Ashe tried to watch television, but the only show he could find bored him. All he could think about was his conversation with Archbishop Harrington. Why was he so insistent that he and Cybil allow Father Smalls to stay with them? Why the special attention on him? Harrington raised more questions than he answered.
“When is Father Smalls supposed to get here?” Cybil walked in from the kitchen carrying a cup of tea.
“I don’t know. All the archbishop said was that he would be getting out today and would come here to stay with us.”
She sat down beside him on the couch. The cinnamon smell of her tea wafted to him. The aroma seemed to make him feel at ease just a bit. He never kept that kind of tea in his house, but once he had been warned that if he couldn’t leave town to stay inside as much as possible they went to get some essential groceries.
“How do you feel about all of this?” she asked.
Ashe turned off the television and gave her his full attention. “I’m not comfortable with this at all. I don’t even know why I’m listening to him.”
“He’s an archbishop.”
“I’m not Catholic. I have no reason to listen to this guy, as far as I know he’s the one out to get us.”
“You trust Father Smalls though?”
He looked at her. “Do I? I did, but now I just don’t know. Is there anyone I can trust?”
“Me.”
“Huh.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“You discovered the file on Marianne’s computer and heard the first warning call.” Ashe looked at her. He didn’t really know why he was saying these things. She wasn’t doing anything to him. He was pretty sure of that. “You’re the one who supposedly heard Erik talking with those strange men.”
She looked down and then back up at him. Her eyes flamed with anger. “How dare you? I’m just as scared as you are. I had a dream about Hortense dying the same as you. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m stuck here as much as you are, and they ransacked my apartment.”
“Brimstone.”
“What?” she asked.
“Before I left him the other night, Smalls told me that sometimes sulfur was called brimstone. I think he was trying to tell me something instead of just being crazy like I’d thought.”
“I remember you mentioning that. Do you think he meant something like the fire and brimstone in Hell?”
“I don’t know, but we smelled sulfur in your apartment and in Erik’s office. The archbishop talked about the Devil. Maybe there is something like that going on.”
“I don’t know.”
“But Father Smalls could have caused that smell. I remember being able to buy stink pellets as a kid. It smelled just like rotten eggs,” Ashe said. He chuckled. “I bought some one time and burst one outside the door of my English class in the eleventh grade. The whole room stank most of the period. My teacher was furious. She kept pacing back and forth holding a lacy handkerchief under her nose.” He held his hand up to show miniscule height. “She was like that tall, but a pure bulldog. It was great. I think she almost vomited everywhere.”
“Why didn’t she just open the window?”
“It was the wintertime and too cold.”
Ashe took a moment to enjoy the paranoia-free thinking before turning back to his and Cybil’s situation. She appeared to enjoy the moment of levity as well. He wondered how many people had ever been faced with a predicament like his. So many people around him had ended up dead, including his fiancée who came back to life and disappeared into the city. He wished that he could do that, just evaporate into the winter fog.
A loud rap on the door focused Ashe back to reality. Cybil jumped up off the sofa, spilling a little of her sweet-smelling tea. She looked at him, and he back at her. For a moment, he didn’t know what to do. The wood on the door cracked again as someone knocked on it. Cybil moved to answer it, but Ashe took her by the arm and shook his head. He would answer the door. If something horrible was on the other side of it, he didn’t want to risk it getting to her first. His throat dried out as he stepped to the door. The handle felt cold in his hand, almost too cold. He was afraid for just a slip of a moment that his hand might stick to the metal.
“Who is it?” The words barely came out louder than a whisper over his parched lips.
“Father Smalls. Please let me in.”
Ashe took a deep breath and let it out slowly through his nose. He flipped the lock with his thumb and opened the door. Father Smalls stood on the doorstep. He held a green suitcase in one hand. A leather duffle bag hung from his shoulder. He looked tired but no worse for wear. Ashe stepped aside without a word to let the priest inside. He closed the door behind Smalls and locked it.
“We’ve been expecting you,” Cybil said. “I was getting worried.”
Smalls set both of the bags on the floor. “Why is that?”
“You seemed like you were running late, although I had no idea when you would get here.”
“I stopped by my apartment to get some clothes and take a shower. I found it rather turned over.” He looked at Ashe who still stood behind him. “I guess the police had to search the place.”
“That’s what Archbishop Harrington said,” Ashe said. “The way he made it sound he searched it too.”
“Yes, I am afraid he found a couple of my books. That is unfortunate.”
“Why?” Cybil asked.
“Because I wasn’t supposed to have such texts. I tried my hardest to keep them hidden and secret, but when you’re in jail accused of murder, you can’t go back and clean your office up to hide any contraband.” He looked at her mug. “Is that coffee or tea?”
“Cinnamon tea,” she said. “Would you like a cup? I’m sure the water in the kettle is still hot enough.”
“That would be nice.” Smalls looked at Ashe. “Where can I put my things?”
