Sister Angel (5 page)

“I’m sure you know that what I’m telling you is true,” Constance said. “And this is true also. I’m a doctor, a psychologist.”

There was a wave of hatred, loathing, terror. Charlie jerked his eyes wide open, grasped the table hard. The
emotional wave was gathering momentum, hitting him like
surges of power. Gretchen screamed and pushed herself
away from the table, stumbled when she stood up, fell back
into her chair. Charlie tried to yell, tried to call out Constance’s name, but he could make no sound.
Stop it,
he tried to whisper.
Stop it!

Constance had been prepared for something, but not this.
She was the target; she knew that as she felt nausea and vertigo. She felt as if she were falling from a terrible
height, falling faster and faster, and knew that when she hit,
she would die. She wanted to fling out her hands, to catch herself, to stop the fall; if she did that, she would be lost. There were words in her head, words she had to say now.
She tried to speak; her throat was paralyzed, her tongue
paralyzed. Angel leaned forward, her eyes wide and staring, her face as pale as death. And in her mind, Constance cried,
No!

“Angela,” she said in a hoarse whisper, “close your eyes.
Go to sleep.”

Angel blinked. For a moment, Constance was afraid it was not going to work, but then the childish face relaxed, her eyes closed, and she took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

It was over. Charlie’s hand shook when he reached for his water and took a drink. It was
all
over, he thought, and he looked at Constance, who was very pale, breathing deeply.

“You were swell,” he said huskily.

She nodded thankfully but kept her attention on the girl across the table from her. Slowly, softly, she said, “Angela,
go into your deepest trance. Very relaxed, comfortable, down, down.”

In a few minutes, Constance asked, “Angela, does Amos
hypnotize you?”

“Yes.”

“You won’t allow him to ever again, Angela. Do you
understand?”

“Yes.”

“When he tries to hypnotize you again, you will remember what I’m telling you now and he won’t be able to con
trol you ever again.” Constance repeated this several more
times before she was satisfied, then said, “I am not your enemy, Angela. I won’t send you back to the home. You don’t have to hate me. You don’t have to be afraid of me. Do you understand?”

Charlie watched in fascination, but time was running out,
he thought, and he caught Constance’s eye, tapped his watch. She nodded.

“When you wake up, Angela, you will remember what we’ve talked about, all of it. You won’t be afraid or ner
vous, but very relaxed and peaceful. You’ll know that Char
lie is not your father, Angela. You’ll want to stay here with us tonight so we can take care of you. You don’t have to go with Amos. You can stay here with us.” As before, she repeated each part of her message several times.

At her command, Angel opened her eyes. She blinked rapidly a few times and started to eat her cake.

“Do you remember what happened?” Constance asked.

“Nothing happened.” Angela did not look up at her.

Gretchen had not said a word throughout. Now she got up and started for the door. “I want coffee, in here, not later
in the living room. Maybe I want a drink, too. Charlie?
Constance?”

They both nodded and she left.

Charlie looked from Constance to Angel and back help
lessly. Had it taken? He could not tell. Constance raised her eyebrow in a “let’s wait and see” manner and he dug his fork into his cake, then put it down.

Angel looked at him and said scornfully, “I knew you were a cop from the beginning. You look like a cop, walk like a cop, smell like a cop.”

Charlie grinned at his cake and started to eat it. “That’s more like it, kid,” he said under his breath. Aloud, he asked, “You had that much experience with cops?”

“Yeah.” She looked past him. He turned, to see Amos in the doorway.

“Come along, Sister Angel. Time to go study.”

She started to rise, then sat down again. A puzzled look crossed her face. She shook her head.

“Sister Angel, it’s late. Time to go home.”

Again she shook her head. “They said I can stay here.”

“We’ll come tomorrow, move in tomorrow with all our stuff. You can wait one more day.”

She was pushing crumbs around her plate with her fork, not looking at him. She shook her head.

Now Amos walked around the table and put his hand on her shoulder lightly. “Be a good girl, Sister Angel. You hear me? Get up and come along home with me.”

Gretchen entered, carrying the coffee tray, to which she had added brandy and glasses.

“Hi, Amos. Just in time. Join us?”

He was watching Angel closely, his hand tight on her
shoulder now. “Be a good girl, Sister Angel,” he repeated
clearly.

She stood up. “Is it okay if I go watch TV awhile?”

“Run along,” Constance said. “We’ll be in here if you want anything. You sure you don’t want coffee, Amos?”

Angel nearly ran from the room.

“You can’t keep her,” Amos said harshly. “She’s going home with me now.”

“You’ll have to get a warrant, I’m afraid,” Charlie said. “The kid wants to stay.”

Amos looked at him, his eyes narrowed, his face mean and rigid. “You’ll regret this,” he said. “You don’t know
what you’re doing.” He stalked from the room and Charlie
followed him through the hallway, watched until he went out the front door, which Charlie then locked.

He returned to the dining room, where Gretchen was drinking brandy as if it was going out of style. “Now tell us what that was all about,” she demanded of Constance.

“I don’t want her to overhear,” Constance said, and Charlie took his glass and stood by the open door, where he
could see the length of the living room, the hallway to the
television room beyond it.

