God's Eye

by Scudiere, A. J.

  Even now, fear and a healthy dose of shame at how she had begged it to touch her lingered in the back of her consciousness. Though she had done those things in a dream, Katharine still felt a measure of responsibility for her actions.

  She laid back, pulling up the tangled sheets to cover her nakedness. She was glad it had been merely a dream, and an easily explainable one at that. She was afraid of the animals and the messages. And she had Allistair and Zachary both plying her with mind-numbing sex.

  No wonder she’d had such a foul dream. With all that was going on lately, it wasn’t surprising that her mind had learned how to make an image so evil and terrifying.

  Part of her wanted to stay in bed, to roll over and go back to sleep, and hopefully replace this dream with a good one. She wanted to be lazy in a way that had always been forbidden to her, first through her upbringing and later through her own rigidity. But when she didn’t slide out of bed, didn’t act, her thoughts turned back to the dream.

  Forcing them to something else was only helpful if there was something else to turn to. All of Katharine’s something elses were just as difficult to get past: the writing on the mirror, her recent sex addiction, her growing lack of personal morals. On the other hand, where her work was concerned, she was finding new morals she didn’t know she had. The problem was that those morals were going to cost her her relationship with both her father and Uncle Toran, the only family she had left.

  So staying in bed was going to be a problem. Only when she rose was she finally able to push away the thoughts she didn’t want to deal with as she pushed back the covers. Her feet found the plush carpet, and for a moment everything was as it always had been. She was getting up alone, in the early morning hours; she’d head to work …

  It was only a momentary lapse in reality, this belief that all was as it should be. But she clung to it as tightly as she could. When her brain would start to wander, she forced it back to the task at hand–and buried her other thoughts behind the simplicity of picking out her slip.

  Standing in front of her closet, Katharine skimmed her hose up her legs. She refused to wear her garter belt again. Today she was keeping it together. Today Allistair wouldn’t see her slip, so she chose a slimmer one that was a little difficult to get in and out of. She chose her suit and laid it across the bed before turning to the bathroom to brush out her hair and put on some makeup.

  Her brush was in her hand, pulling through a wave of her hair when she stopped dead.

  Katharine would have thought the mirror could hold no more surprises for her. Simply finding more words she didn’t understand wouldn’t have unnerved her. Her eyes went wide as her own image made her wish there were words on the mirror.

  As soon as she saw them, she began to feel them–the bruises on her upper arms tugged at her as she moved and turned to get a better look. She bore tiny parallel cuts on her ribs and the back of one arm. Her forehead pulled together as she frowned. It looked like she’d been in a bar brawl the night before.

  Her face was clear of cuts and marks, but her neck bore a series of curved rows of punctures. As she leaned in close to look at the tiny wounds, she lost her curiosity and felt her heart squeeze in cold fear. The clusters of small cuts looked like teeth marks.

  And the bruises on her arms were in the shape of a hand. A hand larger than any she had ever encountered on a human.

  • • •

  Katharine stood at her bathroom mirror and sighed–another message. She was scraping rock bottom and she knew it.

  She had wandered through work for two days. She had lied through her teeth. And everyone had bought it. The whole thing.

  She hadn’t seen Mary Wayne, although she had run two other front-desk stakeouts. By the third time it had happened, she’d stopped asking security to run the tapes. Katharine had headed right upstairs, where she had been stopped by Bonnie at the front desk of payroll, who barely got her “Good morning” out through her nearly perpetual smile before she started into “have you heard?” and “isn’t it sad?” and “oh, you just missed her, she just stepped out for a moment.”

  Of course she had. Mary Wayne was some kind of a ghost who could walk right in front of her and not be seen. Katharine wondered why the woman even bothered leaving her desk, when Katharine could so easily look directly at her and still miss her. It was caught on tape on more than one occasion. It seemed Katharine had developed some kind of Mary-Wayne-specific hysterical blindness.

  But Katharine had just smiled at Bonnie and expressed her sadness over Mary’s imminent departure, though it wasn’t really even at the top of her concern list anymore.

  No. She had been late two mornings ago, when she had discovered the bruises. Mostly because her brain had checked out rather than examine what the marks might mean. The last thing she saw in the mirror was her own eyes starting to roll back, and by the time she had come to on her bathroom floor, it was already close to noon. It was the ringing of the phone that had woken her, although she had been in no shape to move fast enough to answer it. She found out later that it had been Allistair calling, for the second time. Zachary had also left her a message. But none of it had budged her from her spot on the bathroom carpet.

  As it was, she had barely heard the phone ringing for the third time over the pounding in her head. Of course, that had just been the sound of her own heartbeat, elevated to a level of pain akin to being battered by the surf.

  For two days, she had been tossing back Tylenol and Advil like candy. It had lessened the hammering headache enough for her to attempt to go in to work and look normal. But if she had managed to look normal, she certainly didn’t feel normal and was quite convinced that she’d never be normal again.

  The bruises pulled when she moved in certain ways. She couldn’t put her hair up because of the goose egg on the back of her skull. She was overheated from wearing long sleeves. And she had to pretend this was how she wanted it. There was no way to get into a discussion with anyone about her attire without giving away something that screamed she needed to be locked up.

