Her head was canted to the side and her eyes were open, and to Wolf they contained an inconceivable darkness, a darkness that went beyond dead to some realm he did not dare think about. Looking into them was like falling into the depths of hell. Either she or her murderer had painted her eyes with some hideous black makeup that ran ghoulishly down her cheeks. Wolf thought his heart might break.
Feeling sick, he closed the internet connection and staggered to the door. Outside he pressed his forehead against the cold stone of the building’s wall, breathing deeply and fighting nausea until his heart began to settle down.
He returned to his apartment half an hour later with the set of handcuffs. No gig or rehearsal was scheduled for tonight, so before going to bed he drank more than half the bottle of whiskey hoping to dull his bleak thoughts. Drunk, he locked his left wrist to the bedpost and tucked the key under the mattress, put his head down and was asleep almost immediately.
Chapter 12
For the second time in as many months the ghost of his long lost lover was in bed with him, her gown thin as gauze, her skin glowing, her hair a black skein across her face.
She moved close to him, pressing her body to his, her pale lips touching his ear.
God, she felt so real.
You need to know something, Danny, whispered the ghost-woman. They wish to destroy you. Don’t let them. They don’t want you to remember. They don’t want you to tell.
But I don’t remember.
You will, and soon. Beware, Danny.
She pressed her body closer, so sensual. Though it was a dream—had to be a dream—he could not resist her and he slipped into her like butter.
Floating
An explosion at the center of his sex.
At the center of his being, shattering like glass, fragmenting.
Intense blue light engulfing him like a shroud.
He awoke with a start and she was gone. She hadn’t actually been there, of course. Even so, the intense blue light lingered.
Chapter 13
He rose at dawn, dressed and went out into the deserted city, wandering along its empty sidewalks until he came to a church. He stopped out in front, wondering why he had been drawn to this place. An attached metal plaque near the tall, wooden double doors identified the building as The Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Wolf knew the building. He’d lived in Portland for most of his life and the cathedral was an enduring fixture on the city’s landscape. Even so, he could not remember ever stepping foot inside the place. He went up the steps and tested the door. It was unlocked so he went in. Just beyond the entrance and to the right, the holy water font beckoned. In an unconscious gesture Wolf dipped his fingers in and crossed himself. He knew that he had been raised in a Catholic orphanage until the age of eight. Although he could not remember the details of those years, or consciously remember exactly what the religious rituals had been, they now seemed automatic, as though they had long ago been burned into his psyche.
Wolf stood at the rear of the church, smelling incense and candle wax. There were few worshipers on this early weekday morning. The interior of the cathedral was painted in a soft blue glow as morning light stole through impressive blue-tinted stained-glass windows. Something tugged at Wolf’s memory—blue light engulfing him—blue light engulfing everything—and he remembered a passage from the book of St. John: “A light shines in the darkness but the darkness does not understand it.” Funny how certain sights and sounds can trigger memories believed lost forever.
At the front, near the altar, candles glowed in gleaming golden sconces. An elderly white-haired priest wearing a crimson vestment delivered a sermon about trusting in God and not giving in to despair.
Sure, Wolf thought bleakly. He sat at the back of the church until the sermon was over. When the time came he rose and followed the small handful of parishioners toward the altar. He was the last one in line and as he approached the priest Wolf saw that the man’s countenance was furrowed with deep lines of strain. His eyes were gray and Wolf thought that they were the saddest eyes he had ever seen. Feeling awkward, Wolf knelt and allowed the priest to place the host in his mouth.
“You’re new here,” whispered the priest.
Wolf nodded.
“I sense something unresolved,” the priest persisted. “Some pain. Some turmoil.”
Wolf shook his head. “No,” he said. “I came in...” he faltered. The priest waited. “I was just...curious, that’s all.”
“It is more than curiosity, young man,” said the clairvoyant pastor. “Something is troubling you. Are you in need of confession?”
When Wolf looked up and met the priest’s eyes something akin to recognition flickered through his mind. Then it was gone. But he’d seen the same reaction in the priest’s eyes. And something else: panic.
“Oh, dear God, no,” the priest said, taking a backward step and crossing himself. “It can’t be.”
“What?” Wolf said rising.
“I know you,” whispered the priest.
“No.”
“Yes. What is your name?”
“There must be some mistake.”
The priest shook his head and his shocked eyes stared at Wolf. “I don’t think so. My God,” he said again. “How did you...?” The question remained unspoken.
“No,” Wolf said, backing away. “I don’t know you.”
“It has been a very long time,” said the priest. “But I do remember you. I just don’t understand...”
The church had emptied out. Now it was just Wolf and the priest, one on one. “You were a child,” the priest said. “There were other children. All of you were special. Do you remember Apocalypse Island?”
Wolf frowned and shook his head. “No!”
“Ah but I think you do,” said the priest. “Do you know if any of the others—?” The priest’s voice halted as his face blanched white. “Dear God,” he said. “Oh, dear God, it is true.”
