Hallowed Read online

  “What are you playing at, Hank?”

  “Do you think the sudden resurrection of the Tatum girl is coincidental?”

  “Her name is Courtney Noble,” Dad stated, making sure to add extra emphasis to the woman’s given name. “There’s no proof that she’s the person she claims to be. You seem to think there’s a connection between this woman and the killings.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Oh yeah. Her own delusions. There’s that,” Dad quipped. “There’s no tangible string of causation connecting the two events across a thirty-five year gap of time.”

  “Tangible string?” Hank looked at Dad and sighed. “You always had that problem seeing the intangible.”

  “What? Is this a faith thing, Hank? Is that what this is?”

  “She told us that Paul knows how the killer will be caught.”

  My uncle turned and made eye contact with me simply to acknowledge that he knew I had been there all along, then turned back to Dad.

  “She also told us that our family is in danger,” Uncle Hank said. She had told me the exact same thing. If she was crazy, at least she was a consistent kook.

  “We have a highly technical term for that at the department,” Dad grunted. “Psychobabble.”

  “Until I read the letter, I would have said the exact same thing.” He handed the letter back to my father. “Now I see, whether by dumb luck or divine will, that she was right about that part. I think we owe it to ourselves and to the souls of every innocent life that was taken by this madman to investigate every possibility.”

  “Well Hank, you sound just like my goddamn son.”

  Shock was my first instinct at the words of profanity between the two men, one a law-man and the other a priest.

  But then I saw my uncle smirk and slap my father on the back, and I realized that beyond their public roles, they were, first and foremost, brothers, whose expressions of love and respect took on a different flavor than the love shared between sisters or even between parent and child.

  “Sounds like a pretty straight-thinking, well-raised kid to me.”

  They shared a laugh. It was one of the few times I’d ever saw evidence of the boys they once were.

  Dad finally turned and did a double-take when he spotted me eavesdropping. “Obviously, you heard this whole conversation. Now do you understand why I didn’t want her talking to you?”

  Uncle Hank looked at me, staring steadily into my eyes. Suddenly, a look so clearly uncomfortable came over my uncle’s face. In that moment, I knew he knew my secret. Somehow he knew.

  “I talked to her at mass on Sunday.”

  My father seared me with a white hot glare, his jaw hardening.

  “We were surrounded by the entire congregation.”

  He shook his head and planted his foot on the top step. I shudder to think what he might have done had Uncle Hank not been there. “Paul,” he moaned.

  “I was sure I’d get something that might help the investigation.”

  “Did you?” he asked sarcastically.

  “No,” I answered. “Just this thing about the house.”

  Like twins from the same womb, my father and my uncle lifted their heads with identical wide-eyed expressions of dismay.

  “Which house?” my uncle snapped. I’d not heard that edge to his voice before.

  My voice emerged wispily, like my breath had been knocked out of me in a long fall: “The house she was held in. The house where you and Dad found her. She thinks it still exists.”

  My uncle glanced at my father, but Dad was staring off into the space above my right shoulder with a look of dread, the kind that can only incubate in the hearts of the very young at a time when monsters under the bed were still very real possibilities. The look was so focused that I came very close to glancing over my shoulder to see what it was that had frightened him so much. Of course, whatever he saw was now thirty-five years gone, albeit still very fresh in his memory.

  “That house was destroyed,” he said in an unnaturally loud voice.

  I looked at my uncle and I could see the seed of doubt in his expression. For if a girl you thought was long dead rises from her grave, why not a house? Then I recalled what Tracy Tatum had said to me in the confessional.

  If something existed once, can you ever really say when it’s gone that it leaves nothing behind?

  “It was destroyed in a fire,” Dad repeated, like a mantra.

  Before I could stop myself the words spilled out: “Mom told me that the house was torn down to make room for a housing development.”

  A look passed between the two men. Finally, my uncle spoke up: “The truth is, we don’t really know.”

