Disconnection (32 page)

People were so easy, so easy. Easy to believe whatever.

The creature had been other places as well…

Rome and Caligula, the fall of Constantinople, Tomas de Torquemada and the Spanish bloody bloody bloody Inquisition. The French slicing heads. Genghis Khan ripping the skin of horses, murder after murder, villages burned to the ground.

Fiddle
(hiccup)
faddle

The creature held Sela’s body closer to its chest. “God is my strength
(hiccup)
and my power, and He
(hiccup)
maketh my way perfect!” it recited. “Hee hee hee.”
Cough, cough
.

Possessing the reverend’s body was nothing; for a soul to turn so enthusiastically to God could also easily, easily be converged to Satan. That was how it always was.

Harold laughed with the Devil’s voice, the curse of an eternal hell seeping through its breath.

(How easy it had been, just a few lies, a few lies and…)

Tweedle-dee-dee, look at me!

Another fireball of triumph coursed through the creature’s (non)heart as it recited,
“He maketh my feet like hinds’ feet, and setteth me upon high places!”
Joyous nausea rose up in the stolen human body, and the creature rolled its head to the side and coughed up a glob of green and bloody phlegm. The spit oozed to the ground and burned a hole into the earth.

The creature continued to recite passages from the Bible, the Devil’s sick way of celebrating success.
“He teacheth my hands to war; so that the bow of steel is broken by my arms.”
It paused, listening to the rustle of leaves under Jew Boy and nigger cop’s feet as they sought to find it. The creature laughed as it reached its hands over the water, holding Sela just above the surface. Its eyes glowed with the fires of hell as it recited, “I have pursued my enemies
(cough)
and destroyed them;
(cough)
and turned not against they until I had consumed them. Thou have given me
(cough)
the necks of my enemies, that I may destroy them that hate me.”

It stared at the mortal in its arms. It was not finished with the girl, the flame thrower, the murderer of her parents. What a special prize she was! Alas, her ritual had been interrupted. This time, the creature would make it right by her. This time it would really save her.

T
he gun has no bullets. We have nothing, and he’s here somewhere; I can smell him,” Dean whispered.

Lewis looked up at the moon’s sliced white orb hovering over the bayou. He sniffed the wretched sickness of the air. Indeed, the Jewish kid was right. Harold Applegate
did
have a smell about him, somewhere between frankincense and decomposed flesh, and the disgusting aroma was now traveling to Lewis’s nostrils from the south.

“Follow me,” Lewis ordered, stepping over the external roots of an evergreen. He heard Dean groan with discomfort as he followed. Lewis still wasn’t sure how the kid had managed to come out of the coma-like trance he had been in at the pig farmer’s house. He supposed some things in life went beyond explanation. Like Harold Applegate, for example.

It was dark. Too dark. Lewis was well aware that somewhere in the woods Harold waited to kill him, for the reverend was more beast than man. Lewis remembered the look in his eyes back in the chapel; it had chilled the detective to the bone, turning his blood to liquid ice.

Evil cloaked the air around him, as dense as the fog rising from the swamp water. Lewis thought about Tabitha as he explored the bayou
(the crazy things you think about during times like these)
. He thought of the conversations they’d had over the past month, how badly she had wanted to move, and how stubborn he had been about staying in New Orleans.

Tabitha, forgive me, please, if I don’t make it back to you
.

She was such a remarkable woman. He had loved her from the beginning. Her strength and her downright
audacity
to desire a life so far away from the one in which she had inhabited had completely mesmerized him. She was the most unassuming woman he had ever known, wearing her beauty discreetly, almost without notice. He would miss her, should he cross that long black ocean to the other side of unknowing tonight, a mere ghost in a world where Tabitha still thrived.

Tabitha, don’t you give up on me, baby
.

A shadow met Lewis and Dean when they reached the deepest part of the bayou, where the moldy fish smell was the most pungent. “Do you see that?” Dean asked. The boy raised his hand and pointed to the figure standing near the shore, holding something large and
(holy fucking cow it’s Sela Warren maybe we’re too late)
humanlike over the water.

