Why was she tied to this bed? Where was her husband? She called to him.
“Regis! Regis, help me!”
Then her legs began to tremble violently. She tried but couldn't control the shaking, which became more and more spastic. Her arms followed suit, flapping up and down on the short tethers as if she were being electrocuted.
Without the tethers she might have whacked herself in the face. Perhaps that's what they were for.
The tremors subsided, and a memory flickered in her mind, so quickly that it might have been simply a fleeting thought and not a memory at all. A memory of her mother, tethered to a bed like she was, cursing uncontrollably.
“Mother was sick,” she said aloud, alone in her hospital bed.
This was a hospital, wasn't it? The walls were white. The bed had rails. There was medical equipment on a cart next to her. But when she listened, there were no other noises. Weren't hospitals noisy places, full of comings and goings and doctors and nurses and intercoms? If this wasn't a hospital, where was she?
“Regis!” she called out. “Regis, where am I! Help me, Regis!”
The door opened, and an old man walked in. He looked so familiar, but she couldn't place him. He was dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. Not a doctor. A visitor?
“I'm here, Helen. It's me.”
“Do I know you?”
“It's Regis, Helen. Your husband.”
“Bullshit,” she spat. “My husband is a young man. You're an old fart!”
Rather than seem shocked, or even bothered by her outburst, the man simply picked up a hand mirror from one of the medical carts. He held it in front of her.
My God! She was old! How did she get so old?
“We're both old, Helen. You don't remember because you have Huntington's Disease. You've had it for many years now.”
“Oh my Lord.”
The spike of realization pierced her heart. She remembered now—this awful disease that she inherited from her mother. It debilitated the nervous system, causing memory and motor function loss. The tethers were there to hold her arms down when the chorea hit—frenzied palsies that she couldn't control.
“Oh I remember, Regis, oh dear Lord I remember.”
He held her close, running his hands over the back of her head.
“It will be okay soon, Helen. I promise. Things are happening. We'll leave here soon, get you better medical treatment. There's hope. They're making new advancements in gene therapy every day.”
His words didn't cheer her. While they were admittedly hopeful, her husband's delivery was wrong. He was saying it like it was something he'd memorized and repeated a hundred times before.
And then it occurred to her... what if he had said it a hundred times before?
The chorea hit again, and he held her quivering body until it passed.
“I... love you... Regis.”
“I love you too, Helen. Do you want to sleep for a while?”
She nodded. “And I'm thirsty.”
He poured some water from a pitcher on a nearby table and held the glass while she drank. He also checked her diaper, which he found to be clean. She began to cry at the indignity of it.
“Oh, Regis...”
“Shh. I've got something that will help.” Regis went to the medicine cabinet hanging on the far wall and removed a syringe and a bottle. He extracted some liquid like a pro.
“Regis, dear, where did you learn to do that?”
He put on a weak smile. “Just a little something to help you sleep and help with the seizures.”
“Are you sure you can do this?”
He nodded, and placed a hand on her face to stroke her cheek.
The shot didn't hurt at all. As she began to get drowsy, she concentrated on her husband's words.
“He has powers, Helen. Amazing powers. It'll all be okay soon. I promise.”
“Who has powers, Regis?” she asked.
“Bub does, Helen. Everything will be okay soon.”
She tried to focus on him and smiled. “I know it will, dear. I love you.”
“I love you too, Helen. Sweet dreams.”
She drifted off to sleep, thinking about her husband, wondering how he got so old.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Faith would be a thing of the past.
Electrified by the idea, Father Michael Thrist stared at Bub. The beast crouched in front of the Plexiglas while Andy, Sun, and Dr. Belgium pointed out the ABCs on a chalkboard. Could this demon be the thing Thrist had been searching for all these years?
Michael entered the priesthood thirty years ago. A double threat—severe acne and a facial tic than caused him to blink and twitch his upper lip at inopportune moments—made college hell, even at a prestigious school like Notre Dame.
Sophomore year he switched his major from biology to theology, partly because he believed he'd never get a date in his life, but mostly because he found science woefully inadequate to explain the many mysteries of the universe.
After completing his pre-theologate, he served as a deacon for two years at a small church in Gary, Indiana. The area was poor, with one of the highest murder rates in the US. When he received the sixth sacrament and entered the priesthood, he requested a transfer from the archdiocese.
Then came his ascension, as he liked to call it. Which lead him to his current position at Samhain, and to watching a linguist and a vet try teach a demon ABC’s.
Shotzen leaned over and whispered to Thrist, “Soon they'll be roasting marshmallows and singing campfire songs.”
Thrist ignored the comment. Couldn't Shotzen see what was before them? How could he remain skeptical? If anyone should be skeptical, it was Thrist. He'd had the training.
After Indiana, Michael had been assigned to a low income Hispanic neighborhood on Chicago's west side. Though fluent in Spanish—a natural extension of the Latin he learned in school—his new flock never accepted an Anglo as one of their own, especially one whose was always winking and twitching the left side of his face.
He'd been there for a year when the altar boy came to his room, jabbering about a miracle. A local woman had a painting of the Virgin Mary that was crying tears of blood. Thrist had gone to see for himself.
“You're not buying this, are you?” Shotzen whispered, interrupting his reverie.
“What do you mean?” Thrist replied. “And what's with the whispering?”
“Shh! Come here, in private.”
The Rabbi ushered the priest out of his chair and over to the corner of the room, between the data banks of the Cray computer.
“Don't you see what I see?” Shotzen urged, his cherubic eyes looking very serious.
“What do you see, Rabbi?”
“Bub, the demon. I think he already knows English. This is all deception.”
“Ridiculous.”
“If it were an angel in there, instead of a devil, wouldn't you think it already knew English? If this thing is from the pits of hell, surely they know English in hell? If hell exists, the English have been going there for a thousand years.”
“But if he did know English already, why pretend otherwise?”
“Baalzebub is the master of lies, Father. It is his nature to deceive. You said so yourself. Perhaps he's buying some time.”
“Buying time until what?”
The chubby holy man shrugged.
Thrist stopped short of rolling his eyes. “Look, Rabbi, the creature has only been awake for a week. He was discovered in Panama, which, the last time I checked, is not an English-speaking country. He'd been buried since the time of the Mayans. It's hardly likely he knows English.”
Shotzen folded his arms. “I'm convinced he's deceiving us.”
“Do you at least agree he's a demon?”
“I'm undecided. You're the debunking expert, yet you seem to be eating this up.”
“If Bub's a fake, I can't spot it.” Thrist said. “And I’m good at spotting deception.”
The bleeding painting had been unremarkable in its execution, a typical pieta scene. But streaking down the Virgin's face were trails of blood, and a puddle the size of a throw rug was pooling on the floor.