In the House of the Wicked rc-5

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  He left the door to stand on the border of the hallway and living room, not wanting to get any closer to her. Ashley tensed as he stood there, pulling her legs up closer to her body and refusing to look at him.

  “Are you all right?” he asked her. “Do you need to see a doctor?”

  She shook her head no, sniffling, a wad of toilet paper appearing in her hand to wipe at swollen, teary eyes and a running nose.

  “The first thing I want to say to you is how sorry I am,” Remy told her.

  “For what?” she asked, still refusing to look at him.

  “This never would have happened if it wasn’t for me and what I am.”

  “What are you?” The question was quick, harsh, as if she’d been waiting for the opportunity to present itself.

  “I’m an angel…a Seraphim.”

  “Like, from Heaven and stuff?” Ashley asked, sniffing again.

  “Yeah, like that.”

  “That’s pretty nuts,” she said, and started to laugh, but she was soon crying again.

  “It is pretty nuts, and it’s why I’ve kept it a secret from you all these years.”

  “Does anybody know?”

  “Mulvehill found out by accident. Francis, who’s got issues of his own. Marlowe…”

  “Marlowe understands that you’re an angel?” she asked. It was the first time she’d looked at him.

  “Yeah, I can talk to him just like I’m talking to you. I can speak and understand any language. It’s one of the angel perks.”

  “You can speak dog?”

  “Dog…cat…wombat…yeah, anything that has any kind of language.”

  “Did Madeline know?” Ashley asked.

  “Yeah, about that-”

  “Wait-if you’re an angel, how could you have a mother?” she wanted to know.

  “She wasn’t my mother,” Remy admitted with a sigh. “She was my wife.”

  There was silence as the answer slowly permeated.

  “I knew it,” Ashley said finally. “I knew there was something different about you guys…about your relationship. Mom said that she thought you might be one of those gay guys who’s really close to their mothers, but I knew you weren’t gay.”

  “Your mother thinks I’m gay?” Remy asked, finding out more than he cared to.

  “Yeah, she did at first,” Ashley said. “Now she doesn’t know what you are.”

  “I can’t believe your mother thought I was gay,” he said.

  “What would you think?” she asked. “Good-looking guy, lived with his mother, now lives alone with his dog.”

  “You think I’m good-looking?”

  She laughed softly. “Is also very neat and tidy.”

  “Neat and tidy? I’m a slob.”

  “I’ve never seen a dirty dish in your sink…ever, and I’ve known you for, like, a hundred years.”

  “That’s because I seldom eat at home.”

  “Not even a dirty glass or cup. It’s freaky.”

  “But you didn’t think I was gay,” he said to her.

  She shook her head. “I just thought you were…eccentric.”

  “You and your mother didn’t have any kind of bet, did you?” Remy asked, trying not to smile but completely powerless not to.

  Ashley was smiling back, and he saw her old self finally breaking through the darkness he had caused.

  “With my dad,” she said, and started to laugh. She looked at him then and the fear was gone.

  “Your dad? I think I need to sit down.”

  Remy came into the room, lowered himself to the floor, and leaned back against the living room wall, no more than three feet from her.

  “So no money has exchanged hands yet, I gather?”

  “Nope,” Ashley said. “There’s been nothing definitive yet to say who’s won.”

  “How’s it feel to be right?” Remy asked.

  A shadow passed over her pretty face, and she studied something underneath one of her fingernails.

  “You’re probably wishing I was gay.”

  “That would have been normal,” she said. “Easier to understand.”

  “Is there anything that I can say or do to make it easier for you?” he asked.

  He could see her thinking. It looked as though it might’ve hurt.

  “There’s still a part of me that hopes I’m having hallucinations or something, that the crap I’ve just gone through has all been in my head.”

  She looked at him, eyes hard.

  “It’s all been real, hasn’t it?”

  Remy just nodded, feeling ashamed. He was about to tell her how sorry he was again, but knew that it would have little impact.

  “You have no idea how hard it is for me to be sitting here and not crying or screaming or curled into a ball with my eyes closed, but no matter what I do I can’t escape what I’ve seen…what I’ve done.”

  The fear was back, swirling behind her eyes, and he could see that she was doing everything in her power to hold it together.

  “The world isn’t the same anymore, Remy,” she said, looking at him, swollen tears dribbling from her eyes, down a face that somehow appeared older to him.

  “No,” he agreed. “It isn’t.”

  “I’m not the same anymore,” she added.

  It was then that he remembered that Francis was standing outside in the hallway, and what they had discussed.

  “What if there was a way that I could make you the same?” Remy asked.

  Ashley looked at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m just saying, how would you feel if there was a way that you could be made to…forget.”

  He wasn’t sure if it was more fear or excitement he saw in her gaze then.

  “That isn’t possible,” she said in a whisper.

  “Do you remember that you’re talking to an angel?”

  “How? How could you make me forget?”

  “Francis…”

  “Francis can make me forget?”