Do you wanna play, Lew?

Lewis looked to the side. “What’d you say?” he quietly asked Dean.

The boy looked over at him. “Huh?”

“You said something.”

“No, I didn’t.” Dean nodded over at the cloaked figure. “That’s him, isn’t it? How are we going to get her away from him? There’s not much time.”

You wanna play, jigaboo?

It was Harold Applegate’s voice. A sudden, large, gnawing pain struck Lewis in his ass, right where Nick used to hang out. Lewis bellied over, his hands reaching around his butt cheeks. “Fuck,” he said through clenched teeth. “Fuck-a-duck.”

A concerned frown creased Dean’s brow. “Detective?” he asked, laying a hand on Lewis’s back.

“Leave me alone,” he growled, pushing Dean’s hand away from him.

You wanna play doctor, Lew? How about your baaaad case of hemorrhoids, huh? Want them removed, huh? I got some ways. Fiddle-dee-dee
.

A finger—no, it couldn’t be a finger, because whose finger would it be?
Something finger-like
—came up and stuffed itself into Lewis’s behind. The detective threw his head back, drawing out a gasp as the finger-thing penetrated the walls of his rectum, moving back and forth along the rows of hemorrhoids.

You wanna play surgery, detective?

Dean whispered beside him, “Whatever it is, you have to let it go. We’re losing the element of surprise here.”

“The mother-fucker …” Lewis began, but the finger took a hold of his most internal hemorrhoid and began pulling at it the way the back of a hammer pulled on a nail. Lewis fell forward with a low scream.

(you mother-fucker, you God damn mother-fucker cracker ass son of a bitch)

“God hears you!” Harold sang from the riverside. “God hears it all!”

Once I’m finished with Sela, Mr. Nigger Detective Man, you’re up next
.

(You won’t kill another girl. Not on my watch.)

A burst of strength flared in Lewis. “For God’s sake, get your girlfriend!” he yelled at Dean, pushing the boy with all his might. “Go!”

Oh fiddle-faddle. The Jew boy before you, detective? Well, okay, have it your own tootin’
—
excuse my English
—
way
.

Lewis collapsed onto the ground and watched as Dean made a path through the trees, burning up the distance between him and the shadowy figure of Harold Applegate. The young man screamed as he threw all of his weight onto the reverend. Applegate’s composure broke into pieces. Sela slipped from his hands and fell an inch from the water’s shore while Dean tore his fists into the faceless man’s head.

Dean may have been winning points in the battle of human will, but the finger-thing continued to abuse Lewis, acting as a dagger in his ass, punching holes through the tissues, the healthy and the bad, stuffing its vile fleshy cylinder farther and farther up Lewis’s hole. Blood poured like water from a faucet. It was as if the finger-thing had drilled him a new, unlimited asshole. Crimson goo drenched the side of his legs, leaving unbearable pain in its wake.

His next visit with Dr. Angus was going to be a swell time.

(if I don’t die right here bloodied butt and all what a sad way to die)

Lewis was near to fainting with (
oh hell oh oh oh Jesus H. Christ)
pain, but he kept his bearings—he had to, he refused to go out this way. Hell, no, he was not going out this way. The Devil might want him gone, but he trusted that the Lord had other plans.

(You hear that? The Lord’s got other plans for me.)

He heard Harold laugh inside his head.

Lewis clenched his teeth. He would not lose faith.

(Think you’re tough? You got a skinny little kid fucking you up.)

The creature answered,
Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat, detective
.

Lewis observed helplessly as Harold reached into his pocket and pulled out a long, iron crucifix. Dean had only a moment to react before the reverend raised the crucifix up and brutally stabbed him in his side. Injured, Dean fell over, rolling to the ground as he grabbed his side in agony. “Kline!” he screamed at the detective.

I can’t help you now, kid
, Lewis thought as he withered in his own miserable pain. An outline of Tabitha’s face floated past his tired eyes, and Lewis again felt the pounding sorrow of loss.

I’m so sorry, Tabitha. I should have listened to you. Screw New Orleans. Screw this place. I should have followed you anywhere; I should have followed you to the moon, if that’s where you wanted to go
.