Ashe looked at the bags. He didn’t want to stick the priest in Marianne’s room since he wasn’t sure that Smalls was innocent in her death and resurrection. The thought of him and Cybil sleeping in there didn’t sit well with him either.
“In the spare bedroom. Ignore the boxes all over the floor. I’ve been clearing out some of Marianne’s stuff. She kept it all in there.”
Smalls looked toward the other room and back to Ashe. The priest’s eyes seemed piercing. He didn’t know if they always seemed so soul-searching or if it was a recent attribute that came along with his paranoid distrust.
“If you aren’t comfortable with me being in there, I can sleep on the couch or on the floor. I’ve been a priest long enough to get used to some less than desirable sleeping arrangements. I was a cad long before that, which meant I ended up sleeping in a lot of unusual and uncomfortable places.”
“I’m not comfortable with any of this,” Ashe said. “It’s not just you sleeping in there. Imagine getting told that the Devil is after you.”
Cybil walked back in with a mug. She handed it to Smalls. He took a long sip out of it after blowing the steam away.
“So he told you my theory,” Smalls said. “I wish he had let me do it.”
“Needless to say, I find this all very dubious.”
“Obviously.” Smalls drank more of the tea. “Thank you, Cybil. It’s very good. Just what I needed.”
“Archbishop Harrington told me those books were heretical,” Ashe said.
Smalls nodded. “He’s right. That’s the reason I tried to keep them hidden. They contain valuable information for people like me.”
“What do you mean?” Cybil asked.
“I investigate things like possession and other psychoreligious phenomena. Sometimes books that aren’t sanctioned by the Church or are even right out forbidden have the best information.” He looked at Ashe again. “One of those was the text I asked you to get for me.”
“We couldn’t find it,” Ashe said.
“He must have gotten to it.” Smalls shook his head. “I was afraid of that.”
“Who got it? Archbishop Harrington?” Ashe asked. “He said he did.”
“Too bad,” the priest answered. “It was the puzzle piece that I needed. Harrington has forbidden me to look at any of my confiscated books.”
“What was so important about it?” Cybil asked. “Maybe you can look it up on Google.”
“I doubt it would make a website. It was an obscure theory from very early on in the church put forth by a church philosopher when the age of miracles was ending.”
Ashe felt his cell phone buzz in his pocket. He took it out. Erik had sent him a text message. He needed help with the engram recorder. Ashe put the phone back into his pocket.
“I need to go to school,” he said.
“Why?” Cybil asked.
“Erik’s broken one of his engram recorders again. I’ve got to fix it.”
“Let it wait,” Smalls said. “It’s not safe for you to leave the house.”
“I have to. I’m the only one who can fix the thing. I have as much riding on these engram experiments as Rogers. If these machines keeps accurately recording emotion engrams, I could be a multimillionaire.”
“I still think it is not a good idea,” Smalls said.
“What would make it safer? Do I need a crucifix or holy water? What about a wooden stake?” Ashe said. “I can’t completely quit working. I’ll go crazy.”
“I’ll go with you,” Cybil said.
“No.” Ashe didn’t want to leave her with Smalls, but Erik had made advances toward her and she didn’t need to be put into that position again. “Stay here. It won’t take me long to fix the thing. He broke one the other day. It was a simple issue.”
Ashe grabbed his coat off the hook near the door and left the house. The outside air was cool and refreshing. He hadn’t realized how warm the house was until just then. As he walked to his car, he told himself that Cybil would be fine with Smalls. The priest wouldn’t do anything. Despite all the inconsistencies with the man, Ashe still trusted him more than not, at that point, but he thought any little thing could tip the scales.
The building seemed abandoned when Ashe walked in. No one walked up and down the steps. Students didn’t mill around the front, smoking cigarettes. Not a single bicycle was chained to the metal post under the live oak tree. His footsteps echoed down the hall as he walked to his office. The whole place felt like no one had been there all day. He went into his office. Everything inside was just like he’d left it the last time he’d come to campus. This shouldn’t have surprised him but it did. Deep inside of him, he felt like he’d been off campus for months.
Ashe went to a filing cabinet at the back of the room. He fumbled with his keys, looking for the tiny one that unlocked this particular cabinet. There were so many of the small keys on his ring; he needed to organize them better. After a few tries, the correct one slipped into the lock and allowed the top drawer to slide open. Ashe reached in and brought out a small plastic toolbox. All the small tools he needed to work on the engram recorder were inside. Some of them he made special for that project. Keeping these safe was one of the most important things to him, almost as important as keeping himself alive. He thought that he should carry them home to ensure their safety.
“About time you got here.” Rogers walked into the office.
“I got here as quickly as I could. Doesn’t look like anything’s that pressing anyway. Where is everyone?”
“I don’t guess you get memos that often since your forced vacation. The school has cancelled class for a few days to help the student body deal with the recent student deaths.”
