Mask of Flies (27 page)

“You’re early,”
the heavy breasted woman said.

“Always so rude to
customers,” The pretty girl sighed, keeping her head on the young
man’s shoulder. “Come on in, dark and handsome, we won’t bite.”
Craning her slim neck, her black, shoulderless top showcased
exquisite curvature of her collar. Black silk hair tumbled down her
back and curled at the end; it beckoned.

“I’m guessing
you’re Dorina?” Elias said to the dealer of cards, having trouble
keeping eye contact: her large bust disproportionate to the slimness
of the rest of her frame. He felt an under-experienced stirring; it
had been a while since he was in the presence of attractive women.

“You guess correctly.
This young lady is my daughter Nicolette, and my client here is her
paramour, Calvin, who will have my daughter home tonight no later
than 12:30—”

“I’m 19 years old,
No one my age still has a curfew,” Nicolette interrupted.

“I’ll have her home
by then Mrs. P.,” Calvin said in a nasally tone.

From the incredulous
look on Dorina’s face, Calvin’s agreement was shrugged off in
skepticism. “Off with you two, I’ve business here with Mr.
Elias.”

“Fine, bye.”
Nicolette’s deep set dimples augmented her youthfulness. She
grabbed Calvin by the hand and pulled him out of the reading area.
“Nice meeting you Mr. Elias,” her head poked back from around a
bookcase.

“I hear you’re
interested in the history of the town.” Dorina pointed to the empty
seat where Calvin sat. Her dark eyes were glass in the candlelight.

“I am, particularly
when this town was established.”

“Fee upfront, then we
talk.”

Elias pulled two $20’s
and a $10 spot out of the front pocket of his bomber jacket, followed
by a pen and a small notebook. “I’d like to write about the
emergence of the spiritual movement in this town. What can you tell
me about that?”

“A loaded question,”
she deftly shuffled the tarot deck as she spoke. “Most would say
the Fox sisters first popularized the spiritualism movement—they
sensationalized the practice of contacting spirits, but later
recanted their practice as a parlor trick. The three sisters lived in
a house that had a reputation for being haunted, and, at night, they
claimed to hear knocking from underneath the floor. The eldest
claimed to communicate with this presence beneath the floor, first
asking the spirit the sisters’ ages, and it knocked correctly for
each. Furthering the depth of their communications, all the sisters
began speaking to the presence, professed the trapped presence was
Charles Rosma, a man murdered a decade ago and buried in their
cellar. Neighbors helped unearth what appeared to be human bone
fragments from the supposed burial site.”

Elias jotted scarce
notes on his pad; this not being the information he was truly after.
“They found human bones there, sounds like they were legit to me.”

“C’mon Elias, they
didn’t have CSI forensic teams back then; probably was some crushed
up animal bones, planted by those Fox girls. But, as you could
imagine, the finding caused quite a stir back then. A few of the
angry neighbors researched the former owners of the Fox house:
finding the only prior owner was a Christopher Bell, a well mannered
textile merchant. The town blamed him for the murder of Charles
Rosma, but the local authorities couldn’t charge him on the account
of there being no record of Rosma’s existence. Notwithstanding,
Bell’s reputation was destroyed within the community.”

“Yeah, that sounds
shady,” Elias said in a snicker.

“The sisters began to
garner fame as highly regarded mediums and attracted many people to
explore spiritualism as, I guess you could say, a supplemental
religion.” Dorina laughed darkly. “How they piled into Lily Dale
to see them. But one of the sister’s conscious ended up getting the
better of her. She confessed to a crowd that the tapping was the
result of snapping her toe joints, a talent all three of her sisters
apparently possessed. People thought she was lying—to such a degree
the repentant Fox girl had to get a doctor examine her toe, whom
ultimately agreed that the snapping of the joint was loud enough to
be interpreted as tapping, to prove it all an elaborate hoax. While
these sisters cultivated the spiritualist movement in its infancy,
they also damaged its credibility, severely.”

