by J. S. Bailey
He hung a right and halted in the open doorway of a bedroom, his pulse breaking into full gallop once more.
Carly sat cross-legged on a braided rug in the center of the room, rocking back and forth with her eyes scrunched closed. The landline phone she’d used to call him sat in its cradle beside her on the floor.
Not having the faintest idea of what to say or do, Bobby flipped on the light. “Are you okay?”
She shook her head. “What do you see?” she asked, keeping her eyes firmly closed.
“Is this a trick question?”
“I’m not laughing, Bobby. Go on. Tell me what you see in here.”
“I see you sitting on the floor.”
A grim smirk tugged at her mouth. “At least I know I’m still here, then. What else?”
Bobby made a quick appraisal of the room. Neatly-made bed with a cerulean bedspread and fuzzy, sky-blue pillows. A dresser. A desk and chair. Photos and knickknacks and stuffed animals. “I see a bedroom?”
Carly’s eyes opened. They were more bloodshot than Bobby had ever seen them. “Bobby, I have to step down as counselor.”
This was just about the last thing he expected to come out of her mouth. “What? Why? I thought you liked doing that.”
“Why?” She gave a hollow laugh. “Because I’m losing my mind. Heck, I even thought I was holding a gun, but I guess I wasn’t or you’d have mentioned it.”
For the first time Bobby noticed the red plastic ladle lying across her lap. “I don’t get it,” he said, the sight of the utensil deepening his unease.
“It’s not that hard to understand. I can’t counsel anyone if there’s something wrong with me.”
“Okay.” Bobby swallowed. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Are you blind?”
Despite his concern, irritation rose within him. “Look. You call me upset, I come here and see you sitting like this, and you expect me to figure out what’s the matter without you telling me? I’m not a psychic.”
At first he thought she’d go off on him like she had on the day they’d met, but instead she said, “I need help. For three years I’ve helped people work through their problems, and I can’t even work through my own.”
“Why do you think you’re losing your mind?”
She mustered a few ounces of resolve. “A man was in the kitchen.”
“I didn’t see anyone.”
“He isn’t here now.”
“Where did he go?”
“Heck if I know.” She shivered.
Bobby licked dry lips. “He…he didn’t try to hurt you, did he?”
“Not physically.”
Bobby couldn’t see how a prowler would make Carly question her sanity. “Do you know who he was?”
“No, but yesterday I saw him peeking over the privacy fence when I was eating lunch outside, and when I went to tell him off for spying, he disappeared. When I went to go back to the bench, he was behind it like he dematerialized and reappeared yards away in just a few seconds.”
“And then he reappeared today in the kitchen?”
“Right. And he said awful things to me. Things he had no way of knowing.” She drew in a deep breath, and Bobby had the sense that a number of unspoken thoughts rested on the tip of her tongue but she was too afraid to say them.
While he waited for Carly to work up the courage to share the rest of her ordeal, Bobby’s attention drifted over to her dresser, on which sat a framed photograph of a much-younger Carly and another girl he didn’t know. The other girl had a stockier build and darker hair than Carly, though he could tell they were related. The girls sat side by side behind a cake that had orange icing and a bunch of lit candles stabbed into the top.
A new chill snaked its way into Bobby’s veins.
Carly followed his line of sight. “Her name was Jackie,” she said, her voice thick with tears.
Carly hadn’t mentioned a Jackie before. “She’s your sister?”
She nodded. “You didn’t think I was an only child, did you?”
“It sort of crossed my mind. Um, what happened to her?”
A shudder passed through her body, and in his mind Bobby saw himself sitting down and putting his arm around her to give her a boost of strength, but instead he just stood immobile like some dummy in a shop window. “It was the day after our thirteenth birthday,” she said.
“You were twins?”
“Fraternal twins. She was bigger-boned than me, like our dad, and I got the petite genes from Mom. People always thought she was the older sister.” She closed her eyes and took slow breaths. “Jackie was always the mild one. She wasn’t nearly as hotheaded, as, well, you know. She loved to help people.”
“So do you.”
“Not then, I didn’t. Back then I was way more concerned with other things. Looking pretty. Fitting in. Your typical adolescent woes.” Carly glanced down at the ladle in her lap and gave a start as if she’d only just noticed it was there. Face flushing, she set it aside on the rug. “The day after our birthday, we went to the Family Fun Zone. It’s closed now—I think they turned it into a hardware store—but it’s where you could play arcade games and skee ball and things and win tickets you could trade in for crappy prizes. We went every year and thought it was the best thing in the world.” She paused, her face lined with pain. “There was this woman who’d just lost custody of her kids because she was mentally unstable. Her ex-husband took them to the Family Fun Zone the same day we were there. Cassandra—their mother—showed up to kill her ex-husband, but Jackie saw what was about to happen and jumped in front of the guy a split second before Cassandra pulled the trigger.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
“What kid just jumps in front of a gun?” Bobby would have scampered if he’d been in Jackie’s place. He’d still scamper, to be honest.
