“Look, Mama, more drops of blood. Over here, look!”
“Yes, I see,” said Olivia. “Don’t touch it.”
Willow was bent over staring at the blood. “I’m not gonna.” Willow had light brown hair and almost magical brown eyes, and she was as cute as a little girl could be. “What are we following? What if it’s a bear? Or a moose? Would a moose try to eat us?”
“A moose wouldn’t eat us, but it might run over us like a big old truck.” A slight breeze brought the smell of something putrid as Olivia made an unpleasant face as the smell reached her.
“Mama. I smell something stinky.”
“So do I.”
“Why doesn’t it leave any footprints?” Willow made a snowball and threw it. It was perfect snow for making snowballs.
“You know why.” Olivia stopped to listen but wasn’t able to hear anything except for the woodpecker. The dagger on her side was comforting.
“Oh.”
There was another black cross in the woods, this time so far away that it was barely visible. And now thick fog was beginning to engulf them, slowly at first but in no time at all it had become thick, making it difficult to see any distance at all.
“Here comes the fog Mama.”
Olivia nodded. “They like to do that don’t they.”
“Yup.” Willow was looking around carefully and listening intently. The fog meant that it wasn’t very far away now.
The woodpecker stopped banging on the tree. It was peculiar how silence could be both peaceful and unsettling. But this was no ordinary quiet, none of the animals in the area was capable of making a peep, all paralyzed in place. A dead raven fell out of the sky with a plop.
“Mama, it’s too quiet.”
“I know.”
Willow walked over the dead bird. “It killed that bird.”
“I see that.”
Several minutes later the sound of footfalls displacing the light snow told them that someone or something was approaching from their left, no, the right side. Both. More than one. More than two?
“Willow, it won’t work though will it?”
“Nope.”
Olivia considered that something felt different here, and her breathing was being labored. They hadn’t experienced this before, and that’s what frightened her. She saw that Willow was also struggling to breathe.
Olivia sat up in bed. “Willow?”
chapter fifty-six
VALERIE RAN FOR HER OWN DAGGER, and when she got back Daiyu was unconscious though still floating. The doctor sliced the air around her and whatever it was released her and Daiyu’s dead weight hit the bed hard. Valerie wondered if she had destroyed the thing or merely made it leave? As she bent over to check Daiyu’s pulse, the girl came to coughing several times. “Are you okay?”
“I am now. I think it was after the stone. Maybe I should get it blessed or something.”
Valerie examined her neck, observing some sort of claw marks. “That might be a good idea although it doesn’t always work.”
The stone vibrated making a hell of a racket on the bureau scaring the both of them. Valerie picked it up examining it. There was a small circular swirly thing in Brooklyn indicating something but what? An image appeared, showing her the Wyckoff House Museum. The doctor recognized it as she had taken a tour of the house about two years ago. “Daiyu, is that normal for this thing?”
The girl felt her throat. “I’ve never seen it do that before. Showing us an old house. Look! Showing us time. Five minutes after midnight. What the hell?”
Valerie looked into Daiyu’s eyes and then back at the rock. “Things just keep getting stranger and stranger.”
chapter fifty-seven
AUNT STELLA WOKE AT NOON on the nose, remembering the dream that she had just awoken from and it made her smile. She had been kissing Earl, and it made her think, trying to recall the last time she had kissed a man. Her husband was dead a dozen years now so that would be it; he had been done in by prostate cancer. It annoyed her that she wasn’t able to contact him and no visitations in her dreams either.
Stella brushed her teeth as she did after most meals, took a shower and thought about Earl; he might drop dead if he ever saw her naked, killed by the view of a sagging senior. Stella stared at herself in the mirror and didn’t like what she saw, deeming her crows feet could have been accomplished by a murder of crows. Of course, he was a senior himself. Why was it that a man’s appearance didn’t matter as much?
In the living room, she brewed some strong coffee and had two boiled eggs and two toast. She wondered how things were progressing with Olivia and then, of course, her thoughts went to the baby. A million kisses a day for that baby. And because Olivia was beautiful that girl was going to be the most gorgeous in the city. Stella never did care much for the father though she supposed in truth he was okay.
She was thinking about going to some baby store just to window shop, perhaps the BabysDen in Brooklyn? Stella had never been there, but she imagined that they had some good stuff. She had checked it out online though she didn’t bother with her computer much these days, it mostly gathered dust except when she was hunting for old movies to purchase. Maybe she could buy her one of those seat loungers and swing things, sway left and right or so said the page on the Internet. The seat must move as the baby jumps around, at least that was her guess.
In her Spiderman pajamas she looked out the window, and there was no sign of Earl. Would she be pounding on his door one day? Stranger things she supposed. “Kiss me, Earl.” She wanted to hear what it sounded like. “Earl, are you gonna kiss me or not? Earl, I haven’t been kissed in over a decade.” No, that sounds too desperate. Maybe I should just let it happen naturally, and if it doesn’t, I can always cry myself to sleep. And she laughed as she again took a gander out the window.
