Asylum (46 page)

            In
the window, only the top of Seth’s head was visible.  There was the dresser,
the desks, herself, and…someone else.  A man, one she had never seen before, with
a striped shirt…suspenders, a clean-shaven face with a cleft chin, and even
from a distance, dark angry eyes.  Had he been visible in the room, he would
have been standing right beside her.  When she finished rubbing her eyes, he
was still there…glowering at her.

            “Seth…”
she whispered.

            Seth
looked up and turned his head, following her gaze to the window.  He jumped to
his feet, one hand still on Chloe.  The image in the window faded, dissolved
until they could only see themselves.

            “Oh
my…GOD,” Sam gasped.

            Seth
whipped his head around to stare at her, and his eyes lit up.  Something in his
head must have clicked.

            “I
know what to do,” he said.

            Gathering
Chloe up in his arms, he hurried out.  Sam stood alone in the room for a
moment, staring at the window.  A slow smile crept across her face as she
studied her faint reflection.

*          *          *

           
Chloe
coughed and choked.  There was smoke everywhere, burning her eyes, pouring down
her throat, filling her nostrils until she couldn’t breathe.  The absolute
darkness made it more terrifying.  She could feel her hands, but even waving
them in front of where she was sure her face was, she could see nothing.  Worse
yet, there seemed to be no ground.  Nothing firm and solid that she could
flatten herself across and crawl away on.  If there was fire, shouldn’t she be
able to see something?  Yet she could hear it, cracking and popping somewhere
very close by.  She tried again to breath, but couldn’t draw air.  Where was
she?  Where was this place?  She was going to suffocate.

            “You
can make it stop,” A dry voice said from nearby.  “Try it and see.  Tell it to
stop burning…it will.”

            Chloe
tried to take another panicked gasp of air, and couldn’t draw anything in but
smoke.  She beat an invisible hand against her chest.  She was going to vomit,
she was going to die.

            “You
don’t need to breath,” the voice said calmly.  “It’s an illusion in this place,
a habit of the body, one of the first things to go.  Now tell it to stop
burning.”

            “STOP
BURNING! STOP BURNING!” she wheezed.

            For
an instant she seemed to spin in the black bottomless world, and then it was
silent.  No smells of burning or smoke either, just darkness.  She still
couldn’t take a breath, but she quickly realized she wasn’t losing
consciousness, her lungs just wanted to take in air.  She could feel them
inside working to expand.  She could hear her heart beating too.  Yet when she
focused on it, the sound didn’t come from inside her chest, it seemed to beat
all around her, it was external.

            “Wha-”
she gasped in a tiny airless voice.

            “You’re
trying to form words with a mouth.  You don’t need that here, you just have to
think them,” the voice answered.

            For
a second, she could hear something else, another noise over the sound of her
heart beating.  It sounded like Sam.  Sam yelling from far off.  Her voice
sounded tinny, like it was recorded on an old phonograph.

            “Where
am I?” Chloe thought, and the words boomed loudly around her.

            “You’re
inside yourself,” the voice replied.  “It’s a hard place to get to, so well
done there.”

            “What
is burning?  Where is the fire coming from?” she thought, wincing at the volume
of her words.

            “I’m
afraid that’s my fault,” the voice conceded sorrowfully.  “It’s part of my
reality, it comes with me.  Something of a curse really, lose the body, keep
all it’s experiences, especially it’s last.”

            “GEORGE!”
Chloe thought-shouted.

            “In
the spirit,” he agreed.  “Now how about you make us some ground, and possibly
some light?

            “How?”
Chloe wondered.

            “Oh,
this is your head, you see?  You still control the body, the thought
processes.  I don’t claim to understand the science, but I’m quite sure that
all you have to do is picture it.” he explained.

            Chloe
ground her teeth and thought with all her might about the hardest most solid
and level ground that she could possibly ever imagine beneath her feet.  Her
toes quickly smashed and bent, her senses reeled.  Had she still been falling
then?

            “Well
done,” George’s voice applauded her effort, “Now…light?”

            Chloe
squeezed imaginary eyes shut.  The first thought to cross her mind was the
northern lights on Presque Isle.  The wavering curtain of multi-colored light
illuminating the beach.  When she opened her eyes, she saw water lapping
against a frozen beach at night.  Overhead the aurora borealis shone more
brightly than she had ever seen it in real life.  Blazing reds fading into
fiery oranges and then flaming yellows against a backdrop of stars.  Seated on
a long flat rock, near at hand,  a man with a thick black moustache and high
collared shirt watched her patiently.

            “Very
nice,” he commended her without moving his lips.

            Chloe
looked down at herself and saw…nothing.  NOTHING!  She didn’t exist.  He was a
ghost and in this world, he was sitting, watching her bodiless form.  She was
the ghost, she did not exist.  She could feel the panic starting again.

            And
then Seth’s voice.  So far away, some words, so faint: I’m here, you’re okay
it’s all okay.  She could almost feel his finger brush against her invisible
cheek.  She mimicked taking a deep breath.

            “Alright?”
George asked.

            Chloe
nodded.

            “That’s
right, you exist, imagine yourself, you’ll see yourself just fine,” he
encouraged.

            Again
Chloe followed his advice and saw her hands, and then arms appear, like a
photograph being developed.  She looked down at a pair of bare feet and wiggled
her toes.

