I needed something to clog the holes. Mother’s ping-pong balls! She had numbered them. They were stored in a vat and picked every week at the church lottery. I ripped open cartons, tore through boxes, and pried open metal cases until I found the keg in which they were stored. Rummaging inside, I pulled out two balls and raced toward my sister, squooshing the balls into her eye sockets, praying they would stop the bleeding.
The effort had sapped me of all energy. The chemicals on the rag I had inhaled were still taking their toll. I drifted into an agitated sleep.
Time passed.
“Colm,” Becky screamed, in pain.
I woke up.
“I’m here,” I said.
“I can’t see!” she shouted.
“I’ll be your eyes.”
“It hurts,” she sobbed. She was shivering. “It’s so cold,” she said.
Just outside the murky dungeon, the furnace lay dead, starving me and my sister of heat. It squatted, dumb and oblivious to our needs, for it too had abandoned us, despite my prayers for its fire and warmth. Terror filled and numb with cold, we waited for the dawn. But there was no sunrise, only the faint glow of a dingy twenty-five-watt bulb that flickered intermittently, threatening the cellar with total darkness.
Fever ridden, Becky coughed and wheezed. Her breathing had become a rattle.
Her condition worsened as the bleakness of our days led into the darkness of our nights. Eventually her breathing ceased. My sister was dead.
As I held her lifeless form in my arms, the door to the cellar creaked. It was my father. He descended the stairs, brandishing a hunting knife, eyes on Rebecca.
“You leave her alone!” I screamed.
The force of his blow knocked me against one of the tailor’s mannequins, dismantling it. My mind was set on one thing: I had to protect my sister from his sinful hands. I grabbed the mannequin’s severed arm and charged my father. The limb smashed against his kneecap, sounding as though it had crushed bone.
“You little bastard!”
He lunged for me. But his fractured knee wouldn’t support his bulk. He collapsed, holding the injured joint. “I’m gonna kill you if it’s the last thing I do,” he seethed.
Another blow felled me. I turned my head before passing out from the pain. My eyes caught Mother’s grin and the rolling pin coming at me again.
When I came to, a rope was cutting deeply into my wrists. Pain racked my head. I was hanging from a meathook like a leg of lamb.
Father had skinned Becky. The vulture was standing on the gurney, pecking at her bones. Cutting my sister’s ligaments with its beak, it freed the humerus and tossed it into the air, watching it crash on the concrete floor. The bone cracked apart. The vulture then leaped on the scattered fragments and gobbled them up. Soon, there would be nothing left of my sister. The creature eyed me, ghoulishly.
I kicked my feet wildly, loosening the hook screwed into the moldy beam, and fell to the floor. I grabbed another of the mannequin’s limbs and threw it at the bird. It croaked and flew away, perching on top of the shelving.
I embraced the skeletal remains of my sister. It was now up to me to care for her soul and prevent her bones from further assault. I decided to cremate her. It was the only way to protect her from either predator.
In the murk of the cellar I sniffed the stagnant air for signs of fuel and combustible material. There was a pungency emanating from a darkened corner of our confines. I followed the odor to its source: an abandoned canister of turpentine. Corrosion had fastened the cap tightly, resisting my efforts to open it. I found a clothes iron and brought it crashing down on the can. Turpentine soaked my shirt.
I wielded the iron again, striking the skin of the mannequin. Its guts, clumps of dried wood shavings, spilled out. I scattered them over Becky’s bones.
I unscrewed the lightbulb and pried open the socket. I was rewarded for my efforts by a flash of pain. My eyes, though, hadn’t missed the burst of bluish light that emanated from the tips of my fingers, nor the orange sparks, nor the stench of caramelized insulation wire that seared my nostrils. I’d harness this lightning and direct its bolts at Rebecca.
What witchcraft, what wizardry I was contemplating!
I tore the cable from its mooring and separated the two wires. Solemnly, I approached the heap of bones, sensing their urgency, their longing for rebirth.
As I connected the wires, spears of light cascaded around me, filling the cellar with a haunting luminosity. Fueled by the turpentine, flames blossomed. The lammergeier shrieked as the fire devoured the cellar’s accumulated treasures. Becky’s bones were being embraced by flames, serenaded by fumes.
In the distance I thought I heard my mother scream.
Chapter 85
Driscoll returned from Vermont, frantic. Margaret was missing. In his mind, he played back the voice mail she had left him. She had said that Pierce knew the Benjamin woman was out of pattern. That news was as enlightening as it was unsettling, considering he didn’t know the whereabouts of Margaret. He had left three voice messages on her cellular, and had called her beeper twice, but she hadn’t responded. Where the hell could she be? It was very unlike her not to answer his calls. As he watched the narrow red hand on his office wall clock sweep away the seconds, he worried more and more.
The door opened, and Thomlinson walked into Driscoll’s office holding a magazine. “Old Brookville. You know what an average house goes for in that community?” he asked.
“Why the sudden interest in real estate?”
“$3.9 million! That’s the going price. Location, location, location.”
“You got a career change in mind?”
“That’s where Doctor Pierce hangs his hat. He’s got his home there.”
“That much I know. It’s the only rock I haven’t looked under. But there’ll come a time.”
“Some house. Made the cover of Architectural Digest…June ’98. Here, check it out.”
Thomlinson placed the magazine on Driscoll’s desk, open to a photograph of a palatial facade.
Driscoll read the caption below it: “On the corner of Lilac Grove and Primrose Lane lies the eighteenth-century residence of Doctor Colm F. Pierce.”
The Lieutenant pushed aside the article and stared at Thomlinson. He was about to speak when he was interrupted by the electronic voice of his computer: “You’ve got mail” it sounded.
“Let it be Margaret,” he prayed.
It wasn’t. It was from someone called Paradox. Driscoll looked at Thomlinson, shrugged his shoulders and clicked the Read icon.
Darling Lieutenant,
Bad karma with Godsend, you ask? Well, you can bend me over and tan my hide if I tell you a lie. I went and answered the man’s ad hoping to find my first love. All looked promising until I met with the dude. Seems he wasn’t too thrilled I was…shall we say…less than what he was expecting. I’m what those ratty-ass people call a tranvestite. A rootin’ tootin’ he-she! Well, anyway, your Godsend takes one look at me, rumples up his whitey-ass face and speeds off…The bitch. That sucker done me wrong, dude! Dissin’ me. Can you believe that shit? Call me, honey, my number is 718-545-2134.
Paradox
Driscoll reached for the desk phone and punched in the number. A husky voice answered on the third ring.
“This is Lieutenant Driscoll. Is this Paradox?”
“It sure be, sugar.”
“I just read your e-mail. You’re telling me you saw the man?”
“The monkey-faced white dude, you mean? Yessir. I saw him. He took me for a hundred dollars, that mama’s boy, and there ain’t no way I’m gonna get it back.”
“If I scan you a photo of the man could you ID him?”
“I was hopin’ for a picture of you, sweetie-pie.”