Conspiracy of Ravens Page 10

  “I moved around for a few months, then decided to go to college. I was nineteen when they died, so not too late for school. I landed in Harrisburg and decided to be a cop.”

  “Why? Was your dad a cop?”

  I could feel his smile, hear it in his voice. “No, he was a tour guide, offering trail riding on horseback through Amish country. He was too gentle for the harshness of police work.”

  I learned he’d been married once. He met her in college. She was his literature professor and thirteen years his senior. “No one in class paid much attention to her at first. She was just another teacher, you know? College kids don’t always think of their professors as actual people.

  “Then, that spring, she started to change from this frumpy older lady to a beautiful woman. Of course, she had been all along, but we shallow youths didn’t notice until she bloomed before our eyes. She came in one day with her hair down, instead of up in a bun as usual, and one of the girls asked her where she had gotten her hair done. She said nowhere, it always looked like that, and the girl said she looked beautiful, which is what we were all thinking. I’ll never forget what she said.” I looked up at him to see his mouth quirk as he recited: “In winter’s cloak, I hide away; retreat inside my safest day; until the breath of spring appears; brings away those shadowed years; youth’s visage, it never stays, yet holds the eye; in light, it stays.”

  “That’s lovely,” I said, and meant it.

  “It was lovely and so was she. At least two of her male students asked her out before the end of class that day but she shot them down, saying she didn’t date students. So I waited until I graduated and then asked her out, pointing out I wasn’t a student anymore.”

  “And she went for it?”

  “Hell no. But I was persistent and I wore her down. She finally agreed, with great reluctance, to coffee in the cafeteria. We were married a year later and a year after that, she was gone.”

  “I’m so sorry.” I snuggled closer, offering comfort.

  He rubbed my arm where it lay across his chest. “So, I moved back here, fixed up the old homestead, and waited around for you to show up.” He kissed my forehead, eyes full of ocean waves of sadness and love. I answered the look in the only way possible, with my body and my soul.

  In the afterglow of our lovemaking, the dark stillness of night, I admitted out loud what I feared to say in daylight.”

  “I can...do things. Like her.” There was no mistaking who I meant.

  “I know,” Brad’s answer echoed in the darkened room.

  “Are you afraid of me?”

  He sighed. “I’ll never be afraid of you.”

  “But you were, weren’t you? I saw, at the prison, you were scared of me.” Tears filled my eyes.

  He pulled me up, noses and foreheads touching, only the pale light of the moon filtering through the sheer curtains revealing the whites of his eyes and the flash of his teeth. “I was never afraid of you, Sophia,” he whispered. “I’m afraid for you.”

  He kissed me tenderly, twice, before whispering, “I love you.”

  We slept then, one in peaceful slumber and the other tormented by blue, blood-streaked corpses of infants, dressed in clothing made of ink black raven’s feathers.

  14-Temperance

  Before returning to the prison later the next day, Brad took me shopping for new clothes as he’d promised. There was a distance between us now, a wedge somehow caused by the events of the preceding day. I was confused. He said he loved me, but today he acted as though I was a stranger. I know he’d spoken to Rick. My cell phone showed a phone call last night when I was...unable to function briefly. What had Rick said to him? I vowed to find out later.

  I went through the motions of choosing items of clothing mechanically. It wasn’t the fun outing either of us imagined the day before, I thought. We went back to the hotel to drop my new things off and so I could change. He let me out at the entrance, saying he had work to do and that he’d see me when I got there. I watched him drive away in his Jeep, laden with bags and a heavy heart.

  I dragged my feet getting ready, calling Rick a few times and getting voicemail each time. I didn’t arrive at the prison until noon, well past my typically early arrival time of nine in the morning. The group of ravens--a conspiracy, my brain supplied, how apt-- increased to ten. One was smaller than the rest, a fledgling with downy feathers ruffling in the breeze. I felt bile rise to the back of my throat at the significance of an infant among their ranks.

