The Presence (14 page)

"I'll be home," I reassured her. But I knew the one who needed reassuring most was me.

The Presence looked around his room, making sure everything was as it should he for Catherine.

"
I want you ladies to be nice to her," he told his wall paintings. "She's coming today. No jealousy, now. Eliza May, you did not look kindly on Donna when I first brought her here. No frowning when Catherine comes. I will introduce you all, and I want your smiles to stay in place.
"

He went to his table and picked up the note Catherine had left for him in the church and read it aloud. "I have to see Kirsty. Tomorrow. Here." He turned again to the paintings. "I'll leave this in one of the pews," he said, speaking to them collectively. He tried to do that as much as possible so there'd be no jealousy. So that they'd remember that he'd loved each of them once.

He held the note so they could see it. "Because of this, no one will question why she disappeared. Poor Catherine. She never could get over her guilt about her friend's death. I don't know exactly what happened to her that night or why she's carrying such a heavy burden. Unfortunately, she doesn't seem to have told anyone. Perhaps a
little later she'll tell me, and we'll face it together. Meanwhile...
"

He smiled appreciatively at his ladies. "You all helped me—by being depressed over your past guilts. There were questions asked, inquiries made, lakes dragged, woods searched, but in the end, there was acceptance. Sad girls. All of you so troubled. Who could blame you for disappearing and trying to find new lives? I tried my best to help you. You know that.
"

There was a can of apple juice on the table and two glasses, one of them for him, though he, of course, could not drink. He'd hold it up, empty, and click glasses with Catherine, and make a toast. "To us. To our future. May we have many long years together.
"

He frowned, remembering he'd hoped that for each and every new love he'd brought here, and look what had happened. But this one would be different. He wouldn't let himself remember that he'd thought Alice would be different, and Florence, and little Donna. He'd thought each of them would be different.

The serpent ring was waiting. He picked it up. The red eyes flashed, the gold band twined itself around his finger. "Well, now," the Presence said, content. "I think we are ready.
"

I cycled to the post office and mailed Miss Lovelace's package. She wouldn't get it till after Christmas. She'd wonder if I'd read it, if I believed it. I'd call her when this was over. If I got the chance.

At the block that came before St. Matthew's, I stopped. There were thick oleander bushes bordering a vacant lot. I pushed Grandma's bike and the backpack under them, pulling the branches around to hide them.

The old building watched me coming, its rose and gold windows flaming in the sun.

I checked my watch. Two-thirty-five.

He'd said to come at three. If I was right, he'd already be at the front office window, watching for me. He'd told me before how he watched me come all the way from the corner. Even then it had given me the creeps. It still did. But I was praying that was where he was right now, not suspecting I'd come from the other direction. I was basing my life on an assumption. But it was all I had.

The parking lot was empty. The afternoon before Christmas and no staff around, no cars to hide behind as I ran across the empty space. What if he was watching from a back window and I'd figured wrong?

I ran as fast as I could for the shelter of the church wall.

The day I'd first come, Collin had told me that the back door to the church was sometimes left open. It
had
to be open now. I stood in front of it and touched the knob, which was warm from the sun and loose from so much turning.

It didn't open. I tried the opposite direction, leaned my weight against the door.

Nothing. It was locked, maybe because of the holidays.

Now what?

My breath was ragged in my throat. I should have expected this. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Two-forty now.

I took a step back and looked up. An overhang sat like a cap above the door, under a vine covered with white blossoms that climbed the wall next to it. I'd felt a little secure under that small covering. Farther back like this, I knew I was exposed and vulnerable.

I checked my watch. Two-forty-three.

If I was going to get in, I needed to hurry.

Tilting my head, I saw that above the overhang was a small paned window. And it was open about two inches from the bottom. Ants ran up the vine in a straight line that could have been a shoelace unless you looked closely.

If the window was open a couple of inches, it could probably be pushed up further, enough so I could squeeze myself through. But that would take so much time. Maybe I couldn't even get up there.

I leaned my cheek against the smooth wood of the door and tried to think. I was going or I wasn't.

