Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set (11 page)

“Charlie,” he said when he finally found his voice.  “What’s happened?”

“What’s happened is I’ve become the Prisoner of Zenda.”

Charlie had never been a sturdy sort, but now he looked positively gaunt.  Arthur wanted to throw his arms around him and tell him how much he’d missed him, but the look in Charlie’s eyes stopped him cold.

He sat on the foot of the bed, carefully, so as not to upset the tray.

“You know better than that.  This is your home.”

“Not with turnkey Sanchez around.”

“Charlie, I brought you back for your own good.  That’s not the kind of life for you.  For anybody.  It’s an abomination in the eyes of God.”

“It’s
my
life.”  Charlie’s eyes flashed. 

Arthur had never seen him so defiant.

“It’s a sinful life.”

“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—isn’t that what a United States Senator is supposed to protect?”

“I want to help you turn your life around.”

“Just in time for the primaries?”

If only it were that simple, Arthur thought.  If that was all there was too it...

He shuddered as old memories surged to the fore.  Violently he thrust them back down into the mire where they belonged.

No.  This was not only for himself.  Charlie’s sodomite urges were a test.  If Arthur could help his son out of this moral quagmire, he would prove himself, he would...
redeem
himself.  And God would know what a weapon he had in Arthur Crenshaw.

“Do you like the life you’re living, Charlie?”

“It’s the only one I’ve got.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“It has its moments.”

“In the wee small hours, Charlie...when it’s just you and God and the dark outside the window...how do you feel?”

Charlie’s gaze faltered for the first time.  He fiddled with a slice of toast on his breakfast tray. 

“I wake up at three or four in the morning, shaking and sweaty.  And I sit there thinking about how I’ve failed you.  I remember how Mom never put me down, but every so often I’d catch her watching me and there’d be this unreadable look in her eyes.  I didn’t know what she was thinking, but I have to assume I disgusted her.  And I know what
you
think, Dad—you’ve always been up front about that.  So I sit there in the dark thinking about the revulsion I sparked in the two most important people in my life.”  His voice fell to a whisper.  “And I feel like such a loser.”

Arthur felt his throat tighten.  He had to help this boy.  He reached out and put a hand on Charlie’s arm.  Dear Lord, it was so
thin
.

“You can’t be judged a loser until you’ve given up trying, Charlie.  And that’s why I brought you home.  I want you to try.”

Charlie looked up at him again.  “Try what?”

“To change.”

He shook his head.  “That’s not possible.”

“It is, Charlie,” he said, gently squeezing his arm.  “With God’s help and the right doctors, you can do it.”

Charlie’s laugh rang hollow against the walls.  “I think God must have lots of concerns more pressing than my sexual orientation.  And really, Dad, if it’s the election you’re worried about, relax.  No one connects me with you.  And even if they did, it could actually work to your advantage.  We’re a pretty cohesive voting block now.  We proved that in the last election.”

We
...Arthur shuddered at Charlie’s casual alignment of himself with the likes of Act Up and Queer Nation and the pathetic human mutants and aberrations that marched in those Gay Pride parades.  If getting elected depended on their votes, he’d rather not run.

But public knowledge of Charlie’s homosexuality was only part of the real threat.

“I won’t deny the election is important to me.  You know that.  There’s so much good I can do for this country if they’ll only let me.  I have plans.  I can make us great again.”  He didn’t just believe that—he
knew
it.  “But if I can’t help my own son back on the right path, how can I expect to do it for an entire nation?”

“Dad—”

“Give me a year, Charlie.  One year of prayer and therapy.  That’s all I ask.  You’re young.  One year out of the rest of your life is not too much for your father to ask, is it.  If there’s been no change by the end of that time, and if I see you’ve made a sincere effort, then I’ll accept your...the way you are and never bother you again about it.”

Charlie was staring at him.  “Accept me?  I don’t think you can.”

“If you can try, I can try.  One year.”  He thrust out his hand.  “What do you say?”

“One year...that’s too long.”

“
Half
a year then.  Six months. 
Please!
”

Charlie hesitated and Arthur sent up a prayer:
Please make him accept, Lord.  Between the two of us I know we can make him normal.

Tentatively, Charlie reached out and grasped his father’s hand.

