3 Gates of the Dead (The 3 Gates of the Dead Series) (14 page)

“And you didn’t find that odd?”

Father Neal sighed. “Of course, I did. I still do. Something happened with Amanda beyond just the normal abusive relationship.”

“And why do you think that?”

“Because, she was drawn here, to this church and to me.”

His words made me shift in my seat. The room began to shimmer and swirl in a variety of colors. The smell of incense wafted through the air. The world seemed to tilt as Father Neal stood up. His black priest outfit morphed into a white monk’s robe. Voices started singing in a language I didn’t understand. I glanced at Father Neal and gasped. His white hair glowed, and the age dropped from his face. In his right hand, he held a cup that pulsed with a golden light.

My heart started to race, and I fell out of my chair. I crawled for the door.

“Aidan, are you okay?” Father Neal said.

I looked up, and everything had gone back to normal.

“I … uh … I … I don’t know. I … you… What the hell? What is wrong with me?”

Father Neal limped over to me and gave me his hand. I took it lightly, and he pulled me up with surprising strength. “Nothing, lad.”

“Then what?”

“Something …
other
.” He smiled.

I had to get out of that room, that church, and away from him. “Father Neal, it’s been great. Thanks. I gotta run.”

He reached out and grabbed my arm. “Aidan, I want you to come on a ghost hunt with me.”

That was the last thing I expected to hear from him. “I’m sorry?”

“A ghost hunt. There’s one tomorrow night. I want you to be there. Meet me here at seven.”

“But Father Neal, I can’t…”

“I won’t take no for an answer, Aidan. Seven o’clock sharp, please.”

“But…”

“There are things you must understand.”

I walked outside and headed to my car. The snow had begun to fall again in slow, lazy flakes.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

I turned around and saw no one.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

I looked down and saw bare footprints appearing in the snow again. Not just one pair but dozens of them coming toward me from the church. The church building itself seemed almost alive, its walls bulging, roof shifting and windows reflecting a shimmering presence that looked right through me.

I stood, unable to move. The snow came down in a torrent now, almost blinding me as each footprint appeared, filling the air with the pop of hardening flakes.

Horror gripped my throat. I forced my legs to function, threw myself into the car, and sped off.

Chapter Seventeen

“So, that was my day,” I said as I ate my High Street pizza full of meat and olives.

“Sounds like an interesting day among the clergy of our city.” Jennifer picked at her half-eaten veggie burger. “So, why aren’t you going back?”

“You’re joking right?” I folded my arms and leaned back in my chair. I hadn’t told her about the Amanda dream or Father Neal turning into
Other-World Man
.

“No, I’m not,” she said. “It sounds interesting, a ghost hunt.”

“Yeah, but there is one problem. I don’t believe one word of it, remember?”

She frowned and leaned forward. “Why don’t you believe in God anymore, Aidan? We didn’t talk about it last night.”

I shifted in my seat and picked at my straw. I needed to open up. I couldn’t handle bottling it inside any longer. Jennifer seemed trustworthy; at least, she hadn’t tried to run me back into jail. She’d seen the footprints and heard my offhand comments about God. But I couldn’t find my tongue. “Yeah.”

Jennifer smirked. “You know, for a preacher, you don’t really have a way with words.”

“Sorry. It’s just not something I want to talk about, really. You don’t have me in an interrogation room now.” I hoped she would take that as a joke and drop the subject.

“I’m sorry.” Her face flushed a bit. “I’m just curious.”

I shrugged. “It’s cool. I’m just trying to find the right words. But first, let me ask you a question.”

She raised an eyebrow at me and took a sip of her ginger ale. “Ask away, preacher.”

“What do you believe?”

“About God? I guess I believe there is one.”

“What does that mean?” I folded my arms across my body, the way I did when teaching a Bible study lesson.

“Well, I’m not really sure. I mean, I was raised Catholic, but I don’t go to Mass much anymore. I don’t hold to most of what the church teaches.”

“Doesn’t that usually go with being an American Catholic?” I laughed.

“True,” Jennifer said. “I guess I have my own religion. You know, I believe in God and spirituality. I’m spiritual, but not religious.”

“Okay, let me stop you there. What does that mean, ‘spiritual but not religious?’”

