Pockets of Darkness

by Jean Rabe

  “Hey boss.”

  “Anything?” Bridget’s voice was hoarse. “On the demon bowls, Rob? Anything?”

  “Oh, yeah boss. I spent all afternoon doing some research. An antique shop in Manhattan has two, both Sumerian. Go figure, eh? Some for sale right here in the city. I offered enough cash that the manager will deliver them here after he closes up. Want me to—”

  “Bring them over as soon as you get them.”

  “Sure, boss. Another thing, the Metropolitan Art Museum has some in a near-east display, three of them, also Sumerian. I saw it all on the museum website, but you know they ain’t gonna sell them, it being a museum and all. Got a bid on two on eBay—Babylonian for those. Neither had that buy-it-now option. Four days to go on the one, five on the other. We’ll win them.”

  “Thanks, Rob. Keep looking, okay? And bring those two as soon as they’re delivered.”

  “Oh, I will, boss. As soon as I get them. But it’s gonna take a while to nail all of these friggin’ bowls down, you know.”

  “And any demon bowls that previously sold on eBay … see who bought them. Get names, addresses, phone numbers. Buy them. Buy them all.”

  “Do my best, boss.”

  “Do better than that, Rob.” Bridget breathed more evenly now, but each breath brought more of the noxious odor deep into her lungs. Her mouth was filled with an acrid taste that no amount of saliva she worked up could cut. “Work on it all night if you have to. Call Marsh and if he’s feeling better, get him to help. And don’t forget to call the captain.”

  “Boss, mind telling me what this is about?”

  “No.”

  “Boss?”

  “Yes, Rob?” Bridget noticed that the demon had returned to the spot between the rack of barbells and scale, looked to have comfortably settled itself, and was rotating its neck the way a man might work a kink out.

  “Boss, I figured there wouldn’t be all that many, demon bowls you know, seeing as how old these things are, and made of clay and all. But boss—”

  “Yes?”

  “A link off the museum page says there’s about two thousand intact. If they’re real expensive, it could wipe out all the ready accounts. I suppose we could steal some of them—”

  “Two thousand,” Bridget whispered.

  “Break prisons. Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti,” the demon repeated. “Liburrrrrate.”

  O O O

  Despite being a bloody, disheveled, mess, Bridget stopped in the dining room to make sure Otter, Dustin, and Michael were still there. She hadn’t been physically hurt by her brawl with the demon, not a scratch, just the temporary sensations of heat and pain. Indestructible.

  The trio gasped and stared opened-mouthed and kept her at arm’s length.

  “Mom?”

  “What the hell happened to you?” Dustin said.

  “You okay? Omigod, what happened? Mom? You’re bleeding!”

  “It’s not my blood,” she said.

  “Mom?”

  “Listen very carefully.” Bridget had their complete attention. “The three of you need to stay together, understand? Just like I told you. Together. Nobody goes anywhere alone, not to the bathroom, not to bed, nowhere. Stay together like you’re all joined at the hip. No matter what. There’s—”

  “I-I-I don’t understand, Mom. Is someone in the house? Should we call the police? What—”

  “No cops.”

  “Mom—”

  “Otter, there’s a demon in the city. In the house. A real demon. A feckin’ ugly demon from some pit of hell. But it will be leaving with me shortly.”

  “A what?” The boy had a look of disbelief on his face and started to interject.

  Bridget kept going. “I know. Demons don’t exist, right? Wrong. It’s a horrid gobshite of a beast, and it’s hell-bent on killing people to get what it wants.”

  “Not possible,” Michael said.

  “Don’t believe me. Hell, I know you don’t believe me. I wouldn’t believe me. You think I’m a real header, off my nut. It’s okay if you don’t believe me. But believe this—you three need to stay together. Michael, make some calls and get a few men over … with guns if they have them. It killed Jimmy. Get Rob, Marsh. Get Alvin and his brother Quin, too, the Halm brothers love guns.”