“All right.  Six months.  As long as you understand that I’m not promising you results, just to give it the old college try.”

Arthur blinked back the tears that surged into his eyes.  He pulled Charlie close and embraced him.

“That’s all I ask, son.  That’s all a father can ask.”

Thank You, Lord, he said in silent prayer.  I know this is going to work.  If I can teach my boy to pray, if he can learn as I have learned, if he can find for himself just one tenth of the peace I find in You, he will be saved. I trust in You, Lord, and I know that You will help me in this.

But as he held his son, Arthur was alarmed at how frail he seemed.  He could feel the corduroy ridges of ribs through Charlie’s sweatshirt.  Weight loss, night sweats...Charlie couldn’t possibly have...

No.  That was impossible.  God wouldn’t do that to him.  Arthur didn’t know if he could handle that.  Not after Olivia.  He was strong, but he had his limits.  He wasn’t cut out to be a modern-day Job.

He cast the thought from his mind and held his son tighter.

“Everything’s going to be all right, Charlie.  God will make it so.”

I swore to all present that I would guard her until my last breath.  I told the brother, I will kill to keep her safe.   

But he said to me, No, you must not kill. 

And then I swore I would die to keep her safe.  But within I promised that if the need arose I would gladly kill to keep her secret.  It is the least I can do.

I do not fear killing.  I have killed before, slipping through the crowds in Jerusalem, stabbing with my knife.  And I fear not damnation.  Indeed, I am already thrice-damned.

--from the Glass scroll

Rockefeller Museum translation

EIGHT

Manhattan

As Sister Carolyn Ferris reached behind the scratched and dented dresser in her room at the Convent of St. Ann, she caught sight of herself in the mirror on the wall behind it.

You’re twenty-eight, she thought, and you still look like a child.  When are you going to get wrinkled so men won’t stare at you?

Maybe if she’d spent her teenage years worshipping the sun instead of God, she’d have at least a few wrinkles to show.  But she’d entered the convent at fourteen, and as a result her skin was pale and flawlessly smooth.  She kept her thick, dark, hair cut in a bob—straight, functional, easy to care for.  She wore no make-up—never a trace of mascara or shadow for her large blue eyes, never even a touch of color to her thin lips, and when out in public she tried to look as serious as possible.  Yet despite

her shapeless clothing and carefully cultured Plain Jane look, men still approached her.  Even in habit!

Maybe I should put on forty or fifty pounds.  That would stop them.  Or would it?

But no matter how much she ate, her body burned it off.  She seemed doomed to remain 120 pounds forever.

She removed the compact-like case from under the rear lip of the bureau top and opened it.  Inside was a foil and plastic card with twenty-one clear bubbles, one for each of the contraceptive pills the pack contained.  The label inside the lid read
Yasmin
and gave the patient’s name as Margaret Jones.  Half the pills were gone.  Quickly, Carrie pushed the next light-peach tablet in line through the foil and popped it into her mouth, dry swallowing it as she shut the case and returned it to its hiding place.

Good.  The daily risk of taking her pill was out of the way.  With no locks on the doors within the Convent of the Blessed Virgin, someone could pop in at any time.

Carrie had noted she had two refills left on her pills.  After that, the fictitious Margaret Jones would need another appointment at the West Side Planned Parenthood clinic.  She shuddered at the thought.  She hated pelvic exams and lived in fear of the chance that someone in the waiting room might recognize her as Sister Carrie.  But she put up with the indignities and the fear to avoid the greater terror of pregnancy.

Since she’d be traveling alone, she’d leave her habit behind.  She adjusted the collar of her starched white blouse and straightened the jacket of her black gabardine suit.  “Sensible” shoes—black pumps with one-inch heels—completed the picture. 

She checked the rest of her room to make sure it was neat.  A bed, a night stand with a hand-painted statue of the Blessed Virgin, a reading lamp, a dresser, a crucifix, and a closet—not much to take care of.  Everything in place.  One last thing to do...