“I found out that she’s a runaway,” Constance said then.
“She was in a home for disturbed youngsters in Philadelphia up until two and a half years ago, when she ran off. There was a scandal; the director apparently helped her, gave her money, took her out with him, then she vanished
and he had a nervous breakdown, resigned. She was classi
fied schizophrenic. Her father abandoned her and her mother when she was three. When she was six, she landed
in a hospital with multiple bruises, abrasions, a concussion, and she had been sexually molested. She had amnesia about
the incident. The mother said it was an attack by an unknown. Case closed. Two years later, it was repeated, but
this time the mother was implicated in the beating—by a
neighbor who testified that she often beat the girl. Now the
mother came under investigation. A series of live-in boyfriends, abandonment, the usual story. The mother was or
dered into therapy. When Angel was twelve, her mother had her committed, called her sexually promiscuous and incorrigible. She authorized a series of shock treatments.”

Gretchen looked pale and sick and Charlie’s face was a mask.

“They started her on hypnoanalysis. And they got the story about her father, about the boyfriends she wanted to be her father, her mother’s reaction each time. And they got a dose of what we’ve had from her, the projections she’s
capable of. Easier to call her schizophrenic than try to deal
with that. Delusions of grandeur, nymphomania, schizo… she’s had it all pinned on her.”

“They gave you the key words to induce trance?” Charlie asked after the silence had persisted many minutes.

“Yes. First, she had to know that I was a doctor. That was the kind of cue they left with her, that she would respond to a doctor using those words.” She glanced at Gretchen and added, “It’s a posthypnotic suggestion to return to trance instantly on cue. Obviously, Amos planted one also, but he’s an amateur. He didn’t know enough to protect his power over her. Probably never even occurred to him that anyone else could step in so easily.”

“He isn’t even her father,” Gretchen said in disbelief. “He’s living with her, that poor little kid, using her.”

And they were in the area last summer, Constance thought, when Vernon became obsessed with a mysterious woman and then was killed. She looked at Charlie and he shook his head slightly. She had told enough for now. She nodded just as slightly.

“I’m going to go keep her company,” Gretchen said then.
“She may be lonesome tonight, and afraid. Poor little kid.”

Charlie nodded. “I want to go over the security system.”

It wasn’t over, he thought. Not with Amos out there in a rage, not with that strange girl in the house with powers she seemed to have little control over. They separated then and Constance went upstairs to get her notebook. As she passed the masks on the stairway wall, she scolded them. “You knew all the time,” she muttered. “Damn enigmatic Indians.”

When she returned to the living room, Charlie was clos
ing the drapes; beyond the glass, the floodlights were on,
lighting the entire yard down to the lake.

“No targets,” Charlie said. “Anyone tries to open a door
or window, the system goes off. Sort of like locking up a
wide-open field, but it’s all we can do.”

“You think he’ll try to get in tonight?”

“Not if he’s got half the brains he should have, but I’m spending the night on the couch there, just in case I over
estimate his intelligence.”

And she would keep him company, she thought, eyeing the chairs, the other couch. The upstairs bedroom seemed very far away, inaccessible, out of earshot even.

“Vernon and Wanda used to play games,” she said. “Chess?”

He nodded. She went to the television room and asked
Gretchen for the set and presently they were at play. Shortly after twelve, Gretchen and Angel went upstairs, and soon after that Charlie made his first check of the house. From the dark television room, he looked out at the yard. It was raining, and the wind was blowing fitfully. A freeze was predicted for overnight. The roads were going to be bad for going home, he found himself thinking, and he
longed to be there in front of the fireplace, the silly cats trying to filch anything edible, Constance in her chair, reading
or writing away. Maybe tomorrow they would wrap it up here and go home, ice or no ice, he decided, then finished his tour of the house.

Amos would not be able to give her up, Charlie was
thinking later, staring morosely at the game, where he was
going to be mated in another move or two. In some ways, he pitied Amos, who had tangled with something he could not control or understand or resist.

“Vernon must have seemed a real threat,” Constance said, finishing his thought as she so often did.

“Yeah. But why does Angel keep on looking if she’s found someone?”

“The three-year-old in her is still looking, remember. When the father turns out to be a lover, the three-year-old knows something is wrong, and the search is on.”

“And it’ll never end for her.”

“I don’t know. I want her, Charlie. I want to help her, to
work with her, find out what she’s capable of, help her learn to control it.”

Charlie thought of the images of Constance that Angel
had put in his head—old, ugly, fearsome even. He doubted
that Angel would let Constance anywhere near her, if she had a choice. Yet, they couldn’t just turn her loose. And they sure couldn’t send her back to the institution. She isn’t our problem, he wanted to say, but obviously Constance thought she was, or was willing to take her on as a problem.

“I concede,” he said then. “Want to break the tie?”

“Sure.” She started to set up the pieces again, then stopped when Wanda appeared in the doorway from the kitchen area.

“Why are you both still up?”

“How did you get down here?” Charlie asked.

“The back stairs. It’s after two.”

“Is anything wrong?” Constance asked sharply. Wanda
had on a long robe that looked warm, but she was shivering
and very pale.

“Please, both of you, please go to bed. This is terri
ble, staying up all night, not sleeping. I have to be alone
sometime! There’s always someone… .” She fled into the darkened hall.

Constance followed her to the kitchen. “What happened?” She asked again, sharper this time.

Wanda put a teakettle on the stove and turned on the burner. “I want a cup of tea.”

Constance looked at her helplessly. “Were you dreaming? Is that it?”

“Just leave me alone.”

“Listen to me, Wanda. There are things about him and Angel that you have to know. She isn’t his daughter, and
she’s the one with telepathic powers. He never knows any
thing until they go away and he gets it out of her. She’s the one giving him information, not Vernon. And it’s information right out of your head, our heads, not from beyond the grave.”