  Dustin’s expression turned from worried to cold to shock. Bridget had told him how much she hated guns. “I won’t be part of any madness,” Dustin said. “Right now, I am going. I will not—”

  “I can’t keep you here, Dustin,” Bridget shot back. “But there’s safety in numbers. And I’d rather you not turn up like Tavio or Jimmy. ‘Cause if you go off alone, that’s a very good possibility.” She shouldn’t have said it that way, especially seeing Otter’s face, but she couldn’t take the words back. “You’re safer together. You’re just … safer.”

  She wheeled and stalked from the dining room.

  “Where are you going?” Otter shouted.

  “To the art museum,” Bridget returned. After a shower—alone—to wash off Jimmy’s blood and everything else. And after one more change of clothes, something nice and dark and nondescript. “To the museum so I can free some demons and save all of you. And damn myself to the deepest pit of hell.”

  ***

  Twenty Two

  Jimmy had been a random act of compassion on Bridget’s part, proof that she wasn’t quite as cold or badass as she tried to make people believe.

  Bridget had spotted him roughly three years ago. He was with two other teens, panhandling on the platform—the same platform she’d stood on moments ago before transferring to the train taking her toward the museum.

  She’d offered to buy the trio dinner at the sandwich shop that sat streetside above the platform—the popular 2nd Ave. Deli, which was oddly named because it was actually on 33rd Street. The other two beggars declined, picked up, and moved to another spot where they could mooch unbothered. But Jimmy had taken her up on the offer.

  That’s how Bridget knew that Jimmy was an “honest beggar,” down enough on his luck to accept food, rather than money. Not a professional panhandler at any rate. The city had plenty of those, who treated begging as a full-time job and who raked in a good bit of unreported income and only sought monetary handouts. She’d read an article in the Times that said the average beggar on a NYC street made only $50 a day, but the really good ones made enough to buy a Mercedes and a nice house in the suburbs.

  Jimmy had been overly skinny then, wrists and elbows protruding, all bones and hard angles, but he’d had the appetite of a linebacker. He wolfed down a big bowl of matzo ball soup, followed by two corned beef sandwiches, before coming up for air, saying “thanks, ma’am,” and engaging her in conversation over a piece of cherry pie.

  Could the demon tell she was thinking about Jimmy? Trying to recall the good times with the boy in an effort to blot out the image of him being gutted on the weight bench?

  The demon sat one row in front of her, gaze apparently drifting from one passenger to the next. There were eleven other riders in this car, many of them chattering, the words indistinguishable white noise coupled with the rattle and hum of the train.

  Four women were together, dressed smartly, reasonably light on the jewelry, heavy on the makeup, and in long winter coats, maybe headed to a play or some society function; they had that look. Two teenage boys were in matching jeans jackets, one wearing garish checkered pants, his long hair in a ponytail. The other had a spiky black mohawk and a plethora of earrings—four in his left ear, five in his right, one in his nose, a couple in his eyebrows, a small silver hoop in the center of his lower lip. Earring Boy held the hand of the youth with the ponytail and leaned into him. The other five passengers looked to be on their own. A businessman with a leather briefcase, maybe a lawyer; two middle-aged women, one with mismatched shoes, grocery bags nested in a wire pull-cart; a subway worker that by his weary face hinted he was heading home from a shift; and a homeless-looking soul hunched on a seat at the very back, shoulder
s so rounded and head so shadowed under a hood that Bridget couldn’t determine an age or sex, could hardly tell the figure was breathing.

  The demon seemed most interested in the teenage boys, who were talking close and conspiratorially. The one with all the earrings in particular had the demon’s attention.

  Jimmy had spilled his life story to Bridget over a second piece of pie. He’d told her he had just turned fifteen, had dropped out of school after junior high, was the youngest of five siblings, all scattered to the winds in foster homes.… he hadn’t talked to any of them in a few years and suspected they were all probably old enough to be on their own now. He’d been shuffled from one foster home to the next since he was … Bridget remembered that he scratched his chin before settling on “five.” He couldn’t recall why they’d been taken from their parents, though he knew the police had visited the apartment often before all the kids were finally plucked.

