“And this is Margarete,” Dr. Wolff said.
Frederick leaned close to Dr. Randolph’s ear. “We’re getting a bit wet,”
he said.
Dr. Randolph came to himself and hopped forward to lead them through the sliding doors. “We’ve got her locked in one of the observation rooms. I told her we lost the keys, as you suggested on the phone, but she’s not very happy. She’s, uh, throwing a bit of a tantrum.”
“What does she look like?” Margarete asked.
“Just like in the papers—little girl, maybe ten years old, white nightgown. Beautiful long curls.” He turned right and led them into the oncology wing. “She looks like Shirley Temple.”
“Has she kissed or touched any of the patients?” she asked.
“One, we think,” Dr. Randolph said.
“You think?” Frederick said.
“We’re not sure if the girl did it, or if the excitement was too much for the woman. She was very old.” He suddenly realized what he’d said, but Dr. Wolff didn’t seem to take offense. “Anyway, we can’t get in there with her.”
“She’s still in the room with the patient?” Dr. Wolff said. Dr. Randolph winced inwardly. “We had no choice. That was the room the girl was in when we found her.”
They heard pounding, then shouting. A high-pitched voice yelled, “Or else, mister!”
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A small crowd of nurses, orderlies, and patients had gathered in the hallway outside the room, but they were standing well back from the door and the door’s little window. The door shook every time the girl inside kicked it. Frederick said, “Step aside, please! Thank you!”
“Dr. Randolph?” Margarete said. He turned and forced his eyes to stay on her face. The neck of her dress seemed to plunge almost to her navel.
“We need to get these people out of harm’s way,” she said. He nodded.
“So why don’t you do that?”
“Of course, of course.”
After Dr. Randolph had cleared the hallway—twenty feet of it, at least—
he came back to find Dr. Wolff paging through a small notebook, and Margarete and Frederick conferring in low voices. Were they married? he wondered. Dating? Perhaps they were only colleagues.
“It’s the Long Island girl, all right,” Frederick was saying. “I’d recognize those cheekbones anywhere.” He leaned against the wall beside the door, arms crossed. “God only knows how she gets across the city barefoot and in a nightgown with nobody seeing her. Or into the damn hospital.”
“No one reads our alerts,” Margarete said.
“Dr. Randolph does,” Dr. Wolff said without looking up. He hadn’t realized she’d seen him return. “And for that we are thankful.”
Inside the room the girl kicked and yelled something Dr. Randolph couldn’t make out.
“We have to move before the demon damages the girl,” Dr. Wolff said.
“So the question: temporary or permanent?”
“She’s done this for three years,” Margarete said. “She’s paid her dues.”
“I agree,” Frederick said.
“Temporary or permanent what?” Dr. Randolph asked. “Exorcism?”
“Let me out of here!” the girl yelled.
“To use a word freighted with misunderstanding,” Frederick said.
“But why wouldn’t you choose permanent?” Dr. Randolph sounded exasperated. Dr. Wolff opened her purse. “How heavy would you say she is, Doctor?
Forty pounds? Forty-five?”
“About that.”
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“Oh, and I’m going to need scissors,” she said. “Margarete, could you fetch a pair? This place should be full of them.” Margarete spun away, the skirt of her dress parting to expose a length of tanned thigh. “And Doctor, I need you to unlock the door for me.”
Frederick straightened. “I should be the one to go, she’s not going to do anything to me.”
“I need to talk to her before she leaves,” Dr. Wolff said. “However, I won’t leave you out, Frederick. You can play bodyguard. In a few minutes I’ll need you and the doctor to hold her down for me.”
Dr. Randolph felt his stomach clench. “I’m not sure I should—”
“Don’t worry, Doctor,” Dr. Wolff said. “You’re not her type.”
Dr. Randolph pulled the keys from his pocket, then struggled to find the right one. He could feel the hospital staff watching him. When he placed the key in the lock, the girl inside suddenly quieted.
“Please, Dr. Wolff, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go in there,”
Frederick said.
“Pffft!” she said. Then louder, “My little angel! We’ve found the keys. We’re going to have you out in a jiffy.” She pronounced it zhiffy.
“It’s about time!” the little girl said.
Dr. Randolph pulled the door open, and Dr. Wolff immediately rolled forward, blocking the doorway. “My, aren’t you a pretty little girl!”
Dr. Randolph looked at her through the window. She was a pretty girl. Her face was pale and elfin. Her hair hung in long, golden brown ringlets. The girl looked at Dr. Wolff suspiciously. “I know you,” she said. “You were at that other place.”
“That’s right, we met last year.”
“You’re old,” the little girl said. “Very old.”
“Yes I am.” She rolled forward a few inches. “But let’s talk about you, my little angel. Tell me about the first place you ever visited. Can you remember that?”
The girl tilted her head. “You’re sick, too, aren’t you? You’re dying. ”
Margarete came up behind Dr. Randolph. “Oh no,” she said quietly.