She knelt by her nightstand and gazed at her Virgin Mary statuette.  She repeated the same prayer she said every time she was about to sin:

Forgive me, Mother Mary.  I wish I could have been like you, but I was never given the choice.  And though I sin with full knowledge and forethought, please know that I am devoted to you and always shall be.  Yet despite all my devotion, I know I’m still a sinner.  But in just this one thing.  In everything else I gladly deny myself to do your work, do your bidding.  Yet a small part of my heart remains unruly.  I hope, I trust, I pray that in your own heart you will find room to forgive this sinner.

Sister Carrie crossed herself, rose, and headed for the first floor.

On the way out she checked in with Mother Superior to let her know she was leaving and told her when to expect her back.

The older woman smiled and looked up at her over the tops of her reading glasses.  “Tell your father our prayers are with him.”

“Thank you, sister.  I’m sure that will give him comfort.”

If you knew that monster as I do, Carrie thought, you’d withhold your prayers.  Or perhaps you wouldn’t  She stared a moment at Mother Superior’s kindly face.  Perhaps you’d pray for even the most ungodly sinner.

Not me, Carrie thought, turning and heading for the street.  Not for that man.  Not even an “Amen.”

Supposedly she was visiting him at the nursing home.  Usually the sisters traveled in pairs or more if shopping or making house calls to the sick or shut-ins, but since this was a parental nursing home visit, Carrie was allowed to travel alone.

She’d never been to the nursing home.  Not once.  The very thought of being in the same room with that man sickened her. 

Brad took care of the visits.  Her brother saw to all that man’s needs.  The cost of keeping him in the Concordia, which its director described as “the Mercedes Benz of nursing homes,” was no burden for Brad.  Her investment banker brother’s Christmas bonus alone last year had come to over a million dollars.

Brad traveled a lot to earn that kind of money.  Many of his clients were headquartered on the West Coast and he spent almost as much time in California as he did here in Manhattan.  So whenever he headed west he’d call and leave word that he’d be out of town.  That meant his condo was hers to use whenever she wanted a change from the convent.  Carrie availed herself of that offer by saying that her brother’s absence made it necessary for her to attend to her father more often at the nursing home.

And when she visited the condo, she did not visit it alone.

Poverty, chastity, and obedience, she thought as a cab pulled up outside the convent.  This afternoon  I’m breaking all my vows at once.

A tsunami of self-loathing rose from her belly into her chest, reaching for her throat, momentarily suffocating her.  But it receded as quickly as it had come.  She had hated herself for so long that she barely noticed those waves anymore.  They felt like ripples now.

She descended the convent steps and slipped into the cab.

‡

As the taxi rounded Columbus Circle and headed up Central Park West, Carrie gazed through the side window at the newborn leaves erupting from the trees in the park, pale, pale green in the fading light.  Spring.  The city’s charms became most apparent in spring.  Nice to live up here, far from the squalor of downtown. 

She spotted a homeless man, trudging uptown on the park side, wheeling all his worldly possessions ahead of him in a shopping cart. 

Well, not too far.  You couldn’t escape the homeless in New York.  They were everywhere.

You can run but you can’t hide.

Brad had run to the Upper West Side, to Yuppy-ville.  Or Dinc-ville, as some folks were calling it these days.  But Brad wasn’t a dinc.  Wasn’t married, lived alone.  Carrie guessed that made him a sinc: single income, no children.  He could have lived anywhere—Westchester, the Gold Coast, Greenwich—but he seemed to like the ambiance of the gentrified neighborhoods, and often spoke of the friends he’d made in the building.

The cabby hung a mid-block U-turn on Central Park West and let her off in front of the building.  Carrie counted up five floors and saw a light in one of Brad’s windows.  Had to be one of Brad’s windows—his condo took up the entire fifth floor.  She smiled as desire began to spark within her.  She was the latecomer this time.  Usually it was the other way around. 

Good.  She wouldn’t have to wait.

The doorman tipped his cap as he ushered her through to the lobby.  “Beautiful evening, isn’t it, Sister.”

“Yes, it is, Ricardo.  A wonderful evening.”

Carrie had to use her key to make the elevator stop on the fifth floor.  The sparks from groundlevel had ignited a flame of desire by the time she stepped out into a small atrium and unlocked the condo door.  Slowly she swung it open and slipped through as silently as possible.  Light leaked down the hall from the dining room.  She removed her shoes and padded toward it in her stockinged feet.