  Jimmy said he didn’t like any of his foster parents, though he admitted that none of them were “bad folks” and honestly had seemed to care. They made him go to school, follow rules, and those things had not appealed to him at the time. So he cut out after the third family he was stuck with and fell in with the city’s homeless population, which eventually led him under Manhattan. Jimmy had been Bridget’s introduction to the mole-world.

  Bridget couldn’t recall just what had possessed her to offer Jimmy a “job” of sorts with her crew. Maybe she felt sorry for him, or saw something of herself in him … running away and joining a gang. He didn’t accept her offer at first; it had taken two more lunches when she ran into him panhandling again. And after a year and a half of doing odd jobs for her, she invited him to live in the brownstone and become a full-time part of her smuggling operation. Maybe it was because of Otter she’d reached out.

  She’d felt she had failed her own son, and believed it was far too late to rectify that with Otter … though now fate had given her another chance with that. So maybe she’d reached out some sort of helping hand to Jimmy at the time in an effort to balance the karmic scales. If she’d left him alone three years past he might still be alive.

  Bridget tried to picture Jimmy sparring with her on the roof, wolfing down corned beef sandwiches, poring over textbooks because she demanded he study, waving his GED certificate under her nose.

  But she couldn’t hold any of those memories for more than a heartbeat. In the end all she saw was his bloody, ripped up body on the weight bench and the demon munching on his heart.

  “Jimmy. Mmmmm.” The demon looked over its warty shoulder and licked its lips.

  It had been reading her mind! In the instant she’d thought that, Bridget discarded the notion—or rather, the essence of it. If the beast could read minds, it would have found a way to communicate with its previous attendants, or even with her. She wouldn’t have had to go to such lengths to connect with a Sumerian artifact and cobble together a conversation through it. Perhaps the demon could capture images or a focus.… Jimmy for example, and before that Tavio. Bridget had been thinking of basically nothing but Jimmy since leaving the brownstone. Likely the demon had some empathic qualities, but couldn’t make a solid mental connection. Tavio, the demon had plucked her ex-husband from her head and must have been able to hone in on him, find him, just like it had found the women important to Elijah Stone.

  Images and connections, but apparently not complete or complex thoughts.

  It was an important realization, and maybe something she could use to her advantage.

  Bridget left at the 86th Street station, the demon following. It felt like the temperature had dropped a dozen degrees in the short time since she’d left home; a snowy-sleet mixture spit down. The sidewalk was slick and forced her to a slower pace than she would have liked. Her breath puffed away and she thrust her hands into her pockets, her fingers feeling cold despite the gloves, all of her cold and empty because of Jimmy. She briefly considered catching the westbound M86 bus that would drop her off right in front of the museum. Instead, she hoofed it the few blocks and jogged up the museum front steps, which had been thoroughly salted. The demon dogged her.

  It was Friday, and the museum was still open. Fridays and Saturdays, and sometimes for special exhibits, the museum stayed open until 9 p.m.

  “You’ll have less than two hours,” a woman at the big octagonal desk told her. “We start clearing the halls at 8:45 and—”

  “I know. That’s okay, I only want to catch the exhibit on the medieval treasures from Hildesheim.” Bridget paid the $25 admission fee. She’d grabbed three ten dollar bills before she left, not wanting to have a wallet on her. The five remaining ought to get her a good-sized cup of coffee for the trip back. “I read about the exhibit in the Times.”

  “I suggest you hurry then,” the woman said, supplying directions. “It’s a large display, about fifty works. Gallery five-two-one. You’ll find it one of the most complete and elaborate collections of church furnishings from Europe.” She prattled on a little more, Bridget catching something about Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim, bronze doors, a baptismal font, and illuminated manuscripts. She left the desk and rounded a corner, following the directions on the map the woman had pointed to, then taking a turn and heading elsewhere.

