LLOYD, PAUL R. (7 page)

Micah waved Bob off. “You guys are
nuts.”

“Don’t believe me. Your choice.
However, be careful. Denise Appleby belonged to a coven here in Naperville, as
I said. About a year ago, the coven disbanded with some of the town’s hags
disappearing off the face of the earth.” Bob filled a cup with dark roast.

“Invisible hags?” Micah’s color
returned.

“More like blown up or murdered or
otherwise made to vanish in some kind of power struggle. One of my teenagers here
at the coffee shop took part. She told me all about it. Even Liz Colera, their
leader, was killed or vanished or made to disappear but in any case has not
been heard from since.” Micah filled the other paper cup with dark roast.

“And you believe Denise is behind
the disappearances?” Micah leaned back in his chair and placed an arm over the
back.

“She headed the revolt,” said Bob.

“What about your girl? Was she like
an apprentice hag?” Micah asked.

“Something like that, but she’s gone
with the rest of the hags. A few days after she poured her heart out to me, she
vanished.” Bob carried the two cups of coffee back to the table.

“In mid air?” Micah asked.

“In mid October. She converted to
Christianity at my church but that didn’t save her from Denise Appleby’s
clutches.” Bob placed one of the coffee cups in front of Micah.

“Thanks, Bob. Do you think Denise
killed her?” Micah leaned his elbows on the table.

“Don’t know, do I? The girl is
gone. Like the other devil worshippers.” Bob placed the other coffee cup on the
table across from Micah.

“What about the leader?” Micah
asked.

“That’s the scary part. If she
isn’t dead, she’s laying low until she becomes strong enough to launch a
counterattack on Denise. A black cat fight may be brewing.” Bob sat down.

“Maybe she blew town.” Micah sipped
his coffee.

“Could be.”

“But this leader, what did you say
her name was?” Micah returned his cup to the table top.

“Liz Colera.”

“Yeah, her. If she’s still alive,
then she’s biding her time. Or hanging out on a beach in Miami because this is
all cock and bull.” Micah turned his cup.

“Let me show you something,” Bob
said.

“What?”

“We’re off to Wheaton to check out the
deed on Denise Appleby’s home.” Bob stood up.

As Micah began to rise from his
seat, Ahlman Brown entered the coffee shop. Micah sat back down. “Speaking of
perverts.”

Bob gathered the coffee cups from
the table. “Ahlman? He’s an angel. Gave a million bucks to the high school.”

“He gave somebody else’s money to
the school,” Micah said.

Bob shrugged. “Who cares? The
school received a million smackers, and Ahlman delivered the check. That’s what
counts.”

“He’s still a pervert,” said Micah.

Ahlman Brown came over to the table
and sat next to Micah. For the first time, Micah realized Ahlman was taller by
a head. “Talking about me?”

Bob tapped Ahlman’s hand. “Micah
called you a pervert.”

“That’s rich. Unlike some people, I
don’t believe in sex outside of marriage.” Ahlman sniffed the air.

“Are you religious?” Micah turned
in his seat as he raised his eyebrows and stared Ahlman in the eyes.

“You may say I am a spiritual
person, yes.” Ahlman turned his gaze to the ceiling.

“What were you doing in Denise
Appleby’s house during the night? You may not enjoy having sex yourself, but
you enjoyed watching Denise and me.”

Ahlman shook his head. “You do have
a vivid imagination. Next, you’ll say I grew wings and flapped out the window.”
Ahlman’s smile ran from up one side of his face to below the ear on the other.

“That’s what you did.” Micah stared
Ahlman in the eye for what seemed many minutes until someone pulled on his arm.

“Come on, we’re on an errand, remember?”
asked Bob.

“Be careful, Bob” said Ahlman.

Bob pointed at himself. “Careful?
About what?”

“Micah is an ex-con, a man with a
violent past. You never know when one of his ilk will explode.” Ahlman smiled.

“Don’t worry about him.” Bob yanked
Micah toward the door.

Ahlman retained his smile. “I would
hate to have anything unpleasant happen to you because you made a wrong
decision.”