“Don’t worry about me,” Dr. Wolff said. “Tell me a story about your adventures. Do you remember visiting Kansas City?” She rolled farther into the room. Margarete and Frederick exchanged a look. 1 7 8
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“You’re really ’fraid,” the girl said. She stepped forward, her filmy white nightgown swishing around her mud-stained legs. Dr. Wolff said, “I have something in my purse I’d like to show you. Do you like surprises?”
“You can’t fool me,” the little girl said. “You’re afraid it’s going to hurt when you die. You’re afraid it’s going to take a long, long time.”
Frederick spun around the frame of the door and grabbed the handles of the wheelchair. The little girl screamed. Frederick hauled Dr. Wolff backward out the door, her legs kicking up. As soon as the chair had cleared the doorway Margarete lunged into the room and tackled the little girl to the floor.
You weren’t supposed to touch the Little Angel, Dr. Randolph thought. That was the first rule.
“Frederick!” Dr. Wolff said. “Get Margarete out of there!”
The demon threw off Margarete and sent her crashing against the far bed. Her strength, for a child, was enormous. Dr. Randolph ducked back out of sight.
“Meg!” Frederick said.
Dr. Wolff took the purse from her lap and tossed it at Dr. Randolph.
“Doctor, get the syringe.”
Dr. Randolph stared at her.
“Twenty cc’s should do it,” Dr Wolff said. “Enough to slow her down without killing the girl.”
Dr. Randolph opened the purse and withdrew a syringe. “What’s in this?” He withdrew the plastic cap from the needle.
“She’s u-up,” Frederick said quietly.
“You,” Dr. Randolph heard the girl say. “You were mean to me last time.”
“Sorry about that,” Frederick said. He raised his arms and stood in front of Dr. Wolff. Dr. Randolph pressed his back against the wall, out of sight of the girl. He gripped the syringe tightly in his damp hands. The girl walked forward. “You’re young,” she said. “Not sick at all.”
“That’s right. Fit as a fiddle.”
“But you’re mean.”
The girl walked out of the room. Dr. Randolph
held the syringe at his
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side, unable to move. She was only two feet away from him, her back to him, and still he couldn’t move.
He must have made a noise. The little girl glanced at him over her shoulder. She frowned. The syringe slipped from his fingers and clattered away.
The girl turned her attention back to Frederick and Dr. Wolff. “I just want to help her,” the girl said. She reached out her hand. “But mean people are always stopping me.”
Suddenly the girl squealed in pain. She wheeled around, turned again, as if the needle were still stuck in her behind. “What did you do?” the girl said.
Margarete held the syringe between two fingers like a cigar. “Nighty night,” she said.
The demon stumbled, and Frederick caught her before her head struck the ground.
“Oh my goodness,” Dr. Randolph said. “She was going to kill us. Kill us all.”
Frederick made a face. “She wasn’t going to go after you.” He looked at Dr. Wolff. “But you, Doctor. I didn’t like the way she was talking. If she comes for you—”
“Summoned or not, the god will be there,” Dr. Wolff said. “Now, before she wakes up, Margarete?”
“Already on it,” Margarete said, and snipped the air with a pair of scissors. She kneeled beside the unconscious girl, lifted up one of the long, springy curls, and clipped it off near the base of the skull.
“Is that necessary?” Dr. Randolph asked.
Margarete smiled up at him. “The Little Angel has a thing about hair. Won’t go anywhere without it.”
“Ah,” Dr. Randolph said, though he wasn’t sure he understood. “What’s going to happen to her?”
“First we try to find her parents,” Dr. Wolff said. “And then the hard work begins.”
11
I woke to darkness and thumping bass and synthesized strings: an eighties funk power ballad. The male falsetto had to be Prince—
nothing compares to Prince—but I didn’t recognize the song. The woman’s voice singing along with the recording was breathy and keening at the same time, threatening at any moment to veer off key. The thing in my head was quiet. Still there, though: it breathed warily, an animal crouched in the corner of a dark room. I lay there inhaling the powdery, foreign scents of an unknown bed. I had no idea how long I’d slept. It’d been almost 2 a.m. before I’d gotten out of the hospital—the nurses hadn’t wanted to let me check out, but O’Connell was formidable. I’d fallen asleep only minutes after getting into her truck, and had woken up briefly to navigate through a series of small rooms. She’d insisted I sleep here, rather than on the couch, and I hadn’t argued.
There was a window above me on the curved wall to my right, but it was dark on the other side—which meant that the window looked out on another room, or that it was still night, or worse, night again—
and the deep ache in my arms and legs told me I’d been sleeping too long in one position.
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Holy shit. Mom had to be freaking out.
The song ended, and in the break, I yelled out, “Hel-lo!” The next song started—another eighties number, but U2 this time. A minute later the door opened and O’Connell leaned in. She was in rock-chick mode again: black T-shirt, black jeans. Despite the singing a moment ago, she didn’t look happy.
I wasn’t in the bed so much as on it: I lay on top of the covers, with several blankets thrown over me. I lifted one arm a few inches, as far as it would go.
“You can untie me now,” I said.
She stepped back and closed the door, leaving me alone in the dark again.
Ooookay.