  “It was a gas leak from somewhere, started the fire,” Dad offered. “It was carbon monoxide poisoning that made us see…” Dad’s voice trailed off. He gave a wave of dismissal and turned away from us to look at the lake. It seemed like a non-sequitur, but it showed the momentum of his mind.

  Uncle Hank gave a single shake of his head, and he cast a look over my left shoulder that chilled my blood. Whatever was so interesting behind my back was making me a little nervous.

  “So what’s there now? Is it an empty lot?” I asked, attempting to bring the conversation back to specifics.

  Neither of them answered. They really didn’t even seem to hear me. They seemed to be listening to other voices—voices from thirty-five years ago.

  “I… don’t know,” Uncle Hank answered.

  “I understand that you’re a little suspicious that Claudia and I might try and go there, but I just want you to know that…”

  “No, Paul, you misunderstand me,” he continued, casting a glance back at Dad, who averted his eyes with something akin to shame, something I wasn’t used to seeing from my father. “We don’t remember where that house had been.”

  I stared at my uncle, considering only briefly if he were lying, then the reality of the situation sunk in. I was questioning the honesty of a clergyman. Perhaps, my father would have tried to pull an “I’m doing this for your own good” type white lie, but not my uncle. He was completely on the level.

  Then I remember the words the Tatum woman had said to me when I asked her about the location: “I don’t know anymore.”

  Time… had a funny way of slipping past in the darkness.

  A shiver went through me then, and I gave an unconscious jerk in response.

  My eyes found my father’s, and after a moment, he gave me a nod of agreement.

  “Can I please see the letter again?”

  Dad passed me the note with a suspicious look.

  I pointed to the last word of the text before the signature. “Graves.” It had been clipped from a periodical, that much was for certain, as the size and type of font didn’t match the surrounding text. “I think I might know where this is from.”

  I told him about the news article Mom kept in her Bible, the one from the Austin American Statesmen that told about the rescue of Tracy Tatum. Obviously, he hadn’t known that she had kept it, because he was visibly upset at first, but quickly disappeared with his cell phone, leaving me and Uncle Hank by ourselves.

  I turned and sunk back into the chair. Uncle Hank studied me a moment before saying, “She told me that she spoke to you, y’know?”

  Looking up into the face of my uncle, I knew then that I had to say something even at the risk of sounding crazy and making my case even weaker. “I’ve been having these nightmares… about that house.”

  He frowned at me then and turned eerily into my father for one fleeting moment. “Why do you think that is?”

  “Maybe it’s my mind’s way of filling in missing gaps the only way I know how.”

  “What are you doing in the dreams?”

  “Trying to save someone.” Claudia, I thought to myself. I’m trying to save Claudia.

  “Like your father and I,” he murmured.

  “Uncle Hank, why did you go there in the first place? How did you know Tracy Tatum was there?
”

  He got this look on his face, the sort of look I recall him getting just before he told the punch line of one of his jokes, but his eyes told a different story. “You may not believe this, but I was chasing a girl.” I must have given him a look of dismay because he pretended to take offense. “Yes, as I explained earlier, the same Graves hormones that makes you do crazy, stupid things used to affect me as well, and I went looking for a girl I met at one of the varsity football games.”

  It occurred to me then that I was talking to a man who wasn’t born with a collar around his neck. For the first time, I was considering all the things he must have given up, all the sacrifices he must have made.

  “I remember following this dirt road back into the deep woods and....” He stopped and just sat staring out at the lake for a time, his eyes squinting as if almost catching a glimpse of something but then losing it again. “I think I must have gotten lost, though I’m not completely sure. I recall hearing a child’s voice, and since I already knew about the Tatum girl’s disappearance, I’m guessing that’s what drew me inside the house.”

  “You just went inside this strange house?”