“This has to be a mistake.” The
clerk turned the computer screen around on the gray marble counter so Micah and
Bob could see it. “The address has had the same owner since nineteen-oh-nine.”

Bob pointed to the date the deed
was recorded. “Or she is still kicking after a century and a quarter.”

Micah looked at the high ceiling twelve
feet above the floor. He glanced down at the white marble floor. The recorder
of deeds office struck Micah as bright and cheerful, despite its gray and beige
painted walls. It was lean, modern, suburban and bureaucratic where he had
expected dark, dull, urban gray. The recorder’s office was located in the
DuPage County Administration building in Wheaton, the town north and east of
Warrenville, making it two towns and a forest preserve away from Naperville.

The clerk spun the computer screen
back around and typed on the keyboard. “No, it must be an old owner. The new
owner must have forgotten to file a deed. She can’t possibly be still alive.”

“Can you check the tax records?”
Bob asked.

“You’ll have to visit the county clerk
for that.” The worker stepped away from the computer. “Will there be anything
else today?”

“Thank you,” Bob headed for the
door with Micah beside him.

“Must be some kind of mistake,”
Micah said.

“Wait until you see the tax
records.”

The county clerk’s office, also
located in the DuPage County Administration building, shared the suburban
upscale bureaucratic chic with the recorder’s office with the high ceiling,
white marble floor and gray and beige walls.

The attendant at the county clerk’s
office brought out the tax record. “This property is paid up to date.” The short,
solid attendant pushed thin glasses up higher on her long nose.

Bob looked at the black,
leather-bound record book. “That’s not what we wanted to know.”

“Thought you wanted the tax
status.” The clerk closed the book.

Bob stared at the clerk. “No, I want
the history of the tax payments.”

“How far back?” asked the clerk.

“As far as your records go.” Micah
said.

The clerk shrugged. “You’ll have to
come back. The computerized system goes back to nineteen-sixty-one. You’re
looking at a downtown Naperville address. We should be able to go back to the nineteenth
century.”

“Twentieth century will do,” Bob
said. “How soon can you get it for us?”

“How about I call you in a few
days.” The clerk turned as if to leave.

Micah asked, “Can you dig out one
early year, say nineteen-ten?”

“Hang on. I’ll take a quick look.
Can’t promise anything.” The clerk disappeared into a back office.

Fifteen minutes later, she returned
carrying an old, leather-bound ledger. She slammed the faded black book down on
the counter. A cloud of dust arose as the administrator pointed past Micah. “Hey,
where did that cat come from?”

Micah followed where the clerk pointed.
“Fritz! How’d you get in here?”

“Is it your cat, sir?” the clerk
asked.

“No, he belongs to my neighbor.”

“You’ll have to take him outside.”

Fritz ran out of the office. Micah
followed him down a long hallway. The cat made a left turn down another hallway
and managed to sneak between several people who were entering through the front
door. Micah returned to the clerk’s office.

The clerk opened the tall black
leather book in front of Bob. “Here’s the ledger for nineteen-ten. Let’s see if
I can find the address for you. Yes, here it is. That’s funny.”

“What?” Bob asked.

“Must be a same name ancestor.” The
clerk scratched her head. “According to this, the taxes were paid by a Denise
Appleby. Can’t be the same person who paid last year.”

“Can you run a list for who paid
the taxes every year from nineteen-ten?” Micah asked.

“Going to cost you,” the clerk
replied.

Bob raised his stubby index finger
on his right hand. “One year per decade, say nineteen-twenty, thirty, forty and
so on up to the present.”

The clerk shook her head yes. “How
about nineteen-twenty, nineteen-thirty, and nineteen-fifty. I’ll only charge
you for three pages. You can find every year from nineteen-sixty-one to the
present online for fifty cents a page.”

Bob slapped his hand on the
counter. “Deal. How soon can you have it?”

The clerk pointed behind Bob and
Micah. “If you use the kiosk over there, I’ll search the old years for you.
Shouldn’t take long now that I know which ledgers to check for this property.”

Two hours later, Micah and Bob had
viewed every year since nineteen-sixty-one online and picked up photocopies of
the tax records for the selected earlier years. Every record indicated the
property taxes were paid by a Denise Appleby.