Sometime last night, after I’d babbled and cried for a couple hours and finally fallen asleep, O’Connell had tied me spread-eagled to the bed frame with the combination locks tucked out of sight and out of reach, an arrangement impossible for me to set up on my own—and one I didn’t much like now. The situation put me in mind of more than one Stephen King novel, and I’d had enough of horror stories. Bono was emoting through the second verse when she came back into the room carrying a vinyl-padded kitchen chair in one hand and my blue duffel bag in the other. She set the chair near the foot of the bed and dropped the duffel onto the bed between my spread legs. She made no move toward the chains.
“I really need to pee,” I said.
“Let’s talk first,” she said.
“About what?”
“Oh, I hardly know where to start.” She sounded peeved. “The county sheriff stopped by for a talk this morning. Not about the Shug, about Dr. Ram. They found the killer.”
“What? That’s great!”
“Some DemoniCon fanboy named Eliot Kasparian. He claims he was possessed, woke up wearing a trench coat and holding a pair of guns. He’s in custody.”
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“So was he possessed by the Truth, or is he faking?”
“I hope for his sake that he’s not lying,” she said. Good point, I thought. The Truth didn’t like fakers. But if he really was possessed, then it was Dr. Ram who’d been the liar. O’Connell said, “We’re not completely off the hook, boyo. The sheriff says that the police still want to talk to all the hotel guests who were there that night, especially the ones that checked out that morning. Especially the ones that might be showing up on security camera tapes.”
“You told him I was here?”
“Her. I didn’t have to—she’s smart enough to figure out where you went when you checked yourself out of the hospital. Plus, you were snoring.”
“She didn’t think it odd that I was chained up in your bedroom?”
“I didn’t open the door. Officially, she doesn’t know where you are.”
“Why would—why would she go along with that?” And why would O’Connell stick her neck out for me?
“She’s a friend. And she lives here. The ladies of the lake watch out for each other.”
I didn’t know what she meant by that. Were there any male residents of Harmonia Lake? I hadn’t met any. Maybe only women stayed, because they weren’t candidates to be the next Shug.
“This is a huge relief, though,” I said. “So you want to unlock me?”
“We’re not quite finished with our conversation,” O’Connell said, and unzipped the duffel. I tried to sit up, but the chains kept me from raising more than my head. “Hey, that’s my stuff!”
She ignored me. And then I realized that of course she’d already been into the duffel—she’d gotten the chains and locks. Shit.
“I have rules, Del.” She pulled something else out of the duffel, a rectangle of cloth. Ah. The oil rag that had been wrapped around the pistol. “One of them is, I will not have guns in my house.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
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“Oh, I’ve already taken care of it.”
“What’d you do with it? That was my dad’s army pistol!”
“It was also a forty-five automatic, the same model the Truth uses. The same model that killed Dr. Ram.”
“But that’s over now—you know it wasn’t me!” I tried to sit up, but all I could do was lift my head in a forceful manner.
“You still can’t go around carrying ready-made props—especially ones that put holes in people. The demons can possess anyone—
whoever they want, whenever they want. They’re especially attracted to those who’ve been possessed before, even by another demon. You’re already marked, Del. So, let’s not make it so easy on them, eh?”
“What did you do with the gun?” I said.
“I heaved it into the lake.”
I blinked at her. I didn’t know whether to be angry or relieved.
“Next,” she said. She pulled out the black nylon bag I’d gotten at the ICOP conference. She withdrew from it a sheaf of stapled papers and started slowly turning the pages. “Now these are i
nteresting souvenirs,” she said. “Out of all the academic crap at the conference, this is what you take with you. What did you think you’d do with these, apply a little guilt, a little leverage to get me to take your case?”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” I said. She spun the packet at me. The pages landed on my chest, open to the page she’d been looking at. At this angle I couldn’t read the words, but I saw the photocopied picture and realized what I was looking at. The “Little Angel” paper from the Penn State woman.
“What are you mad about?” I said. “This is just some research paper I picked up.”
But there was something about the girl in the picture, even viewed sideways. She was maybe nine years old, dressed in a white gown. Even in black and white, after multiple generations of photocopying, the girl’s beauty was evident. Pale skin, high cheekbones, a head bursting with curls.
“When was this taken?” I said.
“Nineteen seventy-seven,” she said. “I was eleven.”
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“I didn’t know,” I said. I looked up. “I swear it, it’s just something I picked up and put in my bag. I thought you grew up in Ireland.”
“My mother and I moved to New York when I was eight, after my parents divorced. The Little Angel found me soon after. I didn’t move back to Ireland until I was a teenager.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t—”
“Stop it. Whatever you had in mind, it doesn’t matter. I don’t require motivation, Del. I don’t need to be manipulated into helping you, and I don’t respond to pity. There are thousands of people who’ve been possessed, and it doesn’t matter if I was one of them—the job’s the same.”
“The job . . . ,” I said, unsure. “Being an exorcist?”
“Being your pastor.”
“Oh. I mean, that’s nice and everything, but I don’t think I need—”
“Del.”
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