Faith of the Divine Inferno - Leslie Thompson (best short novels of all time TXT) 📗

disarmed and restrained. You have stated that Detective Shaw was speaking and behaving like he was mentally ill or intoxicated. The Reverend and three men were required to restrain him until two uniformed officers arrived to take him into custody. Do you remember who called the police?”
What was going on here? That wasn’t what had happened and I didn’t remember anything after Shaw and I were finally subdued. Ryerson and his group appeared to be perfectly fine despite being shot and beaten. They didn’t even have blood on their clothes. I felt at my belt and discovered that both of my batons were gone.
“Shaw called the police when we were trying to get away,” I murmured in confusion. Why would I lie to the police? The detective was staring at me intently now, watching me while I tried to sort out what was going on.
“Why don’t you sit down?” he suggested as he gently took my arm and guided me to a nearby patrol car. One of the back doors was open, and I sat down so that my legs stuck out the side. I struggled to remember what had happened, but the only thing I could remember between the fight and this moment was Ryerson’s grotesque face staring down at me.
“He’s done something to me,” I muttered, frowning. It made sense; Ryerson had proven capable of altering my perception of reality when he stretched out the hallway, so he could easily get into my head if he wanted to. I have never encountered a person who could do this before, so I had not developed any defenses against such an attack. I would remedy that problem before I went after the man again.
“What did Shaw do?” the detective asked softly.
“He saved me. Ryerson is the one who screwed with my head,” I growled. The more I contemplated the things Ryerson could have done to me, the angrier I got. I felt violated and embarrassed, two sensations I liked the least. The detective’s face was wrinkled with confusion and he stood up to think. Finally, he called a pair of paramedics over and they came at me with their instruments. I pushed them away, not wanting to be poked and prodded again.
The detective was speaking softly to one of the paramedics about me, keeping their voices low so that I couldn’t make out was they were saying. I didn’t bother to eavesdrop. I had already figured out that they thought I had taken a head injury or that I was being coerced. Their problem was that they didn’t know if they could believe what I was saying about whom. If I were them, I would have already given up on me as a viable witness.
I heard Shaw give an angry curse, and I stood up out of the car to see what was happening. Alejandro was making his way across the parking lot toward us with the pretty girl in tow. She was still in her cult uniform of a white shirt and yellow skirt, and she was still beautiful as she clung fearfully to the taller man’s arm. Shaw jumped out of the ambulance where he had been held, and he hurried toward Alejandro, trailing cops and emergency workers behind him.
“You two were there,” Shaw called to them. “Will you please tell the police what had happened?”
Alejandro put his arm around Mabel and cuddled her against his side as he faced the men advancing on him. His dark eyes glittered with anger as they slid over the Reverend and his people, then he made contact with me and quirked a questioning brow at me. I shook my head and shrugged. I didn’t know what to tell him to do. The police already thought that I was nuts. Nothing I could say would make things better.
“Rebecca and Detective Shaw were attacked by Ryerson and his people,” Alejandro explained as if he thought everyone was insane for thinking that Shaw had done anything wrong. Every cop in earshot exchanged frustrated looks and shook their heads in disgust. From his place, Dorman called Alejandro a liar, while one of the women went into hysterics. The detective that had been interviewing me bellowed for people to calm down before he hauled the whole lot of us to the station where we could sit in a jail cell while we waited our turn to be interrogated.
Everyone calmed down after that, and we were separated and questioned again while the Crime Scene Investigators went into the church and processed the scene. For my part, I was finally able to give the Detective Nelson Chayne the truth, minus the weird parts that he wouldn’t have believed anyway. I also neglected to tell him that I was the victim of a kidnapping case. Again, I wanted to avoid the police attention to my personal activities.
Chayne hadn’t been as sympathetic as he had been before, but he wrote down everything I said, asking questions only when I paused. When I was finished, he tried to poke holes in my story, trying to find a lie in the tale, but I held firm. He finally let me go as the crime scene technicians were packing things up and leaving.
“Stay in town please,” Chayne told me, handing me his card. “Call me if you think of anything. I’ll contact you if I have any more questions.” I acknowledged him with a nod and tucked the card in my back pocket. I wasn’t going anywhere, although it would probably be a good idea if I did.