  “I’m sure I must have knocked and when I didn’t get an answer, I must have walked inside, but I’m only working from an assumption. I don’t know why I would have gone any further than that, unless I truly perceived that someone was in danger. I might be brave, but I’m no idiot. I wouldn’t risk life and limb on a whim without some strong reason. Something drove me to enter and search the house for the source of that voice. My faith tells me that it was the Holy Spirit that coaxed me forward.”

  Heat surged through me then. “Uncle Hank, does the Holy Spirit ever speak to you?” I asked in a low, conspiratorial tone, fighting the urge to cast a look over my shoulder for my father. I could hear the distant comforting voices of my family nearby.

  “All the time, Paul. He speaks to all of us in different ways.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” I tried to explain. “Do you ever hear… a voice?”

  He looked at me then and seemed to measure my seriousness. “No, I can’t say that I ever have. You?”

  Suddenly, I felt ridiculously exposed, like a foolish child talking to the wise adult. “I guess I just imagined it,” I lied and rose to go into the house.

  “Paul.” He waited until I looked back before he continued. “If there’s anything you need to talk about, anything at all whether it’s spiritual or not, I’ll always be here to listen. Okay?”

  I gave him a nod and returned inside just in time to catch the backpack that Mom had packed for me thrust it into my arms by Claudia. “We’re rolling out as soon as we get the car loaded.”

  “Honestly? Where to?”

  “Ask Don Corelone Graves. I’m starting to believe we were all put into the witness protection program without our knowledge.”

  Mom, Dad, and Mrs. Wicke all rode together in Dad’s car, Claudia and I with Uncle Hank. A police cruiser met us at the entrance to Highway 98 and escorted us out. We still didn’t know where we were headed, but at least it was back in the direction of home instead of further away.

  Uncle Hank made small talk with us about school and football, until Claudia cut him short impatiently with the question: “What’s the Church’s stance on ghosts?”

  He didn’t seem the least bit surprised. I guess, teaching the occasional CCD class had prepared him for questions like, ‘Do aliens on other planets exist, and if so, will they go to Heaven when they die?’ or ‘If God is all-powerful, can he make a rock so heavy that He himself cannot lift it?’ He must have learned long ago just to roll with it as part of the hazards of the wearing the collar.

  “The Bible says, ‘Humans die only once and afterwards are judged,’ Hebrews, 9:27.”

  “So those who die can’t communicate with those who are living? Is that what the Church believes?”

  He glanced at me briefly. “No, this would be impossible. Communication with those of us that remain on the earthly plane would insinuate a longing for things of the past. When you live in the light of God, there is no such longing for anything else. Essentially, if Heaven is home plate, why would I go back to first?”

  “What if it was to communicate something important to someone you love?”

  He nodded. “Do you know what Purgatory is, Claudia?”

  “It’s kinda like detention for the soul, right? It’s a place where you go to burn for your sins before you can be allowed into Heaven.”

  “Although it might not be a ‘place’ per se, the concept is for a soul that is not fully prepared to be in the presence of true purity, true Holiness, must purge from himself all that keeps him from being fully joined with God. Sin is a distraction and keeps us from the truth of eternal happiness.

  “There are some who believe that since Purgatory may not be a place but instead a concept that is completely separate from time and space and that those who have passed might revisit places or people they have known, maybe to encourage prayer for their souls to heal so that they can get home at last. God might allow the living to see those that have departed, if some good might come of it. There is no agreement on the concept of Purgatory. Protestants, of course, don’t even believe in it themselves.”

  “What about séances?”

  “Strictly forbidden,” he answered casting a stern look in her eyes. “Period.”

  “Why?”

  “Because evil is a creature of opportunity.”

  The bottom dropped out of my stomach, and I looked over at my uncle. It was almost the same words I’d used in Mrs. Herbert’s class the day after the school shooting. A creature of opportunity.

  “There are those who strive to keep us separated from God and will use any means at their disposal to do it. Spiritual manipulation. Violence.”