  Bridget had heard a news spot about the exhibit and really intended to see it, just not tonight. Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim was supposedly the greatest patron of the arts in the Middle Ages and was said to have commissioned numerous illuminated manuscripts. The Golden Madonna was advertised as part of the display. Oh, to delve into something he’d worked on; that would be a historical mind-trip she’d like to take.

  She loved the museum and had been through its entire two million square feet many times—though she’d never been able to traipse through everything in one visit. Her first visit had been with her parents when they tried to teach her about the Old Masters. But she was too young to appreciate the works then, and so was bored stiff. The highlight had been visiting the museum’s gift shop, where her father bought her a puzzle featuring a reproduction of Adolf Dehn’s Spring in Central Park. They’d put it together on the kitchen table, and she still pictured it in her mind, a watercolor view south from Sheep Meadow toward midtown Manhattan.

  Bridget came to appreciate the museum as a teenager, when she and some of her Westie pals would pickpocket the more affluent-looking tourists come to see whatever new exhibit was being promoted. She took time then to soak in the art and afterwards would spend her pilfered money on a dinner in an expensive restaurant. Restaurant? Her son had just inherited one; she’d try to talk him into selling it. Otter should go to college and pursue a solid career, maybe train for the Olympics swim team. Tavio had mentioned that once to her, that a swim coach said Otter should cast his eyes in that direction. A boy didn’t need to worry about running a restaurant.

  Keep focused, Bridget thought. Keep your mind on the museum. She believed she knew as much about this museum as any of its employees did.

  The museum traced its roots to 1866 in Paris, where a committee of Americans traveled with the notion of observing French art galleries so they could establish something similar in New York City. Civic leaders, artists, collectors, businessmen, and philanthropists pooled their talents and money, and in 1870, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its doors. A decade later the museum moved here, to Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street. The building continued to expand, the various additions encasing the original structure.

  To this day, the place was one of the world’s greatest art centers.

  She and Tavio had visited together a few times years ago. His favorite haunts had been the Florence and Herbert Irving Asian Wing, filled with calligraphy, sculptures, lacquers, and textiles, and the Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Gallery with rotating exhibits from the museum’s arms and armor collection. They only took Otter once, when he was six or seven, the boy finding the place stuffy and boring. However, she knew Tavio had taken him rather recently. Again Bridget chastised herself. Tavio had
shown the boy some culture, and she’d shown him the inside of a warehouse filled with ill-gotten treasures.

  She took advantage of a clump of people gathered past the entrance to the Kingdom of Benin Gallery, part of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas collection. Their numbers effectively cloaked her from the cameras, allowing her to slip around a corner and into a blind spot, the demon following her the entire way, babbling and oozing. She waited for another group of people to pass her position, and she melded in with them, going from blind spot to blind spot, losing herself amid tall men, until she eventually made her way to an employee area, which was thankfully unlocked, and folded herself into a large and mostly empty cabinet. Bridget fiddled with the catch on the inside so that if someone tried to open it they’d think it jammed or locked, but she doubted this late anyone would even come into the room. And if they did? Bridget was usually one to carefully plan, but tonight she was pretty much winging everything. Somehow the demon managed to squeeze inside the cabinet too, its stench overpowering. Her eyes watered and she breathed as shallowly as possible, checked the luminous dial of her watch, tugged off her gloves, unbuttoned her coat, and waited.

  “We have to stay here,” she told the demon, though she knew it couldn’t wholly understand her. “Until well after this place closes.”

  The interior of the cabinet wasn’t completely dark, a crack between the doors let in a little of the room’s fluorescent light. Enough to see the shape of the creature and to tell that all five of its dizzying eyes were open and regarding her; they appeared to have a ghostly luminescence. She couldn’t see the ooze that dribbled down its mottled hide, though she heard its soft trickle, and she heard it belch and smelled the resultant cloud of sulfuric gas, which was followed by what sounded like snoring. Bridget turned her face away and pressed it against a seam in the wood. The scent of varnish couldn’t compete with the rankness of the demon’s breath, but it helped.