  And she probably did need to be locked up. She hadn’t seen a doctor at all, though she could have used one to check out the cuts and scrapes. Even she knew that you didn’t spend five hours unconscious on your bathroom floor and not get checked out. She was quite certain that she’d hit her head on the edge of the counter as she’d fallen when she passed out from seeing the marks. It wasn’t the knock to the head that had put her out, but that was likely what had kept her out.

  She also had to begin to think about the very real possibility of a brain tumor.

  None of this stuff was likely. Seeing creatures in your room and finding soot. Thinking she had messages on the mirror. Passing out several times over a few weeks–when she had never passed out before, except once as a kid, when she’d stood still for too long in a church show, all stiff and starched out in the heat.

  Her breath burbled out of her in a confused sigh. At this point she might have welcomed the brain tumor. That, at least, was an option of this world. But the maid had complained about the soot. So Katharine hadn’t hallucinated that.

  Maybe she had, in some altered state, placed the soot on the carpet herself. Like she had a second personality that was setting her up for … what? Paranoia? Maybe. But the other personality would also have to have written the messages on the mirror and therefore would have to know Latin–and know it well.

  In the past two days, Katharine had surfed the web during work hours. She had convinced herself that she was doing the right thing, because she wasn’t recommending that company funds be used to kill babies or destroy rainforests or any of the other things she’d probably put her John Hancock on in recent years. So she’d had plenty of time to read up on multiple personality disorders.

  But none of it had been helpful. Usually, a second personality formed when a child was repeatedly abused. But Katharine didn’t remember any abuse at all. Maybe the second personality had hidden it from her, but she had no mis
sing gaps in her childhood memory, or even any of her adult life–until recently. She also had a handful of grown-ups, family, and help who had been around her throughout her whole childhood, so it was unlikely that they were all in on abuse so severe that it fractured her into multiple people.

  There were a few odd ways that Katharine could create a scenario where it was still possible. Maybe Light & Geryon was a cover for some fanatical cult. Fine. But then why was she only experiencing these things now? The second personality was supposed to shield the major personality. It was supposed to take the abuse and hide it so the first personality could live a normal life.

  Katharine shook her head to herself. If that were the case, then her second personality was doing a really shitty job, because all that crap was raining down on her these days.

  She wasn’t even sure how a person would go about faking the handprint bruises she had on each arm. Her own hand wasn’t nearly big enough. The only way she could make that thought work was if her alter ego was turning tricks for the Jolly Green Giant and she’d pissed him off.

  The one positive thing out of these last two days was that she had kept herself away from Zachary’s bed, by flatly refusing him every time he asked to see her. And each time Allistair had come close he had touched her arm, causing her to wince and pull away. She’d been celibate for two whole days–a welcome change from the full-out slut she’d been channeling.

  But as she stood at her sink on the third morning, glad that the bruises were finally changing from black and purple to yellow and green, she decided to go straight to her translator with this new message.

  Vigilia prima venio ad te.

  Work would be pointless. And besides, she was injured. At least there were casual clothes she could wear that would cover the bruises and not overheat her. Since she didn’t own any of these casual clothes, she would have to go buy some of them as soon as the stores opened up.

  Katharine meticulously copied the newest message onto a slip of paper, then copied it again. She would leave one with Margot at the library. Carefully, she stashed both slips of paper into the zippered pocket of her purse, then plopped onto the couch with a bowl of yogurt and granola. The TV had not misbehaved again, and she found herself flipping channels and winding up on a morning program.

  She’d never watched weekday morning television before and found herself strangely mesmerized. So much so that when the phone rang she didn’t break her gaze from the TV, just felt around off to the right, in the direction the sound was coming from. She still wasn’t paying attention to the call when she answered it.

  Her father’s voice startled her. She didn’t know who she’d expected, but it hadn’t been him. “Yes?”

  He didn’t give her a moment to find her bearings; the man had never been concerned about anyone else’s bearings anyway. And he surely wasn’t calling to find out if she was okay, if there was a reason she’d been late to work so much and entirely absent so far today. No, he just started barking his problems at her. “Mary Wayne hasn’t shown up for work in two days.”

  “Oh?” Katharine found that strangely soothing. At least she hadn’t been subconsciously erasing the images of Mary walking by her at the front desk anymore.

  “If she doesn’t show tomorrow morning, then you go over to her house and we end this once and for all.” He was red-faced, she could tell through the phone. “Hell, maybe you should just go today.”

  When it came to her father, Katharine was a seasoned veteran at getting out of what she didn’t want to deal with, and her response was as sweet as sugar. “Yes, of course, tomorrow.”

  She hung up before she could get too mad about her father sending her off to confront an embezzler by herself. What if Mary was the crook? If she was leaving, then it was likely that she knew they were on to her. She might very well have a gun and a jumpy personality to boot.

  Just as Katharine started to simmer over her father’s casual disregard of the possible danger he was putting her in, her phone rang again. Still not on her A-game, Katharine answered it with a harsh “Yes?”