  Claudia scowled out the window. “Those are all Christian beliefs,” she murmured.

  “Claudia, I can imagine how much you must miss your father, but no matter how much you want him back, no amount of desire in this world can bring him back.”

  She never uttered a word of reply, just continued to look out her window.

  “Nor would you want to bring him back,” Uncle Hank continued. “He’s in a better place that we can only hope one day to share with him.”

  “I’m not sure I believe in a God who would let people like Gabriel roam freely all over the world killing innocents.”

  “The Earth is the dominion of the Enemy,” my uncle answered forcefully. “You should do well to never forget that.”

  Neither of us had much more to say after that.

  Dad let me attend the varsity game that night on the condition that we go as a family. Claudia insisted on going, which meant that Mrs. Wicke would be going as well. I kind of liked everyone traveling everywhere together. It felt very “pack-like.” It was just too bad that the thing bringing us together was tragedy. I couldn’t help but think about a similar time after September 11th when our country, so very briefly, seemed more like one close-knit family instead of a dysfunctional one.

  Claudia sat in the next bleachers over and read a dog-eared copy of “The Zodiac Unmasked” during the game. Sonny tried to strike up a conversation with her a couple of times, but after a few glares at him, he gave a shrug and turned back to the game. Sonny was harmless, I knew, but still this overwhelming, almost irrational sense of protectiveness toward Claudia pervaded the whole of my being, both emotionally and physically. Just as quickly as it bubbled up, though, it also dissipated, and I was back with joking with him and Greg a minute later.

  The halftime show went well, but didn’t improve the morale of our varsity team. During the fourth quarter, word started to filter back that Brent Jacobs, our cornet section leader, was having a pre-Halloween party on Saturday night and was inviting the whole band. I wasn’t big on parties because they usually involved strangers that I would have normally disliked if I’d met them outside of a social situation, but here I would know everyone, so it sound
ed all right. I was two hundred percent certain that I could talk Claudia into it, because her alternative was hanging out in a strange hotel room with her mother. The real question, though, was if my retired law enforcement officer father would go for it.

  At first, his inclination was “no,” but I explained to Mom that she knew Mr. and Mrs. Jacobs and that it would be at their house. When she asked if there would be alcohol, I answered, “Of course not.”

  When she gave me one of her appraising looks, I went even further. “Look around. We’re nerds and band geeks. Who would be cool enough to get liquor?”

  Sonny, who was sitting within earshot, narrowed his eyes at me.

  Mom said that she would talk to Dad about it, which actually meant that she was in favor but had to talk him into it.

  When I returned to my seat, Sonny turned to me and asked conspiratorially, “When you said we weren’t cool, you were just saying that to ease your mom, right?” The hang-dog look on his face was priceless.

  After the game, Dad met with a couple of deputies who had been to our respective houses and picked up a few essentials for us. While Claudia was ecstatic that they had remembered her laptop and carrying case, Mom and Mrs. Wicke were just happy to have fresh clothes again.

  We drove in a meandering, round-a-bout way south of Haven and ended up in a non-descript house on a cul-de-sac. We were escorted to a single free-standing three bedroom home with an outdoor grille, cable television, and a pool (of which Claudia and I immediately took advantage).

  “Not bad,” I joked with my father. “Looks like all those years getting shot at finally paid off.”

  He gave me a look that was a mixture of confusion and amusement. “Yeah, well one of these days, I’ll have to show you the wonderful timepiece I received.”

  Somehow, both our spirits had changed for the better, and it seemed as if the situation had altered and almost deepened our relationship.

  Everyone wanted to turn-in early. I had offered to take the couch so that Mrs. Wicke and Claudia could each have a room all to themselves. When it was clear that Claudia wasn’t going to allow me the option of sleeping, we started watching the old Steve McQueen version of the Blob on TV. I was already half asleep when she pulled out her laptop and announced that she wanted to try an “experiment.”