Hallowed (33 page)

The rest of the day crawled by without incident.  I waited impatiently for the three thirty bell so that I could get down to the hospital and see Claudia.  When it finally arrived, I was rushing to my car out of instinct, when I heard a shrill whistle.

Then I turned and saw Deputy Nick in the cruiser.

When I proposed that I drive my car to the hospital with him following, he gave a stern shake of his head.  “I’m under strict orders from your Dad.”

He did, however, make me a promise that he would personally see to it that my car made it back to our house by the end of the day, even if he had to drive it himself.

When I finally got to the hospital, Mom told me that Claudia was a little more animated today and seemed to be responding to her channel grazing.  After lunch, she even watched some of a documentary about the sixties.  She still wasn’t talking though.  By the time I had arrived, she had fallen back into a funk, trading bouts of sleeping for staring somberly out the window.

I spent the rest of my night sitting beside Claudia’s bed and telling her everything that had happened that day, including all the concern from the band—consciously leaving out Brent’s cowardly denial of responsibility.  She didn’t respond.  I gave her a kiss on the forehead and had just closed my eyes for some sleep when I heard humming.  I recognized the tune as “Crimson and Clover” and thought it might have been me again, but this time it wasn’t.  It was Claudia.

She rolled over, and despite the darkness, I could see her dark eyes glistening in the dim light.  “I found out what it means.”

“Claudia?” I exclaimed and leaned my ear down to her face.

“It was their song, y’know.”

“Whose?”

“My parents, while they were dating.”

“How do you know?”

“They just told me.”  She smiled, closed her eyes, and fell almost immediately to sleep.

I kissed her one last time and sat back to ponder what that could possibly mean.

When I awoke on Tuesday morning, Claudia was already awake and watching a documentary about all the sightings of ghosts on board the Queen Mary.

“Good morning,” I croaked.

She reached over and put a hand on my arm.  It was warm.  I turned my hand over and watched as she put her hand in mine.

“I missed you,” I said.

She looked at me blankly.  “Of course you did,” she said with a smirk, then turned back to her program.

“You scared us.”

“Sorry, Paul, but if you’ve got something to say, can you wait until the commercial?”

As I sat quietly beside her watching this documentary, I slowly realized that something was wrong with Claudia.  She seemed emotionless, as if the death of her mother had occurred a long time in the past and not less than forty-eight hours ago.

When Mom and Dad came in about an hour later, Mom hugged her fiercely and cried, but Claudia just seemed to endure her.  I could tell right away that my mother knew something was up, but she chose to just let it go.

“Just Claudia’s way of coping,” she told me later with a confused shrug, her eyes still glassy from tears.

After a half hour of uncomfortable silence and another Discovery channel program on supernatural phenomenon, Dad asked me to step outside with him.  He patted me on the arm and said, “You should probably stick around here today, I’m thinking.”

Just after noon, Dr. Patel came in and spoke with Claudia for about ten minutes and told my us that they could discharge her whenever she was ready.

“Are we going back to the apartment today?” I asked Dad, dread in my voice.

“One more night of it, then they’re going to let us return to the house,” he replied.  Seeing my knee-jerk positive reaction, he added, “We need to set up for the funeral wake, Paul.  After that, they’re going to establish an around the clock guard.”

“What about Claudia?”

Adopting an official posture, he laid a hand on my shoulder and pronounced: “We’re temporarily commandeering your room.”

I nodded.  “Ok, where am I going then?”

He gave a casual shrug and turned away from me in mock indifference.  “Any friends you think might be willing to take you in?  How about Lonnie Bertrand’s kid?”  He glanced back at me to gauge my reaction.

“Guess I could take sanctuary at the church.”

I had, of course, meant it as a dark joke, but the instant the words were out of my mouth, I knew I had killed the brief moment of levity between us.

His lips hardened and his eyes shifted away from me.  “We’re putting you in my office for now,” he growled and went back into the room.

True to his word, Deputy Nick had delivered my car back to me.  It was waiting in the drive when we got home.  I took a quick look inside to make sure she was secure and undamaged before I could relax again.

That night Mom set me up in Dad’s office on the fold-out couch and let Claudia have my room.  “Just until we can figure out how we’re going to arrange things,” she told me, but I knew the way the wind was blowing.  It wouldn’t be long before I would be finding places in his office for my stuff and then, Presto Chango, like magic all Claudia’s bloody crime books would occupy what was formerly my shelves.

I still wasn’t exactly sure how I felt about having Claudia under the same roof.  Would the close quarters change our relationship for the worse?