Harold straddled Dean, leaning over him with the crucifix rising once again to mark its victim. The reverend recited,
“The Lord liveth; and blessed be my rock; and exalted be the rock of my salvation.”
He paused, taking a moment to laugh madly at the moon. When he regained whatever sanity was left, he whispered, just loud enough for Lewis to hear, “Die, Jew boy, die.”

And then a cell phone rang.

I
’ll protect you.

The whisper startled Sela from her sleep. She awakened inside a gentle light, as bright as any sun, but as soothing as a ride out to sea. Rubbing her eyes, Sela lifted her head from the pillow and examined her surroundings. She inhaled a sharp breath when she realized where she was.

It was her parents’ bedroom, just as she had remembered it. The off-white walls, the lace curtains. The family photos framed above dark oak furniture. A bedspread of paisley and gold, a black lacquer mirror hanging over the dresser with a small crack from the time Sela had thrown her jack-in-the-box carelessly in the air, unaware of the consequence of hard objects smashing into glass. Her mother’s jewelry box sat on the dresser, opened, exposing what little jewelry her mother had collected over the years.

I’m home
, Sela thought.

She looked down and saw the warmth that so sweetly bathed her skin came from her parents’ body heat. They were sleeping next to her. Her mother was as beautiful as Sela remembered her, her long blond hair cascading around her face, her heavy lashes lowered in sleep. Sela turned to her father and saw that his eyes were squeezed tightly shut, his breathing slow and steady against the pillow.

Mom. Dad
.

Sela looked at her hands and saw that she was no longer a twenty-four-year-old woman, but a child again.

What is this? Have I always been a child? Was I never an adult at all? Was it all a dream?

No
. This was the answer that immediately came to her. Whatever this was—her house, her parents’ bedroom, her parents, her child body—was all a mirage of some sort. Perhaps just another dream.

But it felt real.

On the bedside table, the phone began to ring. Sela turned and watched it, making no move to answer it. If this was just a dream, she was not ready to wake up, and she felt sure that if she answered the phone, the entire illusion of home would collapse around her.

The ringing did not stir her parents. Sela watched them as they floated soundlessly in this nocturnal state, oblivious of everything around them, so at peace.

Mom. Dad
.

How she had missed them. She had so much to tell them. There was not enough time in the universe for her to tell them every thought that had possessed her heart in the last eighteen years.

Sela heard a hand gently tap on the door.

No, not yet. Please, not yet
.

(yes but now)

Tentatively Sela rose from the bed, the mattress rising as she lifted her weight. Walking to the door, it seemed as if the light was following her. She turned the knob and opened the door. Chloe Applegate stood on the other side.

She looked exactly as she had in the mirror last night at Dean’s apartment, save for this time there was no haunting fear on her face, no shadowy whispers, no universe exploding behind her. She looked simply like any other twenty-two-year-old, and not a girl who had died before her time.

Sela knew why she was there. Adamantly, she shook her head. “I don’t want to go,” she said.

Chloe smiled compassionately. “Sorry, Sela,” she said. “I would let you stay if it was in my power, but it’s not.”

“There’s nothing for me back there,” Sela pleaded.

“You’d be surprised.”

“Can’t I stay?”

“Not yet. Look behind you.”

Sela turned around. Her parents were awake, sitting up in bed, their faces emotionless and luminescent under the saintly glow of heaven.

Mom. Dad
.

“Go to them,” Chloe urged. “It will be your last chance for a while.”

Sela walked toward her parents. As she reached the bed, her mother leaned over and stretched her arms out, welcoming Sela in an embrace. The softness of her mother’s arms cushioned Sela; she could not think, she could not breathe, she only understood the pleasure of the moment, a brief shining light in a galaxy of uncertainty.

“I didn’t mean to start that fire,” Sela cried, leaning deeper into her mother’s neck.

Her mother said nothing. She released Sela and gave her a smile that only a mother could give her child. Sela’s father grasped her hand gently and she went to him, repeating the same hug she had given her mother.