She stared out the window, watching the Gallery Hop Art patrons stream by our table.

“You know, I have never really thought about it. I guess it means acknowledging God, being thankful, nice to people, helping in the community and all that. I guess a little praying gets thrown in there too, especially on some of the cases I have to investigate.”

“Okay, so this God you pray to, what is He or She like? Can you describe this entity?”

“Well, no, I guess it’s more of a feeling.”

“Exactly. Why do you need God to be a good person? You don’t. People can be nice without worrying about God hanging over their head.” I took a sip of beer.

She folded her arms across her chest. “So, who says what’s nice? Someone has to enforce the law.”

“So, God is a universal cop? That’s comforting.” I tried to keep the scorn out of my voice.

“No, I mean, laws come from somewhere right?”

“Sure. Society. It’s in the best interest of society for laws to be made.”

She slowly nodded her head. “I see what you’re saying, but I don’t buy it.”

“What, that there is no God or lawgiver? No God you can’t define other than good feelings or ‘must be’s’ that you can’t prove?” I leaned in so far that our faces almost touched.

Jennifer backed away. “I guess, but I have a hard time believing there isn’t something out there.”

“Like what? It could be anything, as Dawkins says. It could be a flying spaghetti monster. You don’t know.”

“True, I guess, I don’t know.” Jennifer frowned. “Still, I hardly think that God and a flying spaghetti monster are the same damn thing.”

“How do you know?” I pressed.

“Because, Aidan, I’m not a dumbass. God is something you can define. A flying spaghetti monster is a stupid concept some asshole came up with.”

“Who says God isn’t the same thing?”

“I do, and so does just about everyone else. Anyone could see the difference between your pasta god and the possibility of a real God,” she said.

I let out a long sigh. “I guess I don’t believe in God anymore because I see no other alternative. I think the whole, vague, spirituality thing is a crock, no offense. Either believe in God, do what he says, or don’t. Why try to have both? It’s just hypocritical or holding on to the notion of God without any of the responsibilities.”

“So, does that go for other religions?” Jennifer played with her empty glass.

“Yeah, pretty much the same concept across the board.”

Jennifer wrapped her arms around herself. Her eyes looked at the table, but from her face, it seemed as if something had just broken inside her.

“Listen, Jennifer, I’m sorry. I got a little intense.”

“No, Aidan, you are right. I just never thought about it myself. I guess God was a teddy bear I didn’t want to let go of. Maybe I just need to grow up.”

“No. I mean, if you want to believe in God, it’s okay. I just can’t do it anymore.”

She stared at me. “You really have thought this through.”

“Yeah, I guess I have.” I paused. “Or I’m trying to anyway.”

“Do you miss it?”

“My faith?”

“Yes,” she said, staring out at the people walking past our table.

“Of course I miss it. It has been a huge comfort in my life, and now it’s gone. There is nothing to take its place.” I fiddled with the saltshaker.

Jennifer hesitated for a moment. “Let’s go for a walk, look at the galleries.”

We paid and headed out the door. The steel archways stretched over High Street, lit with the glow of soft, white light. People filled the streets, walking through the galleries and chatting. A college student band full of white boys with dreadlocks strummed on guitars. People plunked change down into their empty cases. A woman dressed as a groom and a man dressed as a bride twirled in a bizarre, dirty dancing style waltz as they parted the crowd.

“You know,” I said. “I once brought my brother to a Gallery Hop.”

“What did he say?”

“He said it was crazier than anything he saw on a trip to San Francisco.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“How many brothers and sisters do you have?” she asked.

“One older brother. You?”

“Two sisters. My poor dad never got the bathroom.”

We both laughed, and it broke the tension from our dinner conversation. As we walked through each art gallery we talked, and she even touched my arm a few times. It’s amazing how much you miss being held by someone, how much you begin to crave it. My skin tingled as it soaked up the lightness of Jen’s fingers.

We made our way into a particular art gallery, attracted by the artist’s Monet-style self-portrait just outside the door. I picked up a brochure and read it aloud. “My name is Tara. These paintings represent an artistic task that I set out for myself. That is, to paint as much as I could for five days without any corrections. What you see is an honest representation of those days without any visual editing.”

Jennifer gave a half smile. “Visual editing, hmm?”

