Ashe walked into his house to find Cybil asleep on the couch. She had an afghan pulled over her, but despite her small stature, it still didn’t cover her all the way. He smiled when he saw her. The levity in his mood changed as he closed the door behind him and darkness fell across her. What if she was the next target? He wished that he hadn’t gotten her involved in things, but he didn’t know how he could have stopped it. Everything that started happening to him started without him knowing it.
Smalls stepped out of his bedroom. “Don’t worry, I’ve been here the whole time,” he whispered. “I’ve just been doing some research on your computer. I hope that’s okay.”
“I guess it’s too late if it hadn’t been,” Ashe said. “What’s up?”
“Come in here so we don’t wake her.”
Ashe walked into his bedroom with Smalls. He sat on the edge of his bed and let the priest use his office chair. A mosaic of pixels shifted on the screen. Marianne had put that screen saver on the computer. Ashe had never cared for it but hadn’t removed it yet. He supposed he might just leave it as a tribute to her.
Smalls moved the mouse. A sinister-looking picture appeared on the screen. It was a painting of impish-looking monsters poking people with a variety of different sharp instruments. Other characters that looked like priests stood around the periphery. A flaming brazier took up the center on the painting. A man crucified upside down dangled above the flames.
“What kind of stuff have you been looking at?” Ashe asked.
“Satanic stuff, mostly. I’ve been trying to contact a colleague of mine who specializes in all things evil.”
“Is he a parapsychologist too?”
“No, he’s just a normal priest, but the Vatican uses him to investigate things like possession and events believed to be perpetrated by real Satanists, not just a bunch of yahoos thinking that they’re worshipping the Devil.”
“Is that his website?” Ashe asked.
“These are some of the images he has there. This painting was made by someone who accused the Inquisition of being started by the Devil. Note the priests standing around not stopping the demons. Of course there is also Christ being crucified upside down over the flames of Hell.”
“So what have you found out?” Ashe asked.
“We might have a real case on our hands.” Smalls twisted around in the chair and looked at him. “I’ve not encountered a real religious happening in many years.”
“What was the last thing you encountered?”
“Technically, it’s the only real phenomenon that I’ve encountered. It was a case of stigmata in a Guatemalan girl living in south Texas.”
“Never anything like this?”
“A few cases of supposed Satanism back in the early 1990s. It was just a bunch of headbangers riding the coattails of the Devil-worshiping craze from the ’80s. They killed a few pets. One of them was trampled trying to rape a horse.”
“Rape a horse?”
“He read in some fake spell book that having sex with a horse would raise Satan. It had something to do with the Jersey Devil. The problem was he was too stoned to notice that he was having relations with a stallion.”
“No resurrections though?”
“None.” Smalls looked at him. Ashe felt like the priest was reading his mind. “What do you know, and why are you back so soon?”
“Semmes had to arrest me, but he knew I couldn’t have taken part in some of the grave robbing or whatever you want to call it. He had to let me go because you and Cybil were my alibi for last night.”
“They thought you killed your students?” Smalls asked.
“Possibly. They also tried to accuse me of murdering a doctor in the Providence Hospital morgue, and stealing the body of Eddy Bertram, one of my dead students. Dean Allred was my alibi in that situation.”
“Are you saying it happened again? Another corpse walked out of the morgue here in Mobile? Was the stranger with it?”
“It looked like it. The stranger also killed the pathologist.”
Ashe looked at the priest. Smalls’ face drooped as worry started to play across it. He shook his head and rubbed his chin.
“This is bad, Ashe. I think something very bad is happening.”
“Like what?” Cybil stepped into the bedroom.
“I don’t know,” Smalls said, “but it’s more than just some stalker breaking into your apartment and possible necrophilia.”
“How long have you been listening?” Ashe asked.
“Since you got home.” She walked over and sat beside him. They clasped hands. “Are we in serious danger?”
“Probably,” Ashe said. “Semmes actually brought me in to warn me without giving away any sensitive police information.”
“Does he think it’s Satanists?” Cybil asked.
“He doesn’t know what to think, except that we might be in danger.” Ashe looked at Smalls. “You’re probably not safe either.”
“That will be between me and the Lord I suppose,” he said. “I am going to leave now. There are a few things I need to research in-depth.”
Smalls didn’t wait for them to say another word. He stood and walked out of the bedroom. The front door opened and closed. Cybil squeezed Ashe’s hand tighter. He felt her trembling. It wasn’t fair for her to have been dragged into things.
“Maybe you should leave town for a little while until we figure out what’s going on,” he said.
“Where would I go?”
“To your parents’ house,” Ashe suggested.
“That’ll be the day. All they’d talk about is how I’m too old to still be in college. They’ve been on about that for years now.”
“You’re just what, like twenty-two?” Ashe asked.
“You’ve drank with me and screwed me twice, and you don’t know how old I am,” she said.
Ashe couldn’t tell if she was angry or joking. He didn’t know what to say so he banked on silence. She raised an eyebrow.
“I just figured you were that age because you’re a senior in college,” he said.
“Twenty-seven. I’m a senior because I quit when I was nineteen and twenty-one. Then I changed majors at twenty-two and twenty-three.”
Ashe let out a sigh. “I feel relieved. I started to feel like that dirty old man in Lolita.”
“Humbert Humbert,” she replied. “One of those majors was literature, and you’re not a dirty old man. But you are a douche bag.”
“So I guess you’re staying in town,” he said.
“I guess I’m staying here,” she said. “If someone is out to get us, I don’t want to drag any of my friends into it.”
“That makes sense.” Ashe was happy. Cybil made the place feel less like quicksand. “I’m sorry you got dragged into it.”
“I don’t know how I did. All we did was go to a parade. How did you get in the whole mess?”
“I don’t know.”
Ashe started to rack his brain again. He figured that somewhere locked up in there he might find the missing puzzle piece to answer that question. Nothing came up. They kept holding hands. He rubbed her thumb with his. She put her head on his shoulder.
“I’m a little bit hungry,” she said.
He looked at his watch. It was well past eight p.m. He hadn’t eaten all day, but didn’t seem any the worse for it. “I don’t have a lot in the kitchen. I haven’t been shopping in a while.”
“I’m sure I can find something to fix, and after that maybe we can take another shower.”
Ashe looked at her. She wasn’t joking although she smiled. “Really?”
“Sex is my coping mechanism. It really helps relieve stress. Right now I’m under a lot of it.”
“We’ll see.”
Ashe felt guilty because his feelings for Marianne were still so raw. The guilt also stemmed from the fact that he didn’t know if he was expressing his feelings for Marianne with Cybil or if he was having real feelings for her. He’d always felt a little bit attracted to her. It didn’t matter. He would do it anyway. She’d gotten dragged into the whole mess, and fooling around was the least he could do to make this situation a little more tolerable.