When I got out of the bathroom, Claudia was waiting for me in Dad’s office.  She sat in his big office chair, legs folded over one of the arms, and swiveled back and forth.  I could already tell she was wide sun-shiny-day awake.

“I heard you cursing,” she commented.

“Sorry, I think the furniture moved at some point during the night.  I’d swear that desk is slowly making a break for the hallway,” I muttered, crawling back under the covers.

“Are you taking these?” she asked, displaying the bottle of sleeping pills she had snagged from the coffee table that I was using as my night stand.

I gave a labored sigh.  “I changed my mind.”

Originally, my plan had been to start taking the pills to knock myself out, though
in the light of the dream I’d had Monday morning, I was more than a little afraid of sleeping.  Afraid of what I might see--or touch--next.  I couldn’t deny that I had just checked myself in the bathroom mirror for scrapes or bruises, just in case I’d had another REM run-in with the October Country mystery man.

At this point, I had started to consider heavy doses of caffeine.

“This is going to be weird for you, isn’t it?” Claudia asked in a low voice.  “I mean, me living here with you.”

“Well, I got a speech from Mom about the rules of the house,” I explained, glancing apprehensively at the open door to the hallway.  “Respecting personal privacy and no late night meetings, etc. etc.”

“I should probably get going then.”  She said wiggling her toes at me, just not making a move to leave the chair.

I sighed and shook my head.  “They’re right, Claudia.  We can’t do this sort of thing anymore,” I responded humorlessly.

The teasing sneer disappeared from her face.  She demurely set her legs on the carpeted floor and leaned forward, smoothing her nightgown down over her knees.  “Sorry,” she replied, “it’s just that I never thought someone would think I was…”  She glanced up at me furtively, a needy look in her eye.

“Y’know, I think you are,” I assured her, glancing away just in case she caught the neediness in my own eye.

Finally, she rose and started out, stopping at the last moment in the doorway.  She made no effort to speak, but I knew she wasn’t ready for the conversation to end.

“Are you okay, Claude?” I asked as gently as an awkward teenage boy could.  “I mean, I’ve never lost someone close to me.  I can’t possibly know what you’re going through.”

She took a deep hitching breath and let it slowly out.

“In four days, I’ll see them again,” she announced, her back still turned to me.

The shock of that statement took me completely by surprise.  In as sensitive a voice as I could manage, I said to her, “Your mother’s gone, Claudia.”

“No, Paul,” she responded in the tone she reserved for those moments when she felt I was being impossibly dense.  “The veil between the living and the dead is thinnest on the Celtic New Year.  I’ll see them both in four days,” she said with excitement in her voice, “I’ll see the Counsinner again and I’m finally going to meet my father.”

With that, she disappeared back down the hall, leaving me to speculate.  It was then that I remembered a portion of that poem.  The one she read way back in fourth grade to the derisive laughter of her peers.

“They want to be heard but sometimes are unable.

  On this night of nights you can hear.

  Loud and clear.

  For this is their time of year.

  The season of the shadow people.”

A chill ran through me, wondering what the healthy response should have been and failing at giving her even a bad one.

Pat’s funeral was on Wednesday morning.  There were nearly a hundred people in attendance, mostly colleagues and students from our school.  Mass was held at St. Peters and Uncle Hank gave the liturgy.  Several teachers and students spoke about her.  Mom spoke last.  She arrived at the podium strong and composed, but that didn’t last.

“Pat Wicke was my best friend growing up,” she said, her nose growing red the way it did just before she cried.  “We told each other all our secrets.  All our fears.  She shared my joy during all the best times in my life, my graduation, my wedding, the birth of my son.  She was there lending me her strength during the death of my parents and when she had to leave me to go to Dallas, she gave me her favorite toy as a girl.”  She held up a raggedy china doll that looked slightly older than me and sniffed.  “She was always the strong one out of…”  It was here that she closed her eyes and gripped the doll tightly to her chest, composing herself.  “She gave me strength and I’m going to miss my friend.”

She stepped around the front of the altar where the coffin sat and hurriedly tucked the china doll beside the body.  She took one last look, clutched her hands to her face and let my father help her back to her seat as she sobbed.

I watched Claudia sitting next to me with the same blank expression through the whole ceremony and told myself that it would happen at the gravesite.  There the reality of what was happening would sink in.  There she would cry.

But as Uncle Hank began his “dust to dust, ashes to ashes” thing, Claudia never broke down.  She just looked solemn and sad-eyed and somehow innocent, like a child not yet capable of grasping the concept of death itself.