If Donna Cuesta was down there, I could set her free. If I couldn't free her, but if I found out for sure she was there, then I could call the police.

Or I could give up now. I'd be taking a chance on someone's life, leaving her a ghost prisoner forever, or until Noah became disappointed in her. The way he'd become disappointed in Belinda Cunningham.

I was shaking, pressed like a limpet against the door.

I made myself step back again and look up at the window. Then I took hold of the thick stem of the crawling white vine. It wasn't sturdy like a tree trunk, but when I tugged at it, it didn't pull away from the wall.

Two-forty-eight.

He'd wait a few minutes after three, still thinking I'd come. But even so, I had hardly any time. If I was going...

I began the climb, holding the scabby branch, white flowers dropping like snowflakes around me. My other hand reached for the rough stone of the overhang and found it, so I could walk my way up the wall, up, up, till I was lying on my stomach across the small porch roof. Ants marched over my arms and hands. I thought I felt them in my ears.

I caught the window ledge, the splintery, unpainted wood tearing at my fingers. Now I was pushing the window, and it was creaking up, stopping and sticking.

Panic churned inside me. What if Noah heard the noise, came running, grabbed my wrists, pulled me in?

I lay there on my stomach, panting like a dog, my legs dangling, the white snowflakes falling lazily around me. I listened, but the only sound was the cawing of crows, fighting over something in the parking lot.

The window had opened as far as it would go. There were maybe fourteen or sixteen inches of space. Enough for my shoulders to squeeze through?

I wriggled, headfirst, terrified of being caught half in, half out, and fell with a thump on the wooden floor. For a couple of seconds I lay there, alert to any sound. What if he'd heard that thump? Would I have time to squeeze myself back through the window?

There was nothing, not even the squawk, squawk of the crows.

I sat up, all of me hurting. I was in a small storage room filled with wooden chairs and music stands. Sheet music spilled from cardboard boxes against the wall.

I tiptoed across to the door and slowly opened it. Dusty steps led down, and I saw that I was somewhere behind the big pipe organ. My feet made no sound.

Now I could see all the way down into the quiet sane-tuary. There were the candles piled in their baskets for tonight's midnight service. There was the row of scarlet poinsettias. I stood as still as a lizard, my eyes searching for any sign of Noah. He wasn't there, unless he had made himself invisible. I looked for a shadow, a stirring of the air, but there was nothing.

How could you outwit a man who wasn't there? What was I doing here anyway, taking this terrible risk? For what?

All right. For a chance at redemption.

Two-fifty.

I crept down the rest of the steps, across the front of the pulpit, and past the altar, crouching to make myself as small as possible. The arched door to the basement was closed. It squealed as I opened it and again when I closed it behind me. Instantly, I was swallowed up in blackness.

Lotties diary words replayed in my mind. It was as if I heard her speaking them, a young girl, scared as I was. But she had thought she was going to meet a lover. If I met anyone, it would be a demon. "It was very dark," she'd said. "Dark as Hell must be."

"I smell evil," Grace, the little Native American girl, had whispered. Evil.

In the pocket of my jeans was the flashlight. I pulled it out. Its light was faint and pale, but it showed me the steps and the open space below. It wasn't fully finished down there. Part of the basement floor had not been excavated. It was outside earth, hard-packed, high as my head. The air was musty and dead as the inside of a tomb. My flashlight beam picked up the big stained armchairs, stuffing hanging out of them, broken pews piled one on top of the other, and an ancient piano.

I went farther down into the void, dark closing behind me. My light threw shadows on the back wall. I zigzagged the beam across the old plaster till I saw the big stone fireplace. I ran across to it and pressed my hands against the carvings. Something there slid the fireplace back. "Open, open, open," I whispered frantically.

The fluorescent glow of my watch face showed two-fifty-four.

Hurry! Hurry!

I leaned forward and put my mouth against the ice-cold stone. "Is anybody there?" My voice was so timid I could hardly hear it myself. But if Noah was close, I couldn't risk him hearing. Oh, please, don't let him be close.

