The Skull Ring (15 page)

"What about them?"

"You call and tell me you're flying in from North Carolina, and what's the first thing I think about? How we're going to have a great time together, get close, reaffirm the wonderful thing we share. God forbid, even spend the night together. And you barely give me the time of day. It's always about you, isn't it?"

Julia had no answer. Though she was burning inside, she couldn't help but admit the truth of it. If only Mitchell could see she needed an ally more than she needed a lover. She hated herself for not being able to reach him, for having so very little to offer. Even God had no use for her.

"You think it's easy to go six months without sex?" Mitchell continued, his grip tightening on the steering wheel. "I mean, if you were holding out on religious grounds, maybe I could respect you. But I can't help thinking you're teasing me on purpose. Your tap runs so hot and cold, I sometimes wonder if you're trying to make me crazy, too."

"I'm not crazy." She stared straight ahead, at the spires of the tall buildings looming in the thick of Memphis. "They call it 'panic disorder.' Or 'personality disorder not otherwise specified, with schizotypal traits,' depending on whom you ask."

"That's what Lance Danner says. But I'm sure he had his own reasons for keeping you on a short leash." The traffic had jammed and slowed to a crawl. Mitchell turned to look at her. "I don’t care if these screwballs get their jollies by turning you on a spit and roasting you over the flames of your own juices, but I wish they’d leave a little meat on the bone for me.”

"Let me out at the next corner." The hotel was three blocks away. Even though Creeps filled the sidewalks and lurked in the alleys, they were a safer risk than Mitchell.

"Don't be ridiculous, Julia." Mitchell's tone changed, became patronizing. "Let's have dinner."

The traffic backed up to a stop, and Julia opened her door.

"
What do you think you're doing?
" Mitchell shouted. But Julia was already out of her seat, her purse under her arm, dodging between two parked cars and heading down the sidewalk. Mitchell called her name once more, but a blaring car horn forced him to close the passenger door and move with the traffic.

Julia tried to avoid looking at the strangers who passed her, the people who lurked in doorways, those who hid behind newspapers or peered out from windows. A police siren sliced into her like a laser, its frenzy echoing off the concrete facades. Car exhaust hung heavy in her throat and in her nose. The city's humid stink pressed against her like a second skin, and she suddenly longed for the clean, fresh smell of the Blue Ridge forest.

She kept her eyes on the sidewalk, concentrating on making it to the next crack, and the next, trying to ignore the hundreds of moving shoes. She hugged her purse close to her chest. To have it snatched now, when she finally had a clue to her past that might be more valuable than money, would be the final joke played by this cruel city.

Someone bumped into her, she gasped and glanced up despite herself—

A bad man, face hidden by a hood
—

She gave a small scream, and the man backed away, his hands spread in innocence.

"Sorry, lady," he said, sweat beading his balding head. He wasn't one of the bad people, just an overstressed, overweight jogger who was in a hurry for a date with a heart attack. He tugged the hoodie of his Tennessee Titans sweats and continued on. Julia staggered away and the sea of flesh swept on.

The hotel lobby was cool and sparsely crowded. Julia controlled her breathing during the solo elevator ride and was finally in her hotel room, the door safely locked. She sprawled on the bed, the image of a million bad people painted inside her eyelids, an entire Memphis filled with hooded Creeps. She lay there until she was as back to normal as Julia Stone could get.

Then she sat up, carried her purse to the desk, closed the curtains, and took out the box.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

It was the first time Julia had ever used the fingernail file she carried in her purse. She scraped the blunt, hooked edge against the lid to clean the accumulated grime and wiped the lid with tissues moistened by her saliva. She turned the box around and saw that the star was actually a pentagram. Carefully etched into the points of the star were the features of a goat's head, with curling horns and broad nose and evil, slanted eyes.

Two words were carved beneath the symbol:
Judas Stone
.

She had hoped that her memories were faulty, that her father had no connection to the bad people despite what Dr. Forrest said. But here was damning evidence that blew a spark of memory into a bonfire of unavoidable truth. Here was a solid piece of the past, hellish and strange and as disturbing as a dozen Creeps. She realized with a spasm of fear that she would no longer be able to lie to herself.

Daddy had been one of
them
.

Her fingers trembled so much she could hardly hold the file steady. She inserted the blade into the crack and pried open the lid. An aroma of aged mold rose from the box. Inside was a tiny piece of rumpled cloth, stained a dark shade of reddish-brown.

She carefully lifted the cloth and placed it on the desk. She sat before her tableau of grit and soiled tissues and old wood spread across the brightly shellacked surface of the desk. She had to look away for a moment, to reaffirm that the sane, sterile hotel room still existed, that order and not chaos still held sway. The telephone, the television set, and the crisply made bed provided a cold comfort.

The cloth tore as she opened it, bits of thread crumbling away from dry rot. At last she reached the final fold, and sat staring incomprehensibly as sunlight bathed the object.

A skull ring.

Just like the ring from her dream and the same one that Whitmore had described, with one difference. The eye sockets of the skull were empty, not set with rubies. Julia studied the silver expanse of forehead, the cruel mockery of a grin. Inside the band were engraved those same two horrifying words.
Judas Stone
, done in an elegant script.

She knew she shouldn't touch it, that the police would want to dust it for fingerprints. But the police should have noticed the loose boards in her father's closet. True, her discovery of it was accidental, but people trained in investigative techniques would have discovered the box in fifteen minutes.

Unless they already knew the box was there. And overlooked it on purpose. Maybe Satan had gotten to the cops . . . .