Several of the school staff had brought food to our house where we held the wake.  Principal Smalls had brought a casserole dish of chicken enchiladas that were tasty.  He told me during a brief conversation, that I had initially tried to avoid, that he had, in fact, cooked them himself.  After he’d lost his own wife several years ago, he had discovered that he was a pretty good cook.  As it turns out, he was not exactly the A-hole that my schoolmates tried to make him out to be.  Funny sometimes how you judge a person strictly by the ten percent of their life that they display to the public and assume that’s exactly who they are in private.

As I was helping Old Man Barrett to our house from the remote spot down the block where he parked, Nathan Graham crossed the street to join us.  Though the eighty year old grumbled that he could get along just fine with his cane, I told him that my father didn’t give me a choice in the matter.  Hoping that Graham would get impatient and go on ahead, I took my time, barely inching along, but he followed dutifully along behind us.

In the absence of anything to talk about, Graham began to prattle: “Y’know, Pat had been helping me a lot lately.  She’s been helping me look into colleges and financial aid and all that.”

Accepting the inevitability of the situation, I decided to make the best of it.  “Where are you thinking of going?” I asked him, with little interest in his response.

“UT at Austin.  TCU maybe.  I’ve been applying everywhere.”

“Are you going to major in music?”

“Hell no, there’s no money in that,” Graham chuckled.  “This might be the last time I play the horn.”

“No one will ever be as good as Louie Armstrong,” Mr. Barrett snapped, truly animated for the first time.  “No sense in even trying, far as I’m concerned.  They used to say that Satchmo played like Gabriel himself.”

Graham took hold of Mr. Barrett’s other arm.  When the old man tried to take it back, Graham held firmly on.

“I guess that’s why I came.  I think Claudia needs to know what a special woman her mother was to all of us at the school,” Graham told me.

Though I tried to overcome my suspicion, I couldn’t help but glance over at him, trying to be nonchalant.  For the first time, I noticed that Graham wore a collared shirt buttoned-up one more button that looked to be comfortable.  Figured he was just trying to look a little more “formal” for the occasion.

He caught me staring and covered his nervousness with a charming smirk.  “How’s she doing by the way?  Claudia, I mean?”

“Well let’s see, she had to go to the hospital because of what happened to her at the party then her mother dies in a car accident.  How do you think she’s doing?” I asked a little too defensively.

“What exactly happened?  They ever find out?”

I glanced over at him then, and his eyes looked almost jubilant, like he might burst into laughter at any second.  “Someone poisoned her.”

Mr. Barrett whistled through his teeth and murmured a curse under his breath.

“No shit!” Graham burst out, managing to sound both shocked and excited at the same time.  “I knew that stupid game B-Job came up with was going to end badly.”

B-Job was the crude nickname that Brent Jacob’s friends called him.

Some friends, right?

Mr. Barrett drilled Graham with a glare that he didn’t seem to catch.  He finally managed to yank his arm out of his hands.

“That’s why I did what I did.”

I gave him a look then, bracing myself for his answer.  “What
exactly
did you do?”

“Y’know.”  He gave me a smirk.  “The winking and all that.  I was just trying to have a little fun at his expense, y’know.  Throw a wrench into things and see how he dealt with it.  I didn’t think much of that game to begin with.”

“Claudia had to go to the hospital as a result of that game.”

“Hey look, man, don’t get so defensive now.  I know she’s your girlfriend.  I know how close you guys are.  I mean, I see you two up there in the bleachers every day at lunch.  I know.”  Graham gave me a salacious look, though he didn’t wink, I got the impression that it was implied.  “I see that you’re scared and all, but she’s going to get through this if you just do the right thing here,” he replied.  “I know what she’s going through.  My mother died when I was ten years old.”

When I didn’t respond, he simply continued as if I had.  “She was diabetic, and she gave herself the wrong amount of insulin.  It was hard for a while, but Dad and I got through it somehow with the help of friends and family.”  He glanced around at me then.  “Do you know that they had the audacity to investigate my father after her death?  Thought he might have intentionally given her too much insulin.  Can you imagine?”

Not knowing how to react to such an admission, I kept my silence.

“Does Claudia have any family left?”

“She has us,” I responded decisively.

Graham nodded and lapsed into silence, staring at Mr. Barrett with an expression that might have been revulsion, a finger playing absently with the top button of his shirt.

“You ever wonder why everybody thinks I’m an overachiever, Paul.  Why I’m so involved in everything?” Graham asked, his eyelids fluttering excitedly.  “I’m a big believer that a person should live every day as if it’s their last.  Hell, I’ve even tried skydiving. A person’s never truly alive until he feels like he could die.”  He glanced at the man beside him and scoffed.  “You know what I mean, don’t you, Mr. Barrett?”