  Brad was not waiting for me on the steps. I sort of suspected he wouldn’t be after the morning’s shopping debacle. I slumped forward in my seat, resting my forehead on the steering wheel.

  For a moment, I considered just quitting, heading back to Philly, back to my life and my empty apartment, where the cupboard doors opened and closed without human hands touching them, according to my subconscious whims. Where my bed sat, cold as iron. Briefly, I wondered if I were a witch, why couldn’t I just spell myself not to love him, or for him not to love me, or to love all of me, even the abnormal parts. Of course, I knew the answer, either by instinct or some other means. Love is a force of nature, uncontrolled and uncontrollable.

  Wearily, I climbed from the car and slammed the door, consigning myself to another day in the presence of evil. Not before I had it out with Brad once and for all, I decided right then. I remembered painfully how much of a shadow I’d been before I met Brad, before any of this happened. I thought of what Rick said, how he didn’t want to see me just trying to be like everyone else, wearing ‘normal’ like it was ill-fitting clothing. I would not be that girl, slogging wearily through life and pretending to be something I wasn’t! I shed my apathy like a discarded robe. I was going to fight for what I wanted, dammit. No cold, lonely bed and no more denying what I was. I would have my way. I wrenched open the double wood doors and strode down the hallway to Brad’s office door, yanking it open and all but hurtling inside. He stood by his desk, his handsome face wearing an astonished expression.

  I rushed over to him and wrapped myself around him, searing his lips with my own. He buried his hands in my hair and crushed my mouth with the force of his emotions but I didn’t care. I broke contact only when I could no longer breathe, “I love you.”

  The force of my oath rippled through the air, pulling books from the shelves and knocking papers to the floor where they swirled in intricate dances before settling in random patterns around the room. It brushed through his hair and brightened all the colors in the room, making his eyes glow like blue stars. The oath tore through me, proclaiming my body and soul as his. We stood together, bound by love, as though we dwelled in the eye of a powerful storm. He never flinched, accepting all of me in that instant. His choice, his fate, his destiny...sealed with mine forever.

  ****

  “I’ll be right there at the cell door the whole time,” Brad said as we slowly made our way to Catherine’s cell. “She’s been quiet all night, the swing and grave shifts told me earlier. Plus I’ve got some news from Yoakum, and the lawyer finally called to say the psychiatrist will be here tomorrow. We’re getting somewhere, honey, just keep hanging in there, but absolutely no more antics like what you pulled yesterday.” He glared at me, a little, which reminded me of my stupidity from the day before. He couldn’t be too mad at me though...I’d just pledged my life, my soul, to his. It still glowed in his eyes, blinding me. I can see that now.

  “She can mind-fuck me all day without touching me, if she wants,” I said, frustrated. I needed to be able to repeat yesterday in some way. If I could find exact body locations, we could get the ball rolling on this bitch. “You know there are more ravens on the gate every day. What the fuck are they doing there? Do you think she’s calling them, somehow?”

  “Honey, just promise. It’s not worth losing your mind to her. Stay out of her reach. I don’t know how to help you with...well, the parts I don’t really understand. I know that after she touched you, you went into shock and then you were nearly cat
atonic for hours. You’re no use to yourself, me, or this investigation in that condition,” he pleaded.

  “Okay. I promise I’ll stay away from her. Hey,” I stopped him before he could keep walking. “What did Rick say when you called him yesterday?”

  “He told me to give you space to figure things out on your own and that he’d never heard your voice so full of love as when you spoke my name.”

  In full view of his officers, I kissed him soundly and he kissed me back. We were reckless. I fully believed our oath of love would protect us both.

  I tried to put the past twenty-four hours out of my mind and concentrate on the task at hand, getting through another session with Catherine. I felt invincible, as if there was nothing Catherine could do to me now, with Brad’s love bolstering me, giving me strength. I have never been so wrong.

  She launched straight into confession mode when I entered her cell, to my surprise. I’d expected some type of commentary on my personal life, but I barely had time to sit before her voice rang out, loud and clear and determined.