  “He’s acquired this…instrument,” Remy started to explain. “It’s a scalpel of supernatural origin.”

  Ashley was just staring at him.

  “A scalpel so precise that…” Remy paused, even the thought of using the instrument on the girl making him feel sick to his stomach.

  “A scalpel to cut out my memory?” Ashley finished for him.

  “Yeah, that’s about right.”

  “How could…How would you…?”

  “Francis would go in and cut the bad stuff away,” Remy explained. “Like cutting away an infection. He’d likely start just before you were taken and stop not too long after now…just before you get home.”

  “And I wouldn’t remember any of it?” she asked.

  “It would be gone,” Remy said.

  He could see that she was thinking…thinking hard.

  “It would be so easy to say yes,” she said to him. “To let Francis take away all the scary stuff, but that’s the stuff that has changed me… And no matter what I can and can’t remember, I’m still changed. I’m still that new person now, whether I can remember what happened or not.”

  She paused for a second.

  “Does that make any sense at all?” she asked.

  “Yeah, it does,” he told her. “It would be like having a scar and having no idea where it came from.”

  “The experience, no matter how bad or painful, it teaches you something…forces you to grow.”

  Remy nodded, understanding exactly where her head was. He could not help but be pleased at her decision.

  “So I’m guessing that Francis and his scalpel will not be required,” Remy said.

  “No,” she said firmly. “I think I need to remember what’s happened.”

  “You’re sure that you can live with that?” he asked, just to be sure.

  “Yeah,” Ashley said. “I don’t think it’s going to be easy at first, and will probably take a while…but I think I’m going to be all right.”

  It was good to kno
w.

  “And us?” Remy asked.

  She stared at him intensely, studying his face as if seeing him for the very first time.

  “I think we’re going to be okay, too,” she told him, a sly smile starting to form before disappearing entirely. “Especially after I collect my winnings.”

  They had a good laugh then, until Remy remembered her parents. They were probably still worried sick.

  “Have you been in touch with your mother and father yet?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” she said. “I wanted to talk to you first.”

  “Do you think they could handle the truth?” Remy asked.

  She shook her head vigorously. “No way,” she said. “I think they both have a difficult time with the way the world is currently, never mind adding this other business.”

  “What are you going to tell them?”

  “How about that I freaked out…that I needed to get away…that I wasn’t ready for the whole college-and-adulthood thing.”

  Remy made a face. What Ashley was planning on selling to her folks and the authorities that were looking for her was ridiculously thin.

  “They found blood in your car,” he said.

  She shrugged. “I cut myself.”

  “Do you seriously think they’re going to buy it?” Remy asked.

  “I’m not going to give them a choice,” Ashley said firmly, rising to her feet as she took Francis’ phone from her pocket.

  “And, besides, what I’m giving them is more believable than the truth.”

  The city was still pretty much in turmoil, even spreading as far as West Roxbury, where Remy had gone to pick up his car from where he’d left it in front of Saint Augustine’s Church.

  He didn’t see the old ladies there holding vigil, and he wondered if maybe they’d somehow ceased to be with the death of the Grigori Garfial. It might be something he should look into at a later date, just to be sure. He didn’t want the angel scientist’s lab falling into the wrong hands.

  The ride home was a little hairy, lots of streets still closed off, but he managed to get to the Hill in a roundabout way and had even managed to find parking on Pinckney Street.

  He’d used Francis’ phone to call Linda before leaving, his phone having been incinerated when he’d gone nova in the expanding eye of the shadow storm. She was excited to hear from him and equally excited to hear that Ashley was safe and sound. Before hanging up, she’d asked him if he’d seen the news, if he knew what had gone on in the city today, and he told her that he’d caught it in bits and pieces and that it all sounded pretty crazy.

  Linda said that it was beyond scary, and for him to hurry home, that she would be waiting for him at his place.

  Remy let himself into his building, stepping into the foyer to find his door wide open.

  “Hello?” he called out, moving toward the opening cautiously. After what he’d just gone through in the past twenty-four hours, cautiously was just the way to go.

  From inside he heard the sound of toenails scrabbling across the hardwood floor, and Marlowe bounded out to greet him.

  “Hey, buddy,” Remy said, bending down to wrap his arms around the dog’s thick Labrador neck. “How’s my good boy?”

  “Talk again?” Marlowe asked, between furious licks of his face.

  “Yeah, I can talk to you again,” Remy answered him. “And it feels good.”

  “Missed talking,” Marlowe said, giving him his paw.

  “And I missed talking to you,” Remy said, giving it a shake. “This is a new trick. Who taught you this?” As if he didn’t know.

  “Linda,” the dog barked.

  “Thought so. What else has she taught you?”

  The dog then proceeded to get down on the floor and place his face between his paws, looking up at him pathetically.

  “What’s that?” Remy asked.

  “Sad face,” Marlowe answered, springing to his feet, tail wagging.

  “And what does that get you?” Remy asked him.