“No,” Wolf said again, turned and hastily made his retreat toward the exit. The priest was still talking but Wolf put his hands over his ears not wanting to hear any more of what he said. He turned at the door, however, and saw the priest still watching him, his sad eyes burning into him as though they were fiery cinders seeking a path to his soul. Pushing the door open Wolf stumbled out onto the sidewalk. He stood for a long moment bent over with his hands resting on his knees breathing in harsh rasps. He stood upright, turned and walked briskly down the sidewalk unable to get away from the church fast enough.
Chapter 14
After that, time passed in strange blocks that left Danny Wolf totally desensitized to the events of his day-to-day life. The priest’s words had opened a fissure in his soul that would not close.
He began going through the motions of his life in a completely automatic way, numbed of sensation; going to his gigs, playing in his band, coming home, sitting in his chair, drinking his whiskey, occasionally—and only half heartedly—working on new original material for the band. It got so he didn’t care about anything and he liked it that way, his senses dulled, his mind on autopilot. He didn’t have to think about the things that caused him so much pain.
But the dreams did not stop. If anything they only became more savage, turning him into a wasted and wary freak. He could not stop dreaming of his dead lover. Five long years in prison he had somehow managed to relegate her to a part of his mind that was not bothersome. It had been an easy thing to do when he’d thought she’d betrayed him. Now, with the very real prospect of her being dead he could not get her out of his mind. Night after night Siri haunted him.
Sometimes they just talked.
And sometimes they made love.
And she was not the only phantom that haunted his dreams. At times he felt that he was living inside the body of a hair-covered beast. In his deepest, darkest nightmares he saw the suffering children living a terrible life in a place he did not understand. He remembered their screams of torment and terror. He saw priests and nuns and m
en with shadowy faces, and he felt the sting of bad medicine as it made its way through his bloodstream and had its way with him. Sometimes he felt the heat of a savage fire as he remembered his panic and his rage. And through it all, the eternal blue light was there, intense and strangely comforting.
For a time he even gave up the idea of sleeping. Whenever he slept, the nightmares, or illusions, or visions, or whatever the hell they were, became so real that he began to believe he had multiple lives, and that he was living each simultaneously on totally separate planes of existence that had somehow overlapped.
But he soon discovered that not sleeping was a bad idea. First, it was hard to accomplish without some sort of assistance, like drugs. After a while the body just shut itself down. And when that happened, well, he couldn’t deal with the shit in his head. So he found a hookup and began feeding himself stimulants. But that didn’t work either, because the combination of alcohol, amphetamines and lack of sleep made him hallucinate. At least that’s what he’d convinced himself they were. In truth the experiences were far more unsettling than mere hallucinations. They were more like waking nightmares. He knew he was flirting with disaster with such combinations, but he was at a point where he no longer cared what happened to him.
And the Siri sightings began taking on new significance; he started seeing her in places other than his bed, and on these occasions he was wide awake, so he could not be dreaming, and the only logical conclusion could be that she was not a ghost at all, but something more...substantial. Maddeningly she would keep her distance, staring sadly—a face in the crowd at one of the many dark bars his band played at, or on a quiet street late at night, there she would be, the gauzy gown shrouding her, the livid skin glowing supernaturally, the black hair across her face, hands held out before her, eyes filled with the deepest darkness he had ever seen.
I’m waiting for you to see the truth, her expression said. Please, you need to see!
But whenever he tried to approach her, or communicate with her, she would simply cease to exist, further adding to his frustration, and to the very real prospect that she was just a figment of his ever deteriorating mind.
They wish to destroy you, Danny. Don’t let them.
Whenever he tried to make sense of the admonition, connect it with reality, all he saw were things that terrified him. So it was easier to just not go there, to shut the world out. Just because his life had always been filled with strange illusions didn’t mean he had to embrace them. But were they illusions? Was Siri an actual ghost? Is that why she had vanished from the earth? Is that why he was seeing her this way? Was she dead? Had she somehow managed to come back to haunt him? It broke his heart, made him sick to think that she might be out there somewhere, irretrievable, her remains lying where her murderer had left them to rot, her unsettled spirit roaming the earth looking for peace.
Siri was the only good thing that had ever happened in his life. And he could not forget how they had first met. He’d spied her from the stage while playing in some bar and approached her during his break. He’d done the same thing dozens of times with dozens of different women. But from the beginning, even from a distance, he’d known that Siri would be different from all the rest. There was something unsettlingly familiar about her that he’d never been able to pigeonhole. Yes, she was more beautiful than anyone he’d ever seen, exotic in some indefinable way. Yes she was feminine, and smart and sophisticated. But all those things together did not add up to the sum of her parts. There was something about Siri that defied definition, something illogical, something extraordinary, maybe even magical, and in the two years they’d had together Wolf had never been able to articulate what that was. And she was no help at all. Whenever he’d pressed her for details of her life she’d been as elusive as quicksilver, smiling that crooked little smile of hers that he’d become so familiar with and telling him that he and she were the same thing.
At first her aloofness had infuriated him until she’d finally confessed that she was an orphan just like him, and like him had grown up in foster care. No big deal. And in time he’d convinced himself that there was nothing more to her mystery than that. They had both come from nowhere, a pair of lost souls, destined to be one.