  “Temperance was a two raven card,” she began. Her eyes were closed as she spoke. I could see her eyeballs rolling wildly in their sockets beneath the delicate skin of her eyelids, thin blue veins tracing the porcelain skin. This was a new tactic. My voice recorder, returned by Brad, was rolling in my pocket but I was glad for the video camera in the corner, capturing this odd behavior. She looked as though she were a young child reciting an oft told story, or catechism. I shifted in my seat, uneasy. Something was wrong.

  “Catherine?” I made her name a question. “Are you okay?”

  “Two ravens, flapping aimlessly around in Rainsburg,” she intoned. “But it wasn’t raining, not then. It was summer, and beautiful. I ran out of gas a ways from town but I didn’t mind. I started walking up the shoulder of the highway and it wasn’t too long before two guys in a beat up green Ford pickup stopped for me, offered me a ride. I had to sit in the cab between them, their meaty thighs touching mine on either side. It was disgusting,” the murderess shuddered delicately, eyes still closed.

  “They talked a lot, those two. Cawing, true ravens. Ravens and crows are called corvids, did you know? My two corvids were forty years old, both of them, they told me. They were twins, the fraternal kind, not the identical kind. When I heard that I heard, too, the excited whisper of the dark lord’s glee echoing through me. ‘Temperance’, he sang and I found later that was indeed the card the brothers drew. They were oblivious, talking one after the other. I remember their names because of that book. I’m not stupid, you know.” This last was said with some heat, as if she had gleaned my assessment of her intelligence level. And of course, she had.

  I tried anyway. “I know you’re not stupid. What book, Catherine? Were they named for characters in a book? And why aren’t you looking at me?”

  “So much power today,” she whispered, giggling like a naughty child. Her eyelids did not flutter from their closed position, however, and I shifted in my seat.

  “The book is where their mom got the idea for their names. The one driving was Jules, a big guy with a barrel chest and a short beard. Handsome, I guess, if you like that sort of thing. Does Officer Shaw have a big cock, Sophia?”

  “That’s none of your business. We’ve been over this, Catherine. What was the other twin’s name?”

  “Do you love it, what he does to you? His hands on you while he stuffs himself inside...”

  “Catherine, I’m done talking about that. It’s frankly beneath you and insulting to me. Now, your lawyer is coming here tomorrow with a psychiatrist to analyze you. Most likely they will move to deem you unfit to stand trial. I will be required to hand over my tapes and our conversations here will be through. I will also probably never be able to speak to you again. Do you have a story to finish or would you prefer to dwell on my sex life?” My voice raised, I slammed my hand down on the table’s surface for emphasis. It stung my palm but the instant she finally opened her eyes, my pain was forgotten and replaced by fear. Adrenaline spiked through me like a shot of caffeine.

  Her oddly beautiful green-blue splotched eyes had been replaced with orbs of pure black, like the pupil had leaked and oozed into the surface of her eyes, leaving no color behind. They sparkled beneath the harsh fluorescent bulb like polished bits of onyx. I gasped involuntarily, then screamed and covered my mouth when next she spoke.

  “You will listen to what I have to say, white witch,” Catherine boomed in a voice that was not her own. No longer musical, like the voice of a siren, what issued forth from her shapely mouth was deep, dragged over shards of glass, and bleeding with contempt and darkness. Her black eyes pierced me, pinning me to my spot.

  From my peripheral vision, I could see Brad draw his gun. I watched Catherine’s head move in his direction and I knew I needed to get control of the situation.

  “Catherine! Tell me about the other twin!” I shouted.

  Her head turned back to me, empty eyes regarding me with a phantom’s watchful gaze filled with void. I felt like an insect pinned to a specimen board. I concentrated on increasing my own calmness, using my power to shield myself as I had before and slow my heartbeat. Radiating good energy, I used my gift with purpose, unsure if I was doing any good but desperate to block out fear and finish this for good.

  I was marginally successful because when Catherine next spoke, her voice was her own, though her eyes remained black and fathomless.