  “Treats!” the black Labrador barked happily.

  “I think you’re also learning to play Linda like a fiddle,” he said, sticking his head into the apartment to see if she was inside. Finding it empty, he figured she must’ve been up on the roof.

  “No fiddle,” Marlowe explained. “Shake and sad face. No fiddle.”

  “Got it,” Remy said. “Is Linda on the roof?” he asked the dog, already starting up.

  The dog told him she was and joined him on the stairs, practically running him off the steps in order to get up to the rooftop of the brownstone first.

  The dog barked his excitement as he bounded out onto the top floor of the building, announcing his and Remy’s arrival. He could hear Linda telling him to calm down, and smell what he believed to be swordfish steaks wafting from the grill.

  “Hey,” she said, putting the grill cover back down and coming to greet him in the entryway with a kiss. “It’s good to have you back.”

  “It’s good to be back,” he told her, returning her kiss and putting his arms around her thin waist to hug her. Touching her, he realized how much he needed this at the moment and didn’t want to let her go, fearing that he might be pulled from the rooftop, sucked up into a swirling vortex that had appeared in the sky.

  “Hungry?”

  Remy looked from the nighttime sky, where a swirling hole between dimensions had not appeared, and turned his attention to Linda.

  “Starved,” he told her.

  “Excellent,” she said, pulling from his embrace to return to the grill. “The swordfish should just about be done. Why don’t you open that bottle of Chardonnay for me and pour yourself a whiskey, and we should be ready to eat.”

  He heard a crunching sound and looked to see that Marlowe was lying down and happily gnawing on a giant-sized pig’s ear; the ultimate treat when it came to the Labrador.

  “Seems as though everybody is eating good tonight,” he said, opening the bottle of wine as he watched Linda take the steaks from the grill and place them on a plate.

  All so perfectly normal.

  They sat down and ate their meal at the patio table, enjoying each other’s company.

  All so perfectly normal.

  After they had finished, they took their drinks to the rooftop’s edge, looking out over the sparkling city, the shape of the darkened Hermes Building sticking up among the lights like a jagged spike of darkness.

  All so perfectly normal.

  And, in reality, as far from the truth as it could possibly be.

  “It feels different now,” Linda said as he held her.

  She had told him everything that had happened in the city as they ate, about the little girl’s message and how some of the people who had been listening had somehow been stricken dead, about the explosion on the rooftop of the Hermes Building, and the strange atmospheric phenomenon that nobody could explain that had appeared in the sky.

  And of the sighting of what some people were saying was an angel just before the thing in the sky disappeared in a flash of light.

  He remained silent as she told him everything, holding her tighter as he felt her shiver in his arms.

  “Some people are saying that it’s the beginning of the end of the world,” she told him, and he was certain that she wanted to be reassured by him that this was all crazy talk, that there was a rational explanation for every one of the strange incidents that had happened today.

  But Remy said nothing, choosing instead to continue to hold her, hoping that this gave her some sense of security.

  “Just tell me that everything is going to be all right,” she asked of him then.

  And he told her, “Everything is going to be all right.” But Remy knew otherwise.

  For this, too, was as far from the truth as it could actually be.

  EPILOGUE

  Steven Mulvehill awoke feeling…different.

  Reborn.

  He smiled at how stupid and over-the-top the thought was as he left his apart
ment building on his way to the grocery store, but there was a certain truth to it. The heavy cloud of dread that he had worn as a cape since the events connected to Remy’s case was apparently gone, and he no longer felt paralyzed by the fear that had been his constant companion since that day.

  He closed the door behind him and started down the steps.

  He’d had his first really good night of sleep in close to a month and actually was feeling terrific.

  The events of the previous day flashed before him: the jogger he had saved in the alleyway and the old woman-and the things he had confronted to rescue them. Mulvehill felt himself immediately start to react, his heartbeat quicken, the itchy sensation of cold sweat prickling on his neck and back, but then he remembered what had come from the top of the Hermes Building.

  And then he remembered the light.

  The light from atop the building had given him something. Courage? Is that the appropriate word? he wondered as he left his apartment building and headed for his car.

  Whatever it was, it made him want to go back out into the world, despite the shadows and the things that lurked inside them. It hadn’t taken away his fear, for only very stupid people weren’t afraid, but now he understood his fear, and, in understanding it, he could confront it and shoot it in the fucking face, if necessary.

  He’d reached his car and was taking his keys from his pocket when he saw the man approaching from the corner of his eye.

  “Steven Mulvehill?” the man asked, stepping out from between two parked cars to address him.

  “Who wants to know?” Steven answered, giving the man the once-over as he looked up and then back to his keys. The man was dressed in a dark suit-expensive-looking-and white shirt, black-striped red tie, black shoes. He wore his blond hair cut short, and Mulvehill thought that he might have heard the hint of an accent, but would need to hear him speak again to be positive.

  “My name is Malatesta,” the man said, reaching inside his suit jacket pocket and removing his identification.