The old man grunted and seemed to lean closer to me.

“Life is a very fragile thing, Paul,” Graham said in a voice that was very different than the one he’d used before.  “Not one of us is safe.  One minute we’re playing a game and the next minute it’s serious.”  He turned cold eyes on me.

As I helped Mr. Barrett up the steps of the porch, Graham rushed ahead of us and into the house--my family’s house--and held the screen door open for us.  Mr. Barrett gave both of us one last parting look of concern as he struggled over the threshold and into the living room, murmuring a disgruntled something under his breath that only he could hear.

Graham turned and fixed me with his dark eyes.  “Better take care of her, Paul,” he said in parting and followed Mr. Barrett inside.

With all the faces moving in and out of our house, I’d lost track of Claudia.  Desperate now to find her, I called her on my cell phone.  She didn’t answer and when I entered the house, I realized that from the noise level, she probably hadn’t been able to hear it.

I made a quick circuit of the interior of the house and found her five minutes later, outside in the backyard, speaking to Nathan Graham alone.  He stood very close and appeared to be whispering to her.  The hairs on the back of my neck rose.

He had unfastened the top button of his shirt, and I clearly saw a reddened mark in the shape of a comma on his neck.

I moved quickly to Claudia’s side.  He never looked up at me but continued staring down at Claudia.  Finally, I pulled her aside, forcing her to face me.  “My mother needs your help inside,” I promptly lied.

She gave a nod without turning her eyes from Graham.  I gripped her firmly by the arm and led her back up the steps.  She didn’t resist, but followed me sluggishly almost as if she were half asleep.

“What did he want?” I asked Claudia, taking one last look over my shoulder as I held the screen door open for her.  Graham was slowly backing away from the house, his eyes still on Claudia.

“He only wanted to tell me that he was sorry for what happened and how much mom had helped him realize his place in the world.”

“Don’t talk to that guy,” I snapped.

She gave me an innocent look.  “Why?”

“I just don’t like him.”

Claudia studied me then.  “Really?  You?  Jealous?”

“Give me a break, willya?” I grumbled, pushing her firmly ahead of me into the noisy interior of our kitchen.

Only after we had been back in the house for twenty minutes, surrounded by people, did she began to appear anxious.  “I can’t stay here,” she hissed, disappearing into the guest bathroom.

A minute later I nearly leapt out of my skin when the sound of the Classics IV song “Spooky,” started playing from the pocket of my sport jacket.  For a moment, I was utterly confused then I realized that Claudia had programmed my cell phone with that ring specifically for her incoming calls.

It was Claudia calling from the bathroom.

“I’m going out the window.  Meet me at your car.”  Then she hung up.

My car was, of course, one of the first in the driveway, so it was blocked in.  When Claudia saw me, she started up the sidewalk, walking quickly with her head down.

“Are you okay?” I asked when I joined her.

“I need to get some air.”

“Why didn’t you just say so?”  I dialed my parents’ home answering machine.

“What are you doing?”

“Well, I have to tell them something.  They’ll be wondering where you are.”  Mom picked up.  I told her that we would be back soon and that Claudia just needed to get away from the crowd.  She agreed.

A few minutes later we were at the Wicke’s house—or what was now Claudia’s house, I realized.  I suppose I expected to see a change in its appearance, lilies on the porch out front or maybe just yellow crime scene tape, but no crime had been committed here.  The house looked so ordinary that for a moment I could almost imagine that the last two days had been only a delusion and Mrs. Wicke might be inside her office working on paperwork or making a phone call on the porch swing.

Claudia marched right up to the front door, unlocked it and went inside.  I was walking so fast to keep pace with her that when she stopped suddenly at the entrance to the living room, I nearly collided with her.  She closed her eyes and lifted her chin just slightly.  A strange smile blossomed on her face.

“It’s just me,” I heard her whisper almost inaudibly.

Before I could comment on that, she darted into the kitchen and grabbed a set of car keys off the valet board and started into the garage.  I asked what we were doing as the garage door slowly rolled up on its track.  She tossed me the keys and jumped into the passenger side.  When I gave her my patented look of amazement, she casually remarked, “We have to go see Tracy Tatum.”

“What? At the church?”

“She’s not at the church anymore.”

It was only then that I remembered my conversation with Mom.

“In the hospital, I overheard your mom talking to your uncle when she thought I was asleep.  Apparently, the Tatum woman had a nervous breakdown on the night of the car accident.  She was admitted to the psychiatric hospital up in Lockhart on Sunday morning.”