Dorina’s off the cuff
recollection of the town’s history was impressive, but nothing new
to Elias; he already heard it, living in the nearby Red
House/Salamanca area. He was playing his role, waiting to set up the
question that would unravel the location of the Underground Railroad
safe house, that later served as the Farseer’s compound. The time
was now. “In reading, I came across some interesting descriptions
of the area’s early inhabitants, pre Lily Dale:
open
minded in every aspect of life
. This description seems
counterintuitive, being religious fundamentalists, like the Quakers,
covered the region. Where did these freethinkers emerge from?”

“Now you are arousing
my curiosity . . . and superseding my expectations of a Jamestown
Community College student—no offense,”

“None taken.”

“Everyone attributes
the movement of this area to the industrialization of Western New
York in the early 1900’s. Big business brought in better jobs; the
money bought better education, changing the mode of thinking in the
area. But I beg to differ,” Dorina said these last words smugly. “I
agree that the wealthy that migrated to the area— although after
the spiritual movement became popular—already were freethinkers and
intellectuals, but the local populous were mostly farmers of meager
social standing. People tend to forget that this area, before Lily
Dale, was a major route on the
Underground
Railroad
, and that the locals helped liberate countless
slaves, guiding them over into the Canadian border. The freethinkers
were here way before the bourgeoisie arrived.”

“The woman running
the inn mentioned an Underground Railroad safe house, to the north of
here.” Elias lied, the widow Bandish said nothing of the sorts, but
he didn’t care; it was all semantics in the grand scheme.

Dorina’s face was
suddenly drawn in the flicker of candlelight. “That safe house is a
troublesome topic; not because it was used for liberating slaves, but
because after that—the government set up shop in there. There’s
quite a bit of speculation as to what went on in the compound, and
the town officials refuse to acknowledge its existence, bad for
business I suppose. I’m surprised Mary mentioned it.”

“There was a cloaked
man at Leolyn. Mary said he’s a government worker, seemed real
secretive. She told me he rides north often.”

“Those guys come out
every 5 years or so. Nobody knows what agency they come from; the
only way we know they’re feds is by the plates on their Ford
Taurus’ and Crown Vics’.”

“This safe house
sounds interesting. You know how to get to it?” Elias thought he
should’ve have been more subtle, after the fact.

“I’m a bookworm,
not one to hike in the woods. I’d advise against traveling up
there, heard some unsettling—”

A girlish giggle rose
from around the surrounding bookshelves.

“Come out here you
two.” Dorina’s voice switched to that of a stern mother.

Nicolette and Calvin
rounded the corner into the reading area with their heads bowed in
contrition, looking like two puppies that peed on the carpet.

“Sorry, we were kind
of eavesdropping,” Calvin said and then buckled from an elbow
delivered to his midsection by Nicolette.

“What you two want,
thought tonight was a movie in Fredonia?” Dorina asked.

“We were, but found
Mr. Elias to be entertaining. I heard he wants to see the old safe
house. I could take him,” Calvin said.

“Never heard about
you going up there.” Nicolette gave another potshot to Calvin’s
ribs. He absorbed it not unexpectedly. It seemed he was used to being
physically battered by his girlfriend.

“It was a few years
ago, before I met you, Nikki.” Calvin clutched his rib now; the
blow setting in. “Senior year, me and a few of my buddies were
hanging out in the woods, north of here, and we stumbled upon it.”

“I’ll believe that,
if your definition of ‘hanging out’ is getting drunk and smoking
dope, and ‘stumbled upon’ means trespassing.” It was now
evident that Dorina truly enjoyed giving Calvin hell.

Calvin looked at Elias
“For a hundred, I’ll take you up there tomorrow.”

Nicolette took Elias’s
little notebook and wrote her and Calvin’s phone numbers on a blank
page. Underneath she wrote
12 pm
and underlined it. “I’m coming too.”

“Come on in
Stephanie, come in and chat for a bit,” Jessica said with a
Cheshire grin; her delivery equal to a mom attempting to tease a
smile out of an infant.

Stephanie stood in the
doorway holding her baby doll—took it wherever she went, and this
occasion was no exception. “No.” She blocked the doorway like a
squat sentinel; her face drooped, as if the muscles quit contending
against gravity.

“No, why not?”
Jessica spoke in a sweeping tone.