My worn-out light showed me cobwebs, hanging like curtains. "Donna?" I whispered, louder now. "Are you in there?"

My flashlight went out.

But I thought I'd heard the smallest of sounds, like a gasp or a breath.

"Donna? I've come to get you out of there. Be ready to run."

I felt in my pocket for the candle and matches and clawed them out. On the third try, the candle lit, the flame wavering its white circle around me.

A minute after three.

Hurry! Hurry! Noah would wait only so long.

I moved my palms in circles against the carvings. Chips of broken stone stabbed at my hands. My shadow flickered on the dirty floor, shortened itself against the wall.

There was a coldness, a waft of frigid air behind me, and my heart jammed against my throat.

Noah was here. I knew it before he spoke.

"Catherine," he said. "I'm so glad you came."

"
I was coming down to find you," she stammered.

The Presence heard the panic in her voice. Her eyes were wide and terrified. There were ants crawling on the front of her dark sweatshirt. White flowers like stars were stuck in her hair.

He reached out and touched her arm with his cold, cold hand.

"
Welcome to my home, Catherine.
"

I turned to face him. He wasn't there, but I knew his ghost self was.

Air hung frozen around me. The candle flame flickered blue. His voice came clearly from inside that chilled, empty space.

"I'm afraid Donna is no longer here, Catherine. And your friend Kirsty never was—as I think you've guessed. But stay, won't you?"

I heard the rumble as the fireplace opened behind me. I heard the grating sound of stone on stone, and I twisted around, afraid to turn my back on him. In a blink I saw the inside of his den, the big easy chair, the cot bed, the table, and, worst of all, the hideous paintings on his wall. Girls, all with long dark hair, their painted feet not touching the ground, as if they hung on gallows, all smiling their red-lipped gallows smiles and, oh, horror! There I was, on the end, half-finished in a painted blue dress I'd never owned, smiling my own disgusting, scarlet smile.

I jabbed back with my elbow and touched nothing. He laughed, and I thrust the candle where I thought his face would be. There was a gasp, and I stumbled around where I thought he was, and ran, in a frenzy, toward the stairs.

The candle danced its hobgoblin light across the walls, and I glanced behind once to see where he was, even though I knew I would see only darkness and shadows and the opening to that ghastly room.

I stumbled against the claw foot of one of the abandoned chairs, pitched forward, fell into its torn softness. The candle jumped out of my hand, and there was a quick flash of flame flaring up on my right side.

I scrambled away from it, but suddenly everything was on fire, the chair, my sweatshirt sleeve, the right leg of my jeans. I began to run. Bad to run when you're on fire, very bad, but I had to, because the demon that was Noah was somewhere behind me, and that awful den was there, too, waiting for me.

I ran through smoke that made me cough and retch, that scalded my eyes and throat. I heard myself scream.

And then I was shoved from behind, I was on the floor of the basement, there was a coldness around me, over me, breathing on me.

Noah! He'd caught me. Better to burn up—

But he was rolling me over and over on the floor, slapping at my sweatshirt and my jeans, smothering the flames, and he was mumbling, "Lydia! Lydia, my love. I never meant to hurt you, never! Please believe..."

I was on my back, and I saw him, visible above me now, his body shaking. I saw the fire behind him, coming toward us in great hungry licks that caught him, the white shirt going up in flames, and I was crawling, dragging myself to the stairs, inching up them.

I didn't look back.

The Presence was on fire, a living torch. Fire! The one thing, the only thing in this world or the next that terrified him. He heard Mrs. Tibbs's voice: "You wet the bed again. You lied to save yourself from punishment. The fires of hell will consume you. You'll be turned on a spit, forever and ever." Then the swish and slap of the leather strap. The way it scorched his skin, blistered it, consumed him.

And now the fires of hell had him.

In an instant of crimson time he saw faces—Belinda, Florence, Eliza May—and he tried to say old remembered words. "I am heartily sorry ... sorry ... sorry." There were no words.