“I guess that’s nice of them. It would be stressful to have to go to school with that going on.” Ashe opened his toolbox and looked inside. Everything seemed to be in its place. “What have you done to the recorder this time?”
“I’m not sure. It does not want to download the data into the computer. When I put it into the USB port, it tells me that it cannot read the device.”
Ashe closed the top of the toolbox. “That might be a software issue instead of a hardware one. Have you consulted the programmer?”
“It’s not that. I have the software on several computers. None of them will recognize the thing. It’s down in my office. Come on and I’ll show you.”
He and Rogers headed downstairs to the psychologist’s office. A fan blew the air in the room around. Papers on Roger’s desk fluttered. It looked like the psychologist had been working all night for several days. Beside the untidy stacks of papers on his desk, empty potato chips bags littered the floor and empty soda bottles sat here and there. Looking at him a bit closer, Ashe thought Rogers appeared tired, although he didn’t show typical signs like dark bags under his eyes.
“Been burning the midnight oil?” Ashe asked, setting his toolbox down on a Zapp’s Crawtators bag.
“I’m working on a deadline, a very important deadline.”
“Working on a grant?” Ashe asked.
The door to Rogers’ lab opened. A man with black hair swooped into a pompadour walked inside the office. A scar ran from the bridge of his nose to the corner of his mouth. He smiled and revealed small white teeth.
“I wouldn’t call it that,” he said with a strong accent.
Ashe looked from the man to Rogers and back to the man. He felt butterflies in his stomach again. Cybil talked about a man with an accent threatening Rogers. He only half believed that Rogers might have been conferencing with a strange fellow. Even when she said that Rogers had told her that people needed her to mind her business, he thought it was just Rogers being a douche bag. The man walking toward him with the less than friendly smile didn’t look like any professor Ashe had ever met.
“You have no reason to be afraid of me, Dr. Shrove. I won’t hurt you.” He held out his hand to Ashe.
“I’m not afraid,” Ashe said, taking the man’s hand. It felt very soft like it belonged to a person who had always kept it in a glove full of lotion. “You just startled me; that’s all.”
“My name is Mikal Czernobog. I am a business associate of Dr. Rogers’.”
“I don’t know if I’d call us that,” Rogers said.
The increasingly unnerving smile turned to the psychologist. “I don’t know. We have a deal. I did some chores for you and now you have to do some chores for me.”
“Listen, just give me the engram recorder, and I’ll get it fixed,” Ashe said. “I don’t want to have any more involvement in your agreement than that.”
“Dr. Shrove, I was hoping that I could convince you to lend me your services as well. It seems that our dear friend Dr. Rogers is very clumsy with your device. He seems to break it frequently. I need better and quicker results. You show much technical genius. How quickly could you make five more of those devices?”
“The full contraption? About three years,” Ashe said. Although Czernobog made him very uncomfortable, he couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “The engram recorder isn’t something that I’m set up to mass produce. It is a delicate instrument.”
“But if I could provide a facility and ability to mass produce it, how long?” Czernobog asked.
“That’s not possible,” Ashe said. “It’s far too sensitive for that kind of work. Each one has to be handmade.”
“I can provide the hands,” the other man said. “How long?”
“Can you provide the expertise in engineering as well?”
“You do not understand, Dr. Shrove. I have unlimited resources at my disposal.”
“Almost unlimited,” Rogers said.
Czernobog cut his eyes toward the psychologist. The smile disappeared, replaced by a look that Ashe couldn’t describe if he had to. The air in the room almost became electric. Ashe took the chance to snatch the engram recorder that lay on the desk. He dug into his toolbox and got the tool he needed to fix it. As the other two stared at each other like gunfighters in some Old West movie, Ashe finessed the mechanism. It looked like the other one had. Rogers or this guy had been using the recorder to broadcast emotions out. He closed the mechanism back into its plastic shell and replaced it on the desk.
“I’m done,” he said. “I suggest that you use the recorder for what it is designed to do, which is record and download onto a specific program, not playback on something else.”
Czernobog turned back to Ashe. “Is there nothing I can do to convince you to work with me? I really need more of those recorders as quickly as possible.”
“I’m sorry,” Ashe said, “but I’ve got enough trouble right now without dealing with the KGB.”
“KGB, indeed,” the Russian said and laughed. “I have nothing to do with that organization, but I am sure you will come to see things my way, Dr. Shrove.” He reached into the breast pocket of his coat and brought out a black business card with silver lettering. “Take this and call me. You can ask any price.”
Ashe looked at Rogers, but the other professor made no eye contact. He took the card and stuffed it into his toolbox. Without saying another word, he left. As Ashe walked down the hallway, he heard Czernobog.
“Do that again, ever, and you will experience wrath like you cannot imagine.”
He tucked the toolbox under his arm and wasted little time getting to the stairwell and out of the building.