“I wonder if my magazine will be in today? It should be in soon.” Stella finished her coffee and went back to her book Hope: Entertainer of the Century by Richard Zoglin. She was enjoying it but found herself so distracted with Earl that she couldn’t read. “My hormones should be all dead by now I don’t know what I’m on about. I’ll be glad when this phase of my life is over.” She put the book down and took another drink and sighed. “And I was just about ready to join the old spinster club. I’m sure they have room for one more.”
Stella felt like going back to bed, but she had to check her schedule to see if she had any readings, most were in the evening, but on occasion, she had one in the afternoon. She knew that she had one coming up but wasn’t able to recall the date.
She was worried about Olivia, the baby and those evil things though she imagined that she would have some protection that was heaven sent, especially with all the prayers she was sending. Jesus might appear one night and say “All right, enough already!”
Again Stella went to the window and looked out, and there was Earl with some woman down there. She had never seen this one before, about sixty perhaps, shoulder length brown hair and good looking. And the dress the woman had on seemed expensive. “I can’t believe I’m jealous at my age. She’s lucky that I’m not Spiderman cause I’d swoop down on her, out the window I’d go. That would put the fear of God in her.”
Stella walked back toward the coffee table and paced several times before returning to have another look. They hadn’t sat down and were still yakking. Maybe I should go down there and put the run on her? But I can’t, Earl would either never forgive me or just think I was bonkers. Of course, with me talking about ghosts he probably already believes it.
The woman reached out and touched Earl’s face lovingly.
If Stella were a wild animal, she would have growled. She marched to her sofa and went back to her book, staring at the pages but not seeing anything. The medium tried hard to read but couldn’t, slamming the book on the coffee table. If Stella were Spiderman, she’d web her to the side of the building, no, to the roof!
Stella returned to bed, but in less than five minutes she went back t
o have yet another look and saw her kiss him. Back to bed and this time she stayed there.
chapter fifty-eight
FATHER PRIESTLY LOOKED OUT his small cabin window into the rain. A bolt of lightning struck a little too close for comfort, making him take a step back. He stood staring out the window for a long time. It had been raining for hours but finally, it was beginning to ease.
He placed the tome on the table with a thump sending dust flying. The cover of the book was made of wood and covered with leather. It had the symbol of a cross and a small skull burned into it, making him wonder about the origins of it. The priest had purchased it at a yard sale years ago from an old fellow that was insistent that he take it, so much so that it had given Priestly a good chuckle. It belongs with a man of God he kept insisting. He paused to listen to the silence, the rain had finally stopped.
Information was neither good nor evil, it depended on how it was used. Priestly stopped at a blank page in the tome. He remembered it from the last time he had gone through it. Was it his imagination or had some of the pages changed since the previous perusal? It sure appeared that way. Whatever language it was in he could neither make heads nor tails of it, but the images were quite something, and whoever had drawn them was an artist of the highest caliber. He wondered who had owned it before him and how many had gone through it over the centuries.
Some of the drawings were of graveyards and people, some in old fashion clothes and some looked as if they were taken from the present time, very strange. On page two hundred was a likeness of himself in the forest holding the tome, now he was sure that hadn’t been in the book before. At least he thought it kind of looked like him. Drawn with him were two women and a Chinese girl, but he didn’t recognize any of them. That cannot really be me. But he even has the small scar that I have on my cheek. How odd.
Priestly put the book away as he was looking forward to going fishing this morning, the last four trout he had caught were delicious. He would get back to the mysterious book this afternoon. And he had to admit he simply liked sitting by the brook and listening to the sounds of the forest, must be a little like heaven. He wasn’t able to grasp why God would allow certain things to run around here on Earth. All part of the big picture?
The priest made his way to the brook under a cloudy sky but the sun was now attempting to push through, and even though it wasn’t too far away it took him awhile to get there, stopping to observe nature as several chickadees chased each other around; he spooked a deer in the distance. He, of course, could do without the mosquitoes. Father Priestly got comfortable with his back against a tree and tossed the worm attached to his hook in the water, and soon his snoring was added to the sounds of the woods.
As he slept, a gray shadow appeared across the brook, pacing back and forth as if searching for a way to get past the water. It would pause occasionally but then continue. After a few minutes it vanished, and Priestly awoke as he had caught something. The fish was going to look good on his table.
chapter fifty-nine
EVERYONE THOUGHT HELL WAS FIRE AND BRIMSTONE but a blizzard blowing in Hades had the visibility at almost zero, at least in this part of hell freezing cold and low visibility was the current state. Some gusts of wind were more than a hundred miles per hour. The relentless wind continually blew Donald’s wool cap off his head and he had no choice but to continually retrieve it. No matter how much he wanted to just let that fucking hat go he couldn’t. He could hear the devil snickering in his head, at least he thought so.
Having to walk over a hundred miles with the arctic wind numbing his face, he was not impressed with the meeting he had to attend. Donald imagined that the devil himself would be there but he couldn’t be sure. He thought that he wasn’t much more than a zombie now, someone was pulling his strings and he guessed that it was the big cheese with the pitchfork.