“So the property has been in her
family for a long time.” Bob peeked around the windshield to be seen over the
hood.

Micah stood by the car door. “Without
a name change from generation to generation?  We’re talking a new generation
about every twenty-five years, or four generations without changing the name of
the owner of this house.”

“Do you want to check the census
records?”

“No. I can ask her when I see her
again.”

The pounding, when it came, exploded
like a rain of huge hailstones. It began when Micah Probert entered his dark
house. The first punch landed on the back of his skull delivered by an attacker
who hid in the shadows of his entryway. Micah could do nothing, except relax
and let his body fall forward. The momentum carried him away from his attacker.

He bent forward as he ran so the
second punch hit his right buttock instead of the back or kidney area. The
force of the blow increased the pace of his forward motion.

Micah stomped his right foot down
hard and spun around on the ball of this foot, adding momentum to the turn
around. At the same time he cocked his right elbow, clenched his fist and
brought it up sharply to hit what he hoped would be the attacker’s head. He
planned to use the attacker’s forward momentum against him like a baseball
batter hitting a fastball. The speed of the head moving forward, like the speed
of the fastball, would provide additional power to the punch.

Micah barely nicked the jaw of his
attacker with his fist. He brought his left hand up to block the attacker’s
counterpunch, but his assailant again moved too quickly.

The attacker rained blows with a
swiftness Micah had never seen in a prison fistfight. He took a punch in the
face. He could feel his nose becoming flat while an enormous pressure plowed into
his right cheek and eye. Micah staggered back but not quickly enough to avoid
two swift blows, one to his upper chest and the other to his stomach.

As Micah’s back slammed onto the
floor and his head snapped back, he spotted the foot coming. Before he could
move his hands into a defensive posture, the room turned black.

The sounds of insect wings beating
made him think of camping trips to the north woods of Wisconsin during the summers
when he was small. On cloudless nights, he camped in the pitch dark, like now.

He heard a
cat’s lispy meowr but lacked the strength to open his eyes despite the tiny paws
he could feel creeping along his stomach.

***

As the flier came into focus, Micah
observed the faerie wings flapping to invisibility on Ahlman Brown’s back. The
wings roared like a great waterfall or the rushing of a river in flood time. Micah
touched the damp grassy slope beneath him as the sun warmed his face. He held
his hand up to block the bright light as he watched Ahlman soar above the trees
in the distance.

The thought of a river made him
feel as though his face were wet. He placed his hand over the right side of his
face where it mushed into snow.

The world, including the grassy
slope, changed into a white-covered meadow. From far away he could here Denise
Appleby calling his name, “Micah … Micah … Micah …”

He opened his left eye, not knowing
why his right stayed closed. Denise’s face was about six inches above his. She lifted
a package of frozen green beans from his eye. He saw sunlight shine through the
window of his dining room. It warmed the left side of his face.  

“You’ve returned.” Denise turned
her head and smiled.

“Didn’t know I had been away. Why
is my head so fuzzy? And why does my voice sound garbled?”

“You’ve had a terrible fall. Do you
feel okay?”

“I fell?”

“Yeah, you’re at the bottom of the
steps with your face bruised and swollen. Who knows what damage was
accomplished to the rest of you. Seems to me you must have cartwheeled down the
steps. Were you drunk and all that jazz?”

“I remember coming home.”

“Do you remember who you are?”

“Yeah.”

“Care to tell me?”

“Micah Probert. Prisoner number…
no, wait. I’m free.”

“And who am I?”

“You’re the wicked witch, no, wait,
the horrible hag of the western suburbs.”

“You still have your sense of humor
but it’s at my expense. So tell me what you were drinking.”

 “Coffee. Why is my head so fuzzy.
Too much caffeine?”

“Nah. You tumbled down those steps
pretty hard. I’ve never known anyone to fall because they had too much coffee,
and I’ve been around awhile.”

“Yeah, we need to talk about that.
Like why you look so young and attractive for a girl over a hundred-and-twenty-five
years old.”

“First, let’s see if you can sit
up.”

Micah began to lift himself to a
sitting position, but fell back down with a cry of pain.