Brides Of The Impaler (26 page)

He had no appetite so he skipped making himself dinner, and instead elected to go back upstairs to watch some more with his field glasses. Now the front study’s murk was double what it had been before he left; he left the door open but didn’t turn on a light. Only a slant of illumination leaked in from one of the few lights in the long hall. He approached his chair and the slight part in the drapes, was about to pick up the binoculars again when—

His heart surged at a pattering of sound.

Footsteps in the hall?

Damn it. Someone DID come in
. “Who’s there? There’s nothing to steal so you may as well just be on your way.”

His call was only answered by what he thought must be giggling, yet he didn’t step forward nor even turn on the light. Instead, he stood frozen, staring.

The shadow of a figure now faced him from just aside the door.

Rollin gulped.

“Who are you?”

The reply seemed to build first with a sound like blowing
leaves. “You already know,” came the feminine words, lilting and accented. “You’ve been awaiting me for some time, as have your pitiful ancestors—traitors to your country’s true heart.”

Rollin couldn’t have moved even if at gunpoint. His teeth actually chattered but he managed to command: “Get out! This is hallowed ground!”

A raspy chuckle flitted about every corner of the room. “Servitor, how dull, this God of yours. As pitiful as your corroded spirit.”

“You can’t be here! This is a sanctified place, a house of God!”

More rustling, the sound like leaves, yet the angled figure didn’t budge. “Power is like faith, servitor. It fades away. It grows palsied and it dies. Like virility, and like empires.”

Rollin’s eyes couldn’t blink.

“Like you…”

The priest tore away from his stance and turned on the nearest lamp. The shadow was gone. Perhaps it had never been there at all, for now he saw that it may have merely been a queer shadow cast by the coat stand.

Christ, give me strength
…

From another room, something of glass fell and broke. Rollin trotted down the hall, switching on lights as he went. His heart chugged in his old chest, then surged again and he actually shrieked.

Just as he prepared to enter his bedroom, the door burst open and out ran two dirty women with disheveled hair. A stream of giggles poured from their mouths. Rollin’s initial jolt backed him against the paneled wall and as the second interloper passed, she brazenly grabbed his crotch and squeezed. As she headed toward the stairs, the priest noticed that she was nude from the waist down, and carrying a pair of dirty jeans with her. She wore a T-shirt that read
THE DAMNED, and the other one had pink sweatpants on. Their bare feet thunked down the stairs with more giggles.

Rollin knew he was too old and heart-diseased to give chase. Feebly, he shouted, “You little buggers! I’ll have the police after you!” But the warning was only answered by more mocking laughter.

One of the girls’ voices echoed from downstairs, “Sleep good in your bed to night, asshole!”

Rollin caught his breath and entered the bedroom. What had fallen was a framed picture of the Nave of Snagov Monastery, in southern Romania. Glass glittered on the old carpet like wet rock salt. He groaned when he noticed the wavy streaks of black, green, and red besmirching the white walls. His cross above the bed had been taken down and placed on his pillow. “Goddamn them,” he profaned when he picked it up.

It was wet, and the pillow and sheets were drenched. The odor he was only noticing now told him it was urine.

He heard a door slam deep downstairs, which he knew must be the back kitchen door.
Those homeless bitches are
long gone now
, more unpriestly profanation occurred to him. He’d never felt so useless, so impotent.

He swore no further once down in the chancel.
What
could I expect?
Blank-faced, he discovered similar desecration. The same scrawls of magic marker streaked the white altar linens. These weedy vagabonds had brought stout bladders, for another great wash of urine tinted not only the linens but the front carpet. The Communion decanter had been gulped dry, the packets of the Host torn open, their contents wolfed down. Evidently one of the wretches had forced herself to vomit, for that was what now filled the Holy Chalice.

Rollin calmly dragged the fouled linens off the altar and carried them to the laundry room.

“It’s impossible,” Cristina droned after having come to on the couch. Her eyes held wide on the ceiling.

“Honey, it’s a coincidence,” Paul countered. “Sure, a little weird, but it’s still coincidence. You’re overreacting again, right, Britt?”