As I walked to my car, I noticed that a middle aged Mexican couple was rushing up to Mabel with their arms thrown wide to embrace her, they babbled incoherently in Spanish as they rained kisses down on the girl and frantically thanked Alejandro. Another cop wandered over to investigate that scene, and soon the girl and her parents were ushered away. Shaw was grim faced as he listened to a man and then he too was escorted to a vehicle and was gone.
“Can I get a ride?” I turned to find Alejandro standing behind me, looking beleaguered and hopeful. I scowled at him and shook my head.
“You should call the safe house to have someone to come and get you. I’m going home,” I answered. I got into my car and locked the doors so that Alejandro couldn’t jump in. I made sure he had to jump out if my way as I drove off. Ha-ha!
My bed is quite possibly the most fabulous thing in the entire world. When I was as young as I looked, I slept on a straw pallet that had to be beaten and smoked every few months to keep the fleas out of it. After that, I had a long sack stuffed with rags that had to be taken apart and washed if I wanted to keep bedbugs out of it. Then there was a feather mattress that sagged in the middle after a couple of months of sleeping on it, and half the lice that lived in it came from the geese the feathers were plucked from.
Now I sleep on the best mattress money can buy. It has a divine space age design guaranteed to make me feel as content and comfortable as a swaddled babe without annoying springs to poke at me in the night. My maid had come while I was out, and she had put cool silk sheets over the mattress and covered it with my goose-down comforter, all of which was vermin free. This is one more reason why I love the modern age. The bugs usually stayed outside where they belonged.
I had fallen asleep almost as soon as my head touched the pillow and I dreamed. I was standing in a massive cavern with weird formations that looked like they had been poured from melted wax. In the center was a large thermal pool, common in the caves that surrounded my birthplace in the Buda side of the Danube River. I had spent my childhood exploring these caverns with their corridors carved out of the rock by time and rushing water. I had always imagined that the strange rock formations looked like twisted images of the people who used to live within them, back before the first structure was built of wattle and daub. By the time I was born, they served as a safe haven when raiders came to pillage and rape in our town. And they were my secret refuge when my father was home from his travels to distant lands and he was deep into his cups.
I had learned early to stay away from home when Father was there; railing bitterly at Mother for his lost youth, and hitting my two elder brothers because they inevitably stood up to him in her defense. So I spent all of my free time exploring the labyrinths beneath our home, stashing foods and what bits of small comforts that I could carry with me.
My dreams of these hot and humid caverns had always been soothing ones, full of happy discoveries in the dark, and the reliable safety of perfect solitude. However, this dream was different from all the ones before it. There was a hint of something fetid in the heavy air, and I felt an itch between my shoulder blades like I was not alone. In the weird light of the dream, my immediate area was easily visible in the strange gray light created by the mist, and I searched my surroundings looking for the source of my unease.
“Give me your name,” came the cold hissing that curled around me like the thick steam rising from the pool. My every muscle was taut and singing with tension as I searched the strange gray light for the source of the words. I saw nothing there, only the familiar stalagmite that had a smooth round crevice at its base. I went to it and touched the warm rock, remembering how I had made a nest of this place, so that I would be comfortable when I spent the night away from home.
“Your name, tell me your name.” I turned this way and that, seeing nothing that should not have been there. It was then I noticed that the thermal pool had grown, slowly spreading its sulfurous waters across the slick floor. The center of the pool began to boil as more water jetted out of the living rock. Water filled the cave by inches, and then rushed upward by many feet.
“Tell me your name,” came the insistent voice. “Speak the words, or all is lost.”
In the blink of an eye, I was fighting to keep my head above the water as a heavy current pulled ruthlessly at my legs. Without warning, something hard and slimy grasped my ankle and dragged me down below the surface. The water burned as I kicked my legs uselessly to free myself and swim back to air. The heat intensified, making my nerves rage painfully as my flesh began to boil from my bones. I forgot myself in my agony and screamed the last of my breath away.
Then my lungs were full of scorching water and I was drowning. My body wracked itself in its struggle to get a breath of air until there