…
Down on one knee she examined the corner of the patch more closely. It looked like a seal of some kind pressed into the cement. She expected perhaps a date or service information from the contractor who’d done the work but instead…
A dragon?
Or a serpent of some kind, within a circle around which were etched the words: O QUAM MAGNIFICUM, O DOMNUL. Latin, she supposed. It must relate to the house’s previous use by the Catholic Church. But it was the seal itself that bothered her most—the dragon. The crude artwork seemed to depict the dragon as dead, its own tail wrapped around its neck.
Then another, louder, alarm screamed in her head. As she’d been leaning to inspect the cement, her breasts edged into the peripheries of her vision.
Cristina stood up in half-shock and strode straight to the window where the most light was.
What on earth did I do to myself!
It looked as though her breasts and belly had been used as a graffiti canvas. Primitive black, green, and red lines encircled each breast, while more wavy lines of the same colors—the backdrop of her dream—streaked up and down her stomach.
Her own conclusion left her appalled. I was so drunk last night, I DREW on myself?
She did recall her hand landing on something that felt like a fat pen. This has to be magic marker …She went back to the cement but couldn’t find the object.
But the worst consideration slammed home. If Paul sees me like this he’ll want me to go to a shrink! Suddenly her nudity had her feeling utterly vulnerable. And there was nothing down here she could cover herself with. She crept up the stairs, listening, then she peeked out the door when she got to the top.
Oh my God!
She could hear Paul’s voice in the kitchen.
“—unfuckin’ believable, Jess. Yes, yes, I know it’s ten o’clock, and I know we’ve got to fax that arbitration rebuttal out to Massaccesi’s people by noon. I haven’t been this hungover in ages, man…”
What am I going to do? Cristina fretted. She glanced down in more disbelief at her streaked breasts.
“I don’t even know where Cristina is,” Paul was saying. “She was pretty lit last night too; I guess she went out to get orange juice or something. We had sort of a celebration party at D’Amato’s with the guy who makes her dolls. Yeah, the guy named Bruno. I thought he was all hot air until he picked up the check. The fuckin’ guy ordered not one but two bottles of Krug, six bills a pop, plus brandy, plus all kinds of fancy appetizers. Bet he dropped over two grand. Funny thing is, Cristina kept right up with us and, man, she never drinks like that. She must be one hurtin’ puppy right now, wherever she is…”
She had no choice but to take a chance. If Paul was facing the kitchen entry she’d be all right, but if not…
He’ll see me. He’ll see his nut-job girlfriend with magic marker all over her boobs …
She stepped wide into the hall, turned, and zipped right into the laundry room. When she looked, Paul’s back was to her.
At least a trifling relief. She pulled a robe out of the dryer and put it on, wrapping it tight. Then…Here goes.
She shuffled into the kitchen.
Paul stood in his boxers, his hair sticking up. He smiled below bloodshot eyes when he saw her.
“Oh, here she is. Anyway, sorry, Jess. My fuckup. Hold down the fort till I get there.” Then he hung up. He walked over and hugged Cristina, gave her a peck on the cheek. “I hope you’re not as hungover as I am,” he bid.
“I’m sure I am,” she said. Her head pounded with each word, along with the embarrassment of what she’d secretly done to herself. “I hurt all over.”
“God bless Bruno. But he must be going through the same thing so at least we’re not the only ones suffering.” Bewildered, Paul shook his head. “I can’t believe I slept right through the alarm.”
Cristina sheepishly pursed her lips. “And I can’t believe I slept in the basement.”
Paul almost spat out a sip of coffee. “You what?”
She kept the neck of the robe tightly clasped. God, I hope he doesn’t see. “Kid you not. I was so smashed last night, I decided to go in the basement for some crazy reason. And I passed out.”
“That’s some shit-face,” Paul laughed. “I thought you went out to the store.”
“Nope. Your nutty fiancée slept off her drunk on the basement floor. I’m never drinking alcohol again.”
“I just might second that motion. But it was a fun night, with Bruno and celebrating your new figure.”
The Noxious Nun, she thought for no reason at all. “I’d cook you breakfast, honey, but I still feel so lousy—”
“Forget it. I’m over an hour late as it is.” He kissed her again. “I’ve got to jump in the shower, dress, and get my tail to the office. Jess isn’t exactly thrilled. Drink some water to rehydrate yourself and get some more sleep. But, in the bed, not the basement.”
She stroked his cheek, then offered a pained smile. “You look hot in those boxers, you know.”
�
�Oh, I’m sure. My eyes look like road maps—”
So do my boobs …“I have to go lie down. But have a good day at work. I’ll have my act together when you get home, I promise.”
He winked. “Good. Give me a chance to redeem myself after…you know…”
“I wasn’t much in working order either, honey,” she laughed and went to the bedroom. He didn’t notice. What a stroke of luck. But she still felt asinine. Some girlfriend …She hid under the bedcovers and feigned sleep as Paul showered, dressed, and left. Then she rushed to the bathroom.
The mirror’s crystalline clarity made it even worse. The colored lines encircling her breasts and streaking her stomach seemed even thicker, brighter now. Why on earth did I do this to myself! She jumped into the shower, head still thumping, and scrubbed hard with a washcloth and soap, then moaned aloud when she got back out and re-examined herself. The magic marker had barely faded.
Cristina was nearly in tears when she called Britt…
“You’ve got to be kidding!” Britt exclaimed.
Cristina reluctantly opened her robe, showing the marks. “I don’t know what to do. If Paul sees this…”
Britt sat at the kitchen table, flabbergasted. She wore dark Seven jeans, which fit her like tights, a red faux shearling vest, and clear strap platforms. “And you say rubbing alcohol and Lava soap didn’t work?”
“Didn’t even come close to getting it all off.”
Britt opened a paper bag she’d brought, removed a bottle of nail-polish remover. “I remember someone telling me this once. It should work.”
They went to the bathroom. Cristina blushed as Britt carefully blotted the fluid on her breasts with a cloth, then rubbed.
“You’re in luck. It’s working.”
“You’re a godsend!” Cristina exclaimed.
“And you’re a space cadet. Honestly, Cristina. It’s not like you to get drunk at all, but you must’ve been pie-eyed to do this.”
“I know. I can’t explain it.”
Britt looked up from her rubbing. “Is there something you’re not telling me, little sister?”