“Here’s something you have to understand,” Carly said. “Dad raised us to be fearless. Even when we were little he’d pound it into our heads that we couldn’t be afraid of everything like Mom is. He’d read us stories about martyrs and praise their bravery in the face of death. Well, I guess Jackie was braver than I am. You don’t see me taking bullets for people.”
Her words left a hollow feeling in Bobby’s gut, and he felt the weight of her grief pressing down on him. He wanted to say something—he needed to say something—but what in the world could he possibly say that would make her feel better, especially when it seemed to him that Frankie had tried to brainwash his own kids?
Nothing. That’s what. So he kept his lips sealed and waited for her to go on.
“Cassandra was just let out of prison,” she continued. “I saw her in the store the other day and she smiled at me. She must be one of those people who remembers faces.”
“Why’d they let her out?”
“Good behavior, I guess. It’s not like she meant to kill Jackie, but she never showed an ounce of remorse for what she did.”
“I think I kind of understand why you were upset the other night.”
Her lips formed a faint smile. “The thing is, I thought I was over all of this. But now this man I saw…it’s like I’ve flipped my lid. Him going on about how I really want to kill Cassandra to get back at her for killing Jackie. But there’s no man in here. It was all in my head.”
The image of Thane sitting in Bobby’s kitchen flashed through his mind. “Wait a minute. What did he look like?”
Carly’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“Did he have sort of reddish-brown hair?”
“Yeah, and he smiled too much.” She looked up in alarm. “Where have you seen him?”
“In my house and car.”
“What the heck? Did you tell anyone about this?”
Bobby’s face flushed. “Just you. I thought he was an angel.”
“What in the world would make you think that?”
“Because he was trying to help me.” Wasn’t he?
“Bobby, this is bad. You should
have known that’s not what he is.”
“Well, what is he, then? A ghost?”
“A ghost. Very funny.”
It hit Bobby like a kick in the stomach. “You’re saying Thane is a demon?”
“Oh, so he has a name? Nice.”
Her snide tone struck a nerve. “He didn’t try to hurt me, okay? For all I know, he’s an angel and whatever you saw in here was a demon who looked just like him. I mean, don’t demons try to sow confusion? Your dad said something like that in our meeting the other day.”
Carly nodded. “And confusion sows discord.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. You didn’t summon the thing here.”
Something about this situation still didn’t sit right with Bobby. “There wasn’t an aura,” he said. “Shadowy or black.”
“So? You’d only see that in someone who’s possessed.”
“Are you sure? Because I’d think that if a demon appeared like a human, I’d at least pick up some kind of signal telling me what it really is.”
“A demon is the only thing it could be.”
“Or we could both be having hallucinations.”
“Yes, and pigs now have wings and can fly. Is the Spirit saying anything to you about this?”
Bobby paused and listened. Any advice?
In response, the image of Randy sitting at the desk in the church office flitted into his mind.
It wasn’t the answer he was looking for, but it would have to do. “We need to talk to Randy.”
“Now?”
Bobby nodded. Randy had been the Servant for six years. Surely that was enough time for him to have seen and heard just about everything, so he would know what to do.
LUPE SANCHEZ bustled around the kitchen while Randy sat in an armchair beside the window gazing out into the side yard, which was in dire need of mowing since he didn’t yet own a lawnmower.
He would get one eventually. All things in their time.
Lupe poked her head into the living room. “You need me to get you anything?” Her long, black hair was swept back into a ponytail, and her brown eyes were bright, but Randy could still see the sorrow that lay behind them like a shadow. He knew that the guilt over her betrayal of him was eating her alive.
It was yet another obstacle they would work through together.
“A good, stiff drink sounds great about now,” he said.
“Like you need that with your painkillers. I’ll get you water instead.”
Lupe disappeared into the kitchen again, and he heard her filling a glass at the tap. She brought it out, set it on the small table beside him, and gave him a peck on the forehead. “Everything will be okay, you know.”
Randy knew she was right, though news of Graham’s condition had jarred him more than he thought it would, considering the terrible things Graham had done to him.
Yet Graham had taken him in all those years ago. Randy’s teenage years had been filled with more pain and emptiness than most people would ever know. His classmates would talk about things they’d done with their parents and siblings, trips taken and parties celebrated, and Randy would swallow back his pain like a bitter medicine and think about whatever family he’d been stuck with that month, hoping against hope that one would love him enough to adopt him.
But they didn’t.
He’d aged out of the system at eighteen—April Fool’s Day, 2007—and felt like a boat that had lost its anchor. Now he had no hope of finding a family because he was a grown man. Who in their right mind would adopt an adult?
He brought this up with an elderly coworker at the sporting goods store he’d worked at for two years, and she suggested that he join a church to see if he liked it.
“Because even if they aren’t of your blood,” she’d said, “sometimes new friends can become so close they feel like family.”
So for months Randy shopped around for a church he liked, trying out a nondenominational church a few times that was so huge he felt like a grain of sand on a beach. After that he tried a Baptist church and a Methodist church and finally settled on St. Paul’s since it was smaller than the rest and he didn’t feel overlooked amid the throng, and he was very glad he did.