I laughed. “Yeah, well, it’s an interesting idea. Let’s check it out.”

We walked past the reception desk and into the main room. I saw the first painting and gasped. “What the hell?”

The artist had depicted a large footprint, painted blue. A stream of red blood poured out of a wound from the middle of the foot.

“Well, that’s a bit disturbing,” Jennifer said.

“To say the least.”

“Let’s look at the next one.”

The bloody footprint theme exploded throughout all the paintings. The artist had painted it into buildings, landscapes, and people. The last painting made my heart race and the hair on the back of my neck stand up. A tall, willowy girl who looked exactly like Amanda stood with her arms stretched out in a cross formation. Across her throat, a red slash gushed blood and on her forehead, the Hebrew word Nebo had been painted in what looked like jagged knife marks. Her blue eyes were open in death and bore right through me.

“Jennifer,” I rasped. “Look!”

She stared in disbelief. “I don’t believe it.”

Jennifer walked over to a small, red-haired girl with a ponytail. “Excuse me, Tara? Can I ask you a few questions about that painting?”

“Oh, yes, disturbing isn’t it? I haven’t been able to sleep since I painted it.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” she said, her brow furrowed. “But I’m curious, where were you when you painted it?”

Jennifer, who’d been so breezy and relaxed the whole evening, had switched back into detective mode. She radiated tension as she folded her arms. The art gallery had become an interrogation room.

Tara played with her fingers, nervous. “In my studio, of course.”

“Do you have anyone who can back that up?”

“Why do you want to know that?”

Jennifer pulled out her badge. “I’m curious.”

Tara stiffened. “Do you have a warrant?”

I cringed.

“No, but I can get one if I need it,” Jennifer replied, her voice soft but firm. “I hope I won’t. I just need to know about these paintings. It’s really important. It might help us solve a murder.”

Tara went pale and gripped the desk in front of her. “No, that can’t be! It was just a picture in my head. Emily was with me the whole time, weren’t you?” She turned toward her nose-pierced friend standing a few feet away.

I ignored the rest of the conversation and stared into the blue eyes of the painting. I could almost see Amanda in them. It felt like she had died and been trapped on canvas.

I turned away from the painting, the same way I wanted to turn away from all the things that had been happening to me. I couldn’t ignore them, but they were highly inconvenient with my newfound lack of faith. Something kept hitting me in the face. The footprints. The dream. The painting. It almost felt like Amanda was trying to lead me to her murderer from beyond the grave.

But why go through all this trouble? Why not just appear to me and tell me the name of the guy so I could track him down, like she did in Father Neal’s office? I couldn’t understand it.

I had to get out of there. I left Jennifer to her interrogation and stumbled outside. I sucked in the cold night air. Jennifer came out a few moments later, shaking her head.

“Well, their story seems to check out. At least, I couldn’t find any reason to doubt them. But I’m having them come into the station in an hour, just to be sure.” She paused. “Sorry to have to cut this short.”

I nodded. “It’s okay. Bishop needs to go out anyway.”

We walked in silence back to Jennifer’s condo. She stood in the doorframe, looking at me.

“What?” I asked.

“You still love Amanda, don’t you?”

“Why do you ask?”

“That look you had when you saw the woman in the painting.”

I paused. “Yeah, I guess I do. I know it’s weird. I mean, she’s dead now, but I keep feeling as if she is right here with me.”

She shook her head. “It’s not weird at all, Aidan.”

“I was ready to marry her. I still have the ring, actually.”

She nodded but didn’t say anything.

“Are you okay?”

She pointed to the scar on her face. “Do you see this?”

“Yeah, how did it happen?”

“My ex-husband,” she answered in a dry, flat tone. Her voice sent chills up my spine.

“I’m sorry, what happened?”

She gave a slight smile. “I caught him with his girlfriend, and he got mad at me. But let’s just say he got worse than he gave. He limped through the whole assault trial.” She hesitated and looked at her watch. “Gotta run to the station. Talk to you later.”

I squinted. “Wait, why did you tell me?”

Jennifer paused in the doorway. “Love leaves scars, Aidan. Some visible, some not. But they all hurt like hell.” She reached out and touched my arm. “But it doesn’t mean we stop trying to love.”