Donald Nelson had died at sixty-nine from an aneurysm in his brain. Things had been going well before that; he had been headed for the status of a billionaire, but now money and just about everything else was useless here. He had stringy gray hair and blue eyes that still held a hint of cruelty. In life, he had a gimpy leg and terrible arthritis that ached something awful, and here in death, the pain was even worse. He hadn’t believed in heaven or hell as he stole from the poor and made many lives miserable, and now his reality was nothing but torment.
Donald was suddenly warm again, at least for a brief second, because without getting warm how could he continue to freeze. They say that freezing to death wasn’t such a bad way to go but never reaching the point where he felt no pain was hell. The storm eased slightly, just enough so that he was able to see the children, a dozen on each side that he had to walk through. There was no free will here, no choice but to go where his legs were taking him, to some table in the middle of nowhere, to meet with the devil only knew who.
He had strangled a woman once, told himself that he had no choice due to threats to go to the authorities. Agnus popped up every once in a while to laugh at him, imagined that it was the devil’s way of ripping the scab off the sore. Donald didn’t think that it was really her, only a manifestation from the devil.
As he started through the corridor of children he was pelted with snowballs and pieces of icicles, cutting both his temple and his cheek. His heart was beating faster than it normally would, or at least that’s the sensation that he was having. A soul no longer had a beating heart but to him, it felt as if he did. Donald’s face was pale as frostbite was again setting in and he was shivering violently. He wished for death as a chunk of ice caught him in the eye, but he had already attained it. The cold was making it hard for him to move and still he couldn’t stop.
Now past the children, he finally got a glimpse of a circular white table through the bands of sleet, and it looked as though six people were sitting at it, all dressed in black hooded cloaks, one man was a lot taller than the rest. Was he the devil? Another brief second of warming made the cold that much worse, and someone was laughing uncontrollably about something, most likely at him. He wondered if God and the devil were in cahoots? He wouldn’t doubt it.
It took some time to get to that stupid table as the biting wind got stronger, and the tall guy turned to face him revealing a skull with maggots and just a bit of skin clinging to it. It was distressing when the mandible began moving as he talked, and if Donald were alive he’d likely drop dead from the freight.
Satan nodded. “Take your place at the table motherfucker.”
I think you’re an asshole, motherfucker!
“I can hear everything you think. I own your bony ass now.”
“That’s just great,” said Donald as he stumbled toward the chair and sat his bony ass on the snow covered seat. “Perfect in fact, the icing on the cake.”
Everyone at the table turned and looked at him as he sat down, and each one looked worse than the next, one with his left eyeball hanging on his cheek, another looked like a bat had mated with a vulture and he was the end result, and so he had to look away.
“See, we have a problem, Donald,” said the devil. “We need someone to go up there and kill a detective by the name of Olivia Brown. She has a knife that destroys souls, which means if it gets you, well, you won’t be able to come back here or anywhere for that matter. You will cease to exist.”
“Really?” said the guy with his eyeball hanging out.
The devil strummed his skeletal hand on the table. “I can’t force anyone to go so we’re looking for volunteers.”
Donald nodded. “Ceasing to exist doesn’t sound too bad right about now.” He tried to conceive the meaning of not existing. If souls were eternal it did sound disturbing to no longer exist. And that he couldn’t force him to do it gave him pause. He felt that details were being kept from him, important particulars, but one thing was for sure, it couldn’t hurt to not exist.
The devil grabbed Donald’s chair and pulled him closer, took him by the back of the neck and brought his face up to his, and his bre
ath was fifty times worse than he could ever imagine. “Do I have any volunteers?”
Donald knew that the alternative was to suffer for all eternity. “I volunteer.”
Fists pounded on the table in celebration.
chapter sixty
AUNT STELLA HAD JUST FINISHED A READING for a young gay couple, she was able to hear their footfalls and their excited voices in the hall as they left, she also could hear someone else approaching. It was almost ten o’clock, and she was just about ready for a movie and some popcorn when her bell rang. There stood Earl with a single rose and a bottle of wine, Catena Zapata Nicolas 2010 from Mendoza, Argentina. She didn’t know what to make of it. Did he get rid of his girlfriend that fast? He’s got some nerve calling at this hour. Who the hell does he think I am?
Stella swung the door open and glared at him. “Did your girlfriend dump you already?”
Earl looked genuinely puzzled. “Girlfriend? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I bought you some wine and a rose. Can I come in? I know it's late, but I see your lights on into the wee hours.”
Stella wasn’t sure if she wanted him to come in or not. If she got rid of Earl, she would likely be sorry that she did, and if Stella permitted him entry, she might be sorry about that as well. A damned If you do and damned if you don’t kinda thing. “Why are you here?”
How do I approach this? She’s set in her ways, and one wrong move and I’ll be out the door before I’m in the door. I like her she’s feisty. “Well, I ah, well, I’m looking for some company.”
Stella still had that image of him kissing the woman stuck in her head. “I saw you kissing that woman.”
“I don’t know what you are on about unless you’re talking about my sister Charlotte. She drops in to see me once a week or so.”
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