They all sat close around the couch, save for Britt, who stood, smoking. Was she nervous? “Yes, it’s—”

“Bullshit, Britt!” Cristina railed. “How can it be
coincidence?
”

Jess held the odd three-gemmed bowl in one hand, and Cristina’s Noxious Nun doll up in the other. “That is pretty wild, the gems, I mean. Even the order of the colors are the same.”

“Yeah, but that’s the only thing,” Britt insisted. “There’s a logical explanation, Cristina—we’re just not seeing it yet. You’re freaked out because you’ve been dreaming about a nun holding a three-gemmed bowl, and today that’s what we find buried in the basement.”

“And you think
that’s
coincidence?” Cristina said.

“Yes. The two bowls don’t even look alike; in fact that thing from the basement doesn’t even
look
like a bowl, does it? It’s kind of warped.” She took it from Jess and placed it on the coffee table, rim-side down. “It’s probably some kind of old centerpiece. It’s not a
bowl
.”

“What difference does it make!” Cristina almost yelled.

Paul put his arm around her. “Calm down, honey. Britt’s right. There’s a logical explanation. Do you really believe you’re
psychic?
That’s the only other explanation.”

Cristina sighed, sitting back. “I don’t know. I just can’t believe I’m the only one who thinks this is really nutty.”

Paul spoke softly. “Honey, didn’t you say that you’ve talked to the priest several times, the guy from across the street?”

Cristina looked oddly at him. “Yes. Twice. Yesterday I invited him in for coffee. What’s that got to do with it?”

Paul swept a quick glance to the others. “He used to look after this house; the church has owned it for decades.”

“What are you getting at?”

Britt stepped closer. “Isn’t it possible that the priest told you that thing was buried in the basement? And maybe even described the color of the stones set in it?”

Cristina tensed again. “No, it’s not possible, Britt, and you know that. I’ve been dreaming about that bowl for a long time, and I didn’t meet the priest till
several days
ago.”

“Sure, honey,” Paul kept on, “but maybe you met him that first day I brought you by the house right after I bought it. Maybe you met him back then…and maybe he told you about that bowl. Back then.”

Now Cristina looked infuriated. “What? So I’m
lying?
I’m making it up to be dramatic?”

Paul hugged her and chuckled. “No, no, that’s not what I’m saying at all. But, look, your memory’s not exactly the greatest—”

“And you are a little absentminded at times,” Britt added.

“—and you
have
had a blackout, right?”

Paul continued, “So I’m just suggesting that maybe it was something like that. The priest told you about the bowl and you simply don’t remember. I forget stuff all the time, we all do.”

“Yeah,” Jess piped in, “like last month when I worked my ass off on the titles for the Manera deal and
you
forgot to overnight them.”

“And Jess forgets to put the toilet seat down
every damn
day
,” Britt said.

Paul nodded through a smile. “We all forget stuff, honey, and I’m sure that’s what happened here. You’re getting way, way too worked up over this.”

Cristina slouched against him. “I guess you’re right.”

“Objectively speaking, what happened? We found this funky thing in the basement and it happens to look a little bit like the bowl your nun doll is holding. Big deal.”

Now it was Jess’s turn to add some levity. “And, Cristina? If you really
are
psychic…the lotto’s up to twenty-two million, so if there are any numbers floating around your head, how about laying them on us?”

Even Cristina smiled, now that the incident had softened. “All right, so I’m a nut job.” She rose from the couch. “Let me heat up the Chinese food.”

“I’m
dying
for some of the Hunan-style ostrich steak.” Britt went to the kitchen with her. “Let’s get this party started.” Paul and Jess followed them, to get more beers.

“But what do you think that thing really is?” Britt posed.

“Like you said, probably just some old church relic, a centerpiece of some kind, and the dog skull? Probably some bishop’s pet from a hundred years ago,” Paul answered.

Cristina withdrew some plates from the cupboard. “What ever it is, I guess it’s not really even ours. We should give it back to the priest.”

Paul and Jess looked at each other, brows raised.

“There they go doing their
lawyer look
again.” Britt asked, “It must still belong to the church, right?”

“Not in this state,” Jess said. “It’s considered abandoned property.”

“Anything the church left in the house,” Paul added, “whether by accident or intentionally, becomes the property of the buyer after thirty days.”