  “The other one was hideous, a deformed freak. His name was Verne. Get it? Jules and Verne? He looked like one of those creatures. What were those creatures called?”

  I hesitated. “Which creatures?”

  “You know, the ones in the ground...the guy found them when he went there in his time machine. What were they called?”

  “I think you mean the book called ‘The Time Machine’ but it was written by H.G. Wells, not Jules Verne.”

  She sounded crestfallen. “Jules Verne didn’t write that one?”

  “No, he did write other things though. He wrote ‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’ and...”

  Catherine started banging her head hard against the wooden surface of the table. Alarmed, I stood up and reached for her. I was stopped by a shout from Brad. “SOPHIA! NO!”

  I stopped. So did she. She raised her head, blood running from a cut on her forehead and mingling with tears streaming from her eyes. The bloody tears pooled on her chin and dripped, pat, pat, pat, onto the tabletop.

  “I am stupid! You were right. I can’t even get the damn books right!” she sobbed.

  Incredibly I found myself comforting her. “No, you’re not stupid. Those are hard books to get through. I never even read ‘20,000 Leagues’ myself.”

  Her tone was hopeful, mitigated somewhat by the creepy blacked out eyes. “Really?”

  “I swear it. Do...do you want to tell me what happened to the twins?”

  “Okay,” she sniffled and wiped her nose with her prison uniform sleeve, handcuffs rattling. Her eyes were still black, no hint of color bleeding back into their centers. “So, they picked me up, and I had the Temperance card, and they were so ‘out of balance’ it wasn’t even funny. You know what I mean? Like the longer I rode with them, the more I noticed how Jules had gotten all the good stuff and Verne got all the shit. It didn’t seem right. I decided to fix it. Fixing nature’s mistake was like an in your face moment to the Goddess and the dark lord seemed to really like that idea.

  I told them a sad story about how I was starting over because my baby had died and the daddy left me after it happened. I said I’d decided to just get in the car and go as far as I could and wherever I stopped is where I’d get a fresh new life.

  “Verne said a lot of nice things, like, “Oh you poor thing!’ and ‘I can’t believe any man would leave a pretty thing like you!” “And right when you needed him the most!”

  “Jules waited until his brother ran out of steam and then he said, “You got no place to stay and no job yet. Plus your car
’s run outta gas. You’d best stay with us a spell until you get your feet under you.”

  “Normally, I’d never agree to stay with two strange men but they had this thing about them. Some kind of aura I couldn’t really make out, and I’m pretty good with auras and reading thoughts and stuff like that. Maybe you noticed?

  “Anyway. It was like they was two nice grizzly bears that came out of the woods and decided to be people.”

  Catherine’s demeanor and tone changed entirely, adopting a country twang, her inflection and grammar becoming completely different than normal. It was like she was putting on a new persona and it rattled me.

  “I said okay,” she continued, “and they both just beamed at me like I was a new pet or something. They chatted back and forth in that way they had, one starting a sentence and the other finishing it. Jules drove us to their house, which was a real nice place, settled back in the woods a ways. We had to bump down a dirt lane for a while to get to it and it was super-hot, the end of June almost. Verne and his monster face showed me to a spare bedroom when we got there. It was nice, kinda plain. There was a bed with a quilt on it and a nightstand, nothing fancy. But it was real homey. It had its own bathroom, which was a huge plus.

  “I just sort of stayed a while. Jules went back for my car the next day and put some gas in it. He parked it by his truck and never said another word about it. I don’t know if he went through it to find info on me, which wouldn’t have helped because I threw everything out that wouldn’t match my story.”

  “Catherine, who did you tell them you were? I mean, what name do you give your victims? Do you make one up, or tell them the truth?”

  “Oh I always tell them my real name. It’s where part of the power comes from. There is great power in a name, you know that Sophia. Stop interrupting,” she scolded. “So anyway, both twins just took me at face value and took me in. As the days went on I sort of felt affection for the big goofs. They were like the brothers I’d never had. Even Verne with his fucked up face and slow ways was kind of sweet.