And everything about their lives together had been good, until that night... No, he was not ready to think about that night. He hadn’t allowed himself to think about it in years.
He wanted to think about the night they’d met. He’d given her the standard—and ever so corny line: what’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?
“What do you mean, a girl like me?” Siri had replied, feigning innocence.
“You’re too good for this place,” Wolf said.
“I don’t think so.”
“Look around,” Wolf insisted. “Tell me what you see?”
“People,” Siri said. “A colorful variety of them.”
“No,” Wolf said. “These aren’t people. These are drunks and druggies and losers pretending to be people.” He held up his drink and grinned like a fool. “Present company not excluded, of course.”
“Of course,” Siri said with a touch of irony in her voice. “But it seems to me that these losers are providing you with a paycheck, Danny boy.” It was the first time she ever called him Danny boy and he was lost. “Besides I came in to check out the cute guy with the sad songs and the sweet voice.”
“Yeah?” he’d said totally enchanted. He backed up a step, bowed comically and said, “At your service, ma’am. How’d you hear about me?”
“Oh...you thought I was talking about you? Sorry, no, the guy I was looking for isn’t here.” Siri smiled—that slightly teasing, slightly turning up of the left side of her mouth that always managed to melt him. She looked him up and down, the smile not wavering.
“What will it take to convince you I’m the guy you’re looking for?”
“Why don’t you sing me a song?”
“A song? What song?”
“Make one up when you get back on stage,” she said. “Make it just for me. Then I’ll decide if I like you.”
“Okay, what’s your name?”
“Siri.”
And that’s what he did, made up a song on the spot as the members of his band and the audience looked on in astonishment. He called it Teasing Siri and what it lacked in refinement it made up for in innocent charm. Siri stared at him, her eyes alight, that crooked little smile on the pink curve of her generous mouth. She had been his from that moment on.
He had never been so caught up in a woman. She claimed to be a bohemian, although Wolf sensed a sophistication that belied the label. She worked in an Old Port retro-style boutique known as The Grand Orange. They sold everything from incense to head supplies to retro hippy fashions which she wore with amazing style. He loved everything about her, her crooked smile, her big dark eyes, the deep ebony tints of her hair which always seemed aflame with some supernatural fire, her flushed cheeks, her spirit burning brighter than all the stars in the galaxy.
And she had this almost magical connection to him; she understood his intricacies and complexities better than anyone ever had.
On that first night when he’d commented on what an unusual name Siri was, she’d told him that it meant beautiful victory.
And so she became his beautiful victory and it was the happiest time of his life. He stopped looking at other women because they paled to shadows in her brightness.
Then she was gone, leaving a void in his heart that could never be filled. In prison he had learned to dampen his feelings down to nearly nothing when it came to Siri, his bitterness palpable. Now she had come back to him as a ghost woman delivering a cryptic warning.
And now another woman Wolf knew was dead. Was there a connection? Perhaps there was a serial predator out there somewhere and both Siri and Janet had become his victims. If so then why would he wait five years between murders? As far as Wolf knew nothing even similar had happened in Portland in the years between. If it was true then why
was he choosing woman Wolf knew? Wolf did not like the answers he got when he posed these questions.
Chapter 15
Things other than the ghost of Siri Donavon began to haunt Wolf’s life. One day he saw a crucifix painted in what looked like blood on a street sign. He stepped up close to examine the image, touching it with the tips of his fingers. It seemed real enough. At least the dry paint—or blood—or whatever the hell it was, seemed real. Surprisingly, the next day it was gone, scrubbed clean, as if the graffiti police were more on top of things than usual. Several days later he found a graffiti artist’s rendition of a crucified Christ figure drawn on the bricks of an abandoned building. Again he went in close and thoroughly examined the image. When he touched a part of it his fingers came away wet. In revulsion he wiped the wetness away on the grass at his feet. Like the crucifix, the next day the image was nowhere to be seen. And there was no sign that it had been scrubbed from the soiled bricks.
The very next morning as Wolf was passing by a local well-known restaurant he saw a transvestite in a nun’s habit castrating his own genitals with a butcher knife in the sun’s reflection off the restaurant window. This was no static illusion, Wolf realized immediately. Instead it was like a motion picture being played out in real time. The illusion was so disturbing that Wolf picked up his pace, not having the stomach to give it a second glance. Even so, he could not curb the impulse to take a quick glance back. When he did so from the next corner, he saw nothing but empty glass. He walked back and thoroughly examined the window. All he saw were the staring eyes of the restaurant’s patrons within. These incidents were like waking dreams his mind was somehow conjuring. To what end he could not say, but he was a little afraid of asking why. Could all of this be further evidence of his deteriorating sanity?
It occurred to him on more than one occasion that perhaps his mind wasn’t deteriorating at all, that maybe the explanation was far more complex than that. Maybe he was seeing sights others were being denied. Perhaps he had the ability to see beneath the surface of ordinary things to layers of reality few were cursed to witness. Ghosts, demons, transvestite nuns, and, of course, the eternal crosses. Mustn’t forget about them. Yeah, sure, a cynical little voice inside him said. That’s what all nut cases think.
Apocalypse Island Page 5