Jess swigged his beer. “And I’m sure we’re all wondering…what are those stones? Could be a black diamond, an emerald, and a ruby.”

“Can’t hurt to get it appraised,” Britt said.

“Ann, our secretary, sometimes dates a woman who’s a jewelry importer,” Jess said. “I have to go into the office for a few hours in the morning, and Ann’ll be there. I’ll show it to her.”

“She dates a
woman?
” Britt asked.

“
Women
,” Paul corrected, “and, yeah, I do remember her saying that. Maybe she can get it appraised for us. Wouldn’t it be funny if those stones turned out to be worth a lot of money?”

“It wouldn’t be funny to the monsignor!” Jess railed. “Ouch! Ripped off again!”

He and Paul laughed hard.

The previous mishap forgotten now, the four of them resumed their get-together, though none of them were aware that the basement door stood ajar, and if any of them had looked at that precise moment, they would’ve seen an ear in the gap…

All but Cristina had imbibed enough to get tipsy, and the Chinese food, even reheated via microwave, had been delicious. When they all turned in at about one a. m., the entire situation made Cristina think of her college dorm days—or nights, actually—when the muffled sounds of sexual frolic could be heard through the walls. She and Paul got started even before the bedroom door could be closed, though it was more Cristina’s initiation than his. Her spontaneous urges overwhelmed her, as it had been so much of late.
I just can’t help it
, she thought, kissing him and feeling his body through his clothes at the same time. Paul was hard in his pants at once, which delighted her; even half-drunk, it seemed, she could always rouse him. Still fully clothed, she sat him down in the chair and whispered, “That’s right, I promised you a lap dance.” And that’s what she presumed to do even though she wasn’t really sure what that was. First she straddled him, and didn’t even remove her blouse when she braced his face in her cleavage, all the while her jeaned hips squirming over his. She could feel him through the denim, his flesh beating. He kept trying to open her blouse, disrobe himself and her, but she wouldn’t let him yet. She wanted him titillated
first. She held his head and urged him to suck her unbra’d nipples through her blouse, a notion that seemed kinky in some way, a forced restraint that would only make him crave her body more. “Like that, like that,” she breathed as he sucked wet circles into her blouse. Her fingers fiddled up his crotch but only in snatches. The teasing made him hold her tighter, suck her nipples harder as she let herself, too, be titillated but not relieved.

“Baby, I can’t stand it anymore,” he panted, covered in sweat. He suddenly tore her blouse open and began to crudely lick the orbs of her breasts. “You’re teasing the hell out of me to night.”

She let but one finger dawdle at his groin. “If you want me…you have to
take
me.” And with that he rose, hoisted her over his shoulder, and turned to the luxuriant black-sheeted bed. She squealed like a child on a carnival ride when he flung her on the mattress.

She didn’t help him; she simply lay there with the catlike grin. Evidently, Britt and Jess were in their own throes of plea sure, for Cristina could easily hear them through the walls, and for some reason that only stoked her desires further. Paul roughly rolled her jeans off her legs, then one fist yanked off her pan ties to leave them dangling off a foot. The other foot teased his crotch to deliberately interfere with his hasty effort to unbuckle his belt but when his pants were finally down, he shoved her knees to her shoulders and lay right into her.

Cristina had asked to be taken, and that’s what she next received, waves of plea sure spiraling upward with each primitive thrust. The bedposts knocked against the high-priced wallpaper, but she didn’t care. All Cristina cared about was that he lasted long enough to satisfy her own lust.

He throttled her more, as Cristina’s pants turned to something close to shrieks, and she let every lewd image
spill into her head. Both were racked by climaxes nearly at the same time, and then he collapsed on her as the wet heat he’d put inside her began to trickle.
It just keeps getting
better
, she thought. Her fingers toyed in his hair. Soon he fell asleep, so she slipped out from under him and turned off the light.

She snuck out of the room to the dark kitchen, wearing nothing more than the ripped blouse, and then opened the fridge.

“Raiding the leftovers, huh?” Britt surprised her from behind. She came through the darkened kitchen in just bra and pan ties. “You read my mind. Any of the ostrich left?”