No, Julia, that is crazy thinking, and Dr. Forrest says you are not crazy. You are NOT going to start spinning conspiracy theories. Who cares if the Bush family plotted 9/11 and if Rick O'Dell says that Satanism reaches into all levels of government, law enforcement, military, and society? I mean, if it were that widespread, it wouldn't exactly be considered "underground," now, would it?

Satanists had surrendered, joined other more popular and lucrative movements. As counterculture, devil worship had lost favor and was hardly more provocative than Islam beliefs. So far as she knew, no political candidate had ever successfully run on a Satanic ticket. And it wasn't the type of thing one put on a job application. In truth, the orthodox were the only ones who even cared that Satanists had unorthodox practices. And Satan had probably sold more Bibles than Jesus ever had, because fear was the world's greatest sales pitch. Julia knew all about how motivating fear could be. After all, it had pretty much pulled her puppet strings for a couple of decades.

And though her stomach clenched like a hot fist, though electric sweat sluiced from her pores, though she shook so much that her chair squeaked, she reached out and touched the ring.

Nothing.

She didn't know what she had expected, black clouds rolling in, thunder shaking the building, the earth opening up and swallowing Memphis, or merely a puff of sulfurous smoke from which would step a red-faced, goatish creature complete with pointy pitchfork.

Just as God had failed to appear when summoned, Satan had also missed a chance to shock and awe.

So much for vanity over the worth of my soul.

Almost giggling with relief, she lifted the ring and held it close to her face.

"Hello, ugly," she said to the engraved skull.

Did talking to a hunk of silver qualify one for the loony bin? People of many religions addressed gods they couldn't see, and seemed better off for it. Julia figured a good rule of thumb to follow was, "You're only crazy if the inanimate object in question talks back."

Or maybe you weren't crazy, merely one of those privileged few to whom gods deigned to dispense wisdom. Modern prophets were likely misdiagnosed as schizophrenics, and if Jesus really did return to Earth and start spouting messages of eternal rewards and miracles, he’d be strapped to a crash cart, pumped full of Thorazine, and wheeled into a rubber room to wait out the rest of his second coming.

The ring wasn't evil. It was only a lump of mineral, heated and cast and polished by human hands. Except this ring had been her father's, if she believed the engraved words.

The ring was the only relic she had left of the man who had helped bring her to life, a man whose face would have faded like an old photograph except for the recovered memories that kept him always on her mind. And though the memories weren't always comforting, she was grateful to Dr. Forrest, and, before her, Dr. Danner. They had linked her with her own past, shown her how the symptoms of the present came from that bewildering period of her childhood, and now Dr. Forrest was finishing the work of teaching Julia to heal.

Now it was no longer theory. Maybe with this final evidence of the truth, Julia could begin to bury the past.

As Julia held the ring to the light, the twin scars on her stomach tickled and itched. She almost wished the ring
had
spoken, because she still had too many unanswered questions.

Had her father been one of the bad people?

Was he one of those who had chained her to the stone, who danced around her in robes, who touched her, who drank from that strange silver chalice?

Was her father really one of the Creeps?

Recovered memories were one thing, something she knew could be manufactured and then accepted as fact. But the ring was solid, substantial, real. The ring bore the name of Stone. The ring threaded reality into the weavework of an imagined past sewn from dreams, suggestions, and fear.

Julia knew she would do it. It was almost as if the skull moved itself, guided its silver smirk toward her left hand. Then to the tip of her ring finger, the one that should have worn Mitchell's engagement diamond. And then the metal band eased itself over her fingernail, past her knuckle, and settled on the flesh above the pad of her palm.

A warm glow expanded out from the ring, radiated up her arm in waves, spread through her body and made her light-headed. The heat turned into electricity and Julia no longer felt weak. She stared into the skull, and it smiled back at her, as if understanding her need to surrender.

"It's been a long time," the smile seemed to say. "But you're finally ready to become Judas Stone."

No, no, NO.

She yanked off the ring and flung it away. She ran to the far corner of the room as if fleeing a feral animal.

She huddled against the closet, fists over her ears, shrugging off the descending cloak of panic. She forced herself to take deep breaths.

Only a ring, only a ring, only a ring, INHALE . . .

The air tasted of crypts and incense.

Only a ring, only a ring, only a ring, EXHALE . . .

Her heart twitched in her chest like a sack of rats.

The panic settled over her, coal black and blood thick.

Her thoughts spun, wheels without tracks, wire unraveling, stones tumbling in an avalanche. The ring on the hand, the hand that held the knife, that brought the knife down to her belly, that made the incision, a slick hot trail on her abdomen, why was the bad man hurting her,
why
?

And the knife lifting again, blood dripping from the bright blade, the candlelight glinting in its rich redness, the bad people leaning over her, the knife descending again, slicing deftly across the other side of her tummy, and she was aware of the injury, only she didn't feel any pain.

The smoke from the crucibles hung in the air like wool as the bad man held the bloody knife to the sky. Then he raised his other fist, and the skull ring shone pale in the night. The bad man touched the knife to the ring, as if allowing the skull to drink, and the red ruby eyes glowed, pulsed in rhythm to little Julia's frantic heartbeat.

And, beneath the hood, the bad man's eyes glowed with that same red intensity.

He reached into his robe and leaned over her, his breath like old goat cheese, and whispered, "Oh Satan, Master of the World, take as thy bride this whore Judas Stone."

This whore Judas Stone.

She
was Judas Stone, too.

The words rang in her ears, ripped through her like a death knell, ripped the fabric of her soul, even as that dream-image bad man raised her limp hand and slipped the ring home.