“
Shhh!
My baby is sleeping—inside of me.”

Jessica smirked at
this, a little, but then stopped, realizing the fragility of the
woman standing before her, minding that Stephanie would never truly
get to be a mother. Her chaperoned existence would not provide her
the opportunity.

The quarterly
interviews always unearthed a common theme of aloof sadness: the
women of B-Wing yearned for life outside the walls of McIntyre House.
Some of the gals were at that age where they were looking for love;
Abigail picked a new boyfriend out of the staff each week,
unbeknownst to them, but she fantasized all the same. Some of the
gals just wanted to see the world; Gibby used to fixate about a trip
to Disney World, but after reading
The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe
, she wanted to go to
Narnia. And others, like Stephanie, just wanted to exercise her God
given right to give life.

“Will you sit down
with me if I promise not to wake the baby?” Jessica whispered,
seeing no harm playing into the girl’s fantasy.

“Okay.” Stephanie
spoke in a forceful voice, apparently disregarding her own imposed
quiet rule. “How long do we talk? Kim Kardashian is on.”

“Only a few minutes.”
Jessica pulled out the standardized interview form and then rolled
back in her wheelchair to face Stephanie directly. “On a scale of
one to five—one being the worst, and five being the best—how do
you like living here at the McIntyre house?”

“No!”

“No, meaning you
don’t like it?”

“Stupit question.”

“Sorry Steph, I’ll
try to do better.” Jessica took the interview form—obviously
constructed by the directors cute secretary; the same secretary that
never interacted with any of the patients and looked horrified when
one crossed her line of sight—and crumpled it up, tossing it behind
her “Are you happy living here with us?”

“Sad for a while, but
now I’m
very
happy—after meeting him,” Stephanie cradled her baby doll and
rocked back and forth.

“Did you meet a boy
at the dance?” Jessica was there. One of the few occasions where
the boys and girls of McIntyre House would come together, and she
stayed busy breaking up would be lovers from going too far underneath
the gymnasium’s bleachers.

Then Stephanie
whispered: “No . . . I met the man in the window.”

“Tell me about this
mystery man.” Jessica took this for nothing more than a harmless
fantasy—no issue in humoring her guest’s imagination.

“
Shhhhh
!
Only if you promise to be quiet, remember?” Stephanie commanded,
rubbing her tummy.

“Oh, how could I
forget?” She whispered.

“He said not to talk
to nobody about him. I guess he’s a
shy
guy
.” Stephanie snorted loudly, discovering again how
funny rhyming words can be. If this imaginary baby was a light
sleeper, it would have awoken at this moment.

And Jessica couldn’t
help but to be swept up in Stephanie’s laughter.

“
Shhhhh.
Quiet
!”

“Oh my, yes, I’m
sorry. So, what’s this shy guy’s name?”

“His name is
Tomorrow; handsome, nice eyes, and a big, juicy cock.” She broke
out in a violent fit of laughter again.

Jessica let the
language slide. Stephanie was, after all, a grown woman of healthy
desire. Inside the suppressive environment of McIntyre House, she saw
patients’ sexuality surface, from time to time, in similar
far-fetched context. “He showed you his penis?”

“Christ on a stick
Jessica! Not right away. I’m a lady.”

“Yes, a fine lady.”
Jessica blushed a little. “You went on a few dates, before he . . .
showed you?”

“We went on window
dates before I let him in. He knocked on my window, and we’d stay
up all night talking. He told me I was a real beauty and deserved
better than being stuck in a dump like this.”

“Did you tell him
about your baby?” Jessica pointed to the cradled baby doll.

“No. This baby isn’t
real—just practice. I told him I wanted a real baby, and he said he
could give me one if I let him in the window.” Stephanie smiled
deviously. “He always tells me to be so quiet when I want to
scream
.”

“How many times have
you invited him into your window?”

“None of your
beeswax. I’m tired, can I go?”

Jessica dismissed
Stephanie and started to type up the report. In addition to the
pointless interviews, the quarterly evaluations on each of the
patients were due soon. She didn’t want to get behind the curve;
interviewing the female residents, followed by pecking out paperwork.
The life of a Developmental Psychologist.