He’d met Graham and Frankie at a church picnic that took place in a park across town. Later they introduced him to Phil, Roger, and Frank the First.
Phil took a peculiar interest in Randy and kept grilling him about his newfound faith.
Little had Randy known Phil’s reason behind it all.
In the present, Lupe said, “What are you thinking?”
“Who said I was thinking?”
She smirked. “You’re always thinking.”
Isn’t that the truth? “I feel awful about Graham.”
Lupe’s expression darkened. “Don’t think about that man. It’s over. We never have to worry about him again.”
Randy looked out at the sunshine so she wouldn’t see the tears in his eyes. In those final moments in the barn when Graham was about to kill him, Randy had seen something black and fluttering in the pupils of Graham’s eyes. Perhaps Randy had imagined it, but he didn’t think so.
“You’re thinking about him again,” Lupe scolded. She put her hands on either side of his head and swiveled his face around so their noses were barely an inch apart. Tears glistened on her eyelashes.
She planted her lips fully on his, and the tension left his muscles. Lupe let out a soft moan that set Randy’s nerves aflame.
Randy pulled his mouth away from hers to draw a decent breath. “You’re making it kind of difficult for me here.”
A wicked gleam shined in Lupe’s eyes. “Five years, Randy. For five years I’ve waited for you to find a replacement so we can get married.”
“This hasn’t been easy for me, either.”
Lupe stepped back and crossed her arms, letting out a frustrated sigh. “I know. It’s just…”
The sound of an approaching vehicle crunching in the gravel outside made Lupe turn.
“Who is it?” he asked.
Lupe squinted out the window. “It looks like Bobby.” Her eyes widened. “And Carly’s with him.”
Two car doors slammed, and Lupe pulled open the door to admit a pale-faced Carly, who was then followed by Bobby, whose wide blue eyes met Randy’s the instant he stepped over the threshold.
Great.
“Carly!” Lupe exclaimed as she threw her arms around her younger friend. “What happened to you?”
Bobby broke away from them and moved toward Randy. “We kind of have a problem,” he said in a low voice.
Randy brought his hands up and kneaded his eyelids. Might as well get this over with. “Okay, folks. Spill it.”
Carly stepped away from Lupe. “Bobby, you’re the one who saw it first. You tell him.”
Bobby cleared his throat and shuffled his feet. “Can a demon manifest itself as a human?”
The room became so quiet that Randy could hear his own heartbeat, its tempo ever increasing. “Yes.”
“You’ve seen one?”
“Before we go any further into this, may I ask what this is all about?”
“We saw something.” Bobby and Carly exchanged quick glances. “Independently of each other. And we wondered if that’s what it could have been.”
It seemed Bobby was being intentionally vague. “Listen,” Randy said. “If you want me to give you any kind of advice, you’re going to have to be completely clear with me. No beating around the bush, no dodging questions. Okay?”
Bobby sighed. “Please don’t be mad at me.”
Bobby went on to tell the tale of a man who had appeared in his house and later, his car; and Carly talked about how she saw what seemed to be the same man at her house and hallucinated that her bedroom was being trashed. When Carly finished, Bobby said, “So what was it? An angel, a ghost, or a demon?”
Randy leaned his head back and closed his eyes, wishing he could still hear the voice of the Spirit as loudly as he could be
fore. “You said there wasn’t an aura.”
“I didn’t see one. It’s not like Carly could, anyway.”
“Let me think here.” Randy opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. What were they missing? In a human being, a gray, shadowy aura indicated that the individual lived in collusion with an evil spirit or spirits, and a black, writhing aura showed that the person was possessed and in need of cleansing.
When Randy had been in training under Phil, he’d asked why the auras he picked up inside his head weren’t the other way around. “Wouldn’t the darker aura tell me who’s evil?”
“No,” Phil replied in his usual stern tone. “The darker the aura, the greater the individual needs your help.”
If Randy guessed right, the presence of an actual demon minus a human host would cause Bobby to sense a shadow in his mind. Unless…
“Do you think the guy I talked to could have been an angel?” Bobby asked.
“Not if he tormented Carly.”
“But what if it was two different people who just happened to look alike?” Bobby shivered. “I mean, a demon might have known how an angel appeared to me and appeared to Carly the same way so I’d doubt the advice he gave me.”
“Which was what? To save your mother in any way possible?”
Bobby winced, and Randy couldn’t blame him. Bobby had been forced to provide some backstory when talking about the entity that called itself Thane, so now Randy knew about Bobby’s abandonment as an infant. “Do you think it’s possible?” Bobby asked, ignoring his question.
“Of course it’s possible. Just about everything is.” Randy frowned. “This is a trying time in your life, and I apologize for that because it’s partly my fault. I didn’t give you much of a choice back in the barn. I knew you weren’t ready for something like this, but I didn’t know what else to do.”
Instead of objecting, Bobby just nodded.
“But,” Randy continued, “we can’t undo what’s already been done. The powers of darkness will be trying to get at you in any way they can.”
“Really? I never would have guessed. So…how do I deal with this?”
“If either of you run into this Thane character again, I want you to do a little test in order to determine what he is.”