            “You
see?” George nodded.  “The good thing about having a body, a beating heart, an
electrical brain current…all this is much easier when one is alive.”

            “Alive!”
Chloe repeated.  “Alive in this blackness?  Am I dying?  I’m dying and the fire
was hell, wasn’t it?  I’m going to hell!”

            With
a suddenness that would have taken her breath away, had she any to begin with,
the fires blazed up around her, this time bright and easy to behold.  The heat
was instantly unbearable.  Hell…she was in hell!  The fires licked at her newly
formed toes and legs, then like snakes they slithered up her calves, her
thighs.

            “Stop
it!” she screamed.  “It’s burning, everything’s burning, Oh God please, stop
it!  Make it stop!” 

            And
then Seth’s voice…safe, it whispered, and that sudden overwhelming feeling that
he was there, that he was near.

            “That’s
right, let it go, relax,” George’s voice soothed.  “It is what you want it to
be.”

            The
night time beach scene rematerialized in front of her.  George sat unchanged on
his rock.  The fires were gone.

            “What
is going on?  Where am I?” Chloe sobbed, the words echoed around her.

            “As
I said, you’re in your own head…with me.  You invited me, you know.  It is much
easier this way.  You’ve just never before made yourself accessible.” he
shrugged.

            “What
do you want?  Why are you still here?” Chloe demanded.

            “You
know about ‘the Men’, I presume.  You’ve figured that much out at least?”

            “Abraham’s
Men?” Chloe clarified.

            “Certainly. 
And something tells me you know about THEM as well, I can see it in here…a
sense of foreboding…of fear,” he nodded.

            “The
bad ones…” Chloe’s thoughts whispered, as though afraid someone might
overhear.  “They’re watching?  Is that what you meant by they?”

            George
nodded.

            “Don’t
think on them overlong,” he cautioned.  “They can find you as well.  Your kind,
our kind, it’s like carrying a torch in the dark.”

            “What
do you want?”  Chloe demanded again.

            George
smiled at her sadly.

            “To
pass the buck, I’m afraid,” his voice was unreadable. 

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

           
Father Andrew
Finnegan was a man basically at peace.  Admittedly, there were times when he
wondered whether or not he was truly doing enough.  His life seemed almost too
easy, too comfortable.  Upon entering seminary, he had all the youthful notions
of great deeds to be done.  At twenty-two he had envisioned himself in the
white collar, spooning broth into the mouths of starving, skeletal, African
children, rewarded only by the newfound devotion to God shining in their eyes. 
He had imagined himself sweating through jungle foliage, cutting a path towards
those who had not yet the knowledge of the immaculate heart of Mary, to which
he devoted himself.

            The
path he
had
cut was quite different.  Circumstances and a friend in the
diocese had gotten him assigned to a parish in the U.P. early on.  Back to his
home, close to a gentle and loving father whose sickness had been the
inspiration for his assignment. 

            After
his death, he had stayed on in the small church, fostering an active youth
group from a rapidly dwindling population of young people.  His work with the
young adults had drawn the attention of the higher ups, from which had
proceeded the order to take over the church in Birch Harbor.  A campus church,
one comprised mainly of ever-changing student faces, and a few diehard townies.

            That
was almost twenty years ago.  Still, Father Andrew couldn’t complain.  He had
been subjected to years of confessions concerning college promiscuity,
drunkenness, the occasional abortion, drug abuse, academic dishonesty…there
wasn’t much a college student could do that he hadn’t heard before.   He had
been the rock for an entire generation of young people battling the confusing
and forming waters of college life.  If he were to name a regret for a life
spent in the priesthood, the only one he could come up with was that he had no
children of his own.  But God was a good God, and that void had been filled to
brimming with students who had come to him in their hardest and most desperate
hours for advice, for consolation, for a father.  Combine that with the efforts
of the town ladies of the church parish…their homemade pasties, potlucks,
lovingly handmade gifts, and Father Andrew found nothing in his life to
complain about.

            In
fact when a former student, one he had spent his time and heart upon, came back
to visit, and often to thank Father Andrew for his efforts on their behalf, he
was certain that even a natural Father could not feel more pride of a child and
gratitude towards the creator.

            It
was a good life… and that’s where the one snag in the carpet lay.  It should
not be so easy.

            He
was not so young or so foolish as to pray for hardship.  He had lived long
enough to see that God answered prayers.  He would never ask the Blessed Virgin
to intercede on his own behalf, for his own fulfillment, his own life.  From
Mary, he only asked for intercession when it concerned the direct well-being of
the children…his children, the students.  She was the Holy Mother, after all. 
She knew better than anyone the sleepless nights one spent contemplating the
paths a child could take, and as far as Father Andrew was concerned, she had
always done her part.  He would burden her with none of his own desires. 

            So
it was a good life Father Andrew led, a life of small spiritual battles,
untouched by the warfare he felt sure was waged somewhere.  And then came the
banging on his parsonage door…

            If
it hadn‘t of been for that old, reoccurring back pain, the one that was always
worse on cold nights, he would not have been awake.

            The
young man at the door had a face Father Andrew felt sure he recognized, but
also felt, with certainty, that it wasn‘t a face that watched him weekly from
the pews.  The stranger held an unconscious girl in a long white nightgown, and
his eyes begged for help, though he didn’t say a word.