  Her father’s voice boomed across the line. “And don’t do anything stupid. Take that assistant of yours with you when you go.” Then he hung up, leaving Katharine to stare at the phone and marvel that though her father must have cared somewhat about her safety, he’d still managed to get in a good insult in the process. She set her cell back on the coffee table and allowed herself to be sucked back into the created drama of morning news programming.

  Three hours later she had left and come home again, changing into the casual outfit she had bought at a high-end store. She found herself being surprised again at how soft the fabric was. Within minutes she was out the door again, heading off to the library on foot. As she walked the mile in her workout sneakers, Katharine tried to come up with ways to keep from having to tell Margot just how she had found the words she needed translated.

  By the time she was facing the large double doors with the stained-glass insets of falling books, she hadn’t invented any better excuse than a random stranger using the U.S. Postal Service. Katharine pushed through the doors.

  This time, Margot’s face looked up from the book she was reading the instant Katharine approached. Maybe before Katharine hadn’t been worthy of her attention–until she brought in the mystery of the Latin stalker. Upon seeing the look on Katharine’s face, the librarian’s brows came together and the corners of her mouth turned down, probably a reflection of what was on Katharine’s own face. Margot used her library voice, but that didn’t mask the severity of her thoughts. “Did you get another one?”

  Katharine nodded, already pulling the slip of paper from her purse. She slid it silently across the desk until it was practically under Margot’s nose.

  With a brisk nod and faster movements, Margot stood and started toward the reference section with Katharine trailing behind like an obedient puppy. Her head was dipped toward the slip of paper, which obviously held a fascinating mystery for her, but her feet followed a sharp line toward the back of the large room.

  Half an hour later Margot was on the floor next to Katharine, both of them stumped. Though Margot was clearly concerned with the message, Katharine was wondering if Margot always sat on the library floor with her patrons.

  “I can’t get it. It’s much more complex than the last two.”

  Katharine frowned. Sure, the first message was only one word, but the second had three. This one only had five words, and two were short. How much more complex could it be?

  She didn’t voice her doubts, but they must have shown, because Margot spoke up. “Look, we translated the last message wrong at first because we weren’t paying attention to the grammar of the language. When I was going over it, I looked up a bit about it and realized there was way too much I didn’t know. But I was able to muddle through that one. It was fairly straightforward. And I only think I got it right, or at least close enough.”

  The librarian finally took a breath, then continued. “This one has verb and noun forms–I’m guessing that’s what they are–that aren’t listed in the dictionary per se. So I’m going to have to study the whole language more before I can translate this.” She huffed as if not being fluent in Latin were a personal failure.

  Katharine nodded and started to roll herself up off the floor. Margot put a hand to Katharine’s arm to stop her. It was only when she looked Katharine in the eye and waited that Katharine sat back down.

  “What?”

  “You have to go to the cops.”

  “I can’t.” She shook her head and started to rise again. Maybe it had been a mistake to–

  The hand on her arm tugged her back to her seat on the floor. Aside from grabbing Katharine, Margot hadn’t moved a muscle. “I’m assuming there’s more here than what you’ve shown me. I agree that it’s odd to have threats delivered by mail in Latin. But the cops should do more than just see it as odd–maybe they’ll act on it.”

  Katharine tried not to squirm.


  Margot spoke again. “Also, I noticed that you’ve never brought the original note here, not even a photocopy. You’ve always written them out for me. It might be helpful to see the original. Did you save it? Maybe you should put the notes in Ziploc baggies to preserve any evidence.”

  Katharine nodded, “I already did. They’re at home. In baggies.” She paused. “And you’re right, I should take them to the police. This is the last straw.” The last straw? She never said things like that.

  Apparently Margot noticed something, because her voice suddenly changed to low and soothing, like she didn’t want to scare a deer. “Okay, you aren’t going to the police. I get that. But you don’t have the notes in baggies either. Where are they?”

  Katharine pulled back, a small movement of self-preservation. “What? What are you talking about? I’ll go. I said I would.”

  The thin face widened into a true smile that made Katharine realize Margot was actually pretty. Her shoulders moved and she relaxed completely, leaning forward as if confiding to a friend. In that moment, it hit Katharine that she didn’t have any. Friends.

  Katharine felt herself leaning in to hear what she would say. “Look around,” she whispered conspiratorially. “I’m surrounded by books and I love to read. About a year ago I got cheated on by a guy I thought was the one. First I got mad. Then I studied up on liars. And you aren’t a very good one.”

  At least Margot seemed contrite delivering that last line. But the fact that she wasn’t a good liar wasn’t news to Katharine. She sighed and sucked it up. “I’m sorry about your boyfriend.”

  Margot waved her away. “Turns out it was for the best.”

  For some reason, she felt compelled to tell Margot the truth, or at least part of it. Maybe because the woman had been helpful for no reason at all. Maybe because she seemed genuinely concerned for someone she didn’t really know, someone who had just showed up in her library. Maybe because she had leaned in close and confided in Katharine, just a little. Or maybe just because Katharine was getting scared. “I can’t take the notes to the police. I don’t have them.”