4490 words (17 minute read)

Chapter 11

Sunday, November 11th - Mid-Morning

Jennifer looked up at the statuesque Asian with purple hair highlighted with blonde at the ends.  This woman made Jennifer feel short, fat, dark and ugly.  The cop in her tried its best to ignore the desire to punch the perfectly coiffed almond-eyed bombshell in her throat.

“Hi Sandy, I know you said not many men come in here but I wondered if any come in especially ones that are about your height — with those heels on — wanting a dye job using Clairol Honey Blonde.”

“High Lift?”

Jennifer perked up.

“Yeah, I think.”

“Yay, we use dat here but not for long time.  We use more da shimmery lites collection.  Owa clients like the highlights more.  You should go.  Two visit in one week no good for business.”

Looking into her glamorous oval eyes smoked to purple pearlized perfection this early on a Sunday morning made Jennifer madder still.  Holding herself in check, she tried again.

“What about the other stylists and colorists?  Do they have male clients?”

“Yeah, sure.  You go talk to dem.  Dey come tomorrow.  You can wear street clothes like dis you wear today, right?  No good for business for you to come like we in trouble.  No good.”

Rolling her eyes, Jennifer snapped her notebook shut, gave the woman a tight smile and walked out without saying another word.

On the Long Island Railroad, Jennifer pressed her forehead against the window and stopped herself from sighing yet again.  She watched Bed-Stuy slide by fast as the train made its way towards Jamaica, the first stop in Queens.  The ride would give her time to review all that had happened, or, at least, what she thought had happened. 

Jennifer had to decide what she was going to tell Feinster and what to leave out.  Everything was so jumbled in her head she almost didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t.  The memory loss disturbed her but the receipt was even more disturbing.

“Damn it!”  She banged her head against the window making the person in the seat in front of her jump.

“Hey! Tryin’ to sleep here.  Keep it down will ‘ya?”

A man’s blue eye peered back at her through the space between the window and the high-backed fake leather seat.

“Sorry!”  She reined herself in and pulled her bag closer to her. “Shit!  I forgot to make the deposit again!” she hissed to herself.  The money was still tucked away in her bag.

The Fury poked its head out and peeked at the goings on in the Jennifer host’s mind.  It was calmer.  Abatu relaxed.  The case was foremost on Jennifer’s mind — a good thing.  The weekend’s debauchery was still there but the subconscious had taken over that area while the cop’s conscious mind was on the murder. Abatu added another distraction and cackled before fading into the background once more.

Remembering Chad, Jennifer cursed under her breath. 

Why do Babs and Feinster insist on this guy?  What’s so great about him?  Well, other than his abs, his ripped arms…

With a strangled groan of frustration, she decided to call him.  If Feinster felt Chad was okay, then Jennifer would see it through, at least, for the one date.

Jennifer wondered if Feinster knew about her childhood.  However, Feinster was so good at interrogations and listening to what was said, and more importantly, what wasn’t, that Jennifer was sure her colleague was well aware of her issues.

Knowing she couldn’t put it off any longer Jennifer took out her cell and dialed his number.

“Hey Lady.  Long time no hear.”

“You’ve got a short memory.  It hasn’t been that long.”

“It’s been long enough,” he said with a smile in his voice.  “How’s everything?”

She didn’t know how to answer him without lying. “It’s going...”

“How evasive is that?  I’ll leave that alone and just ask one more thing before you let me go.  Do you like fortune telling?”

“Huh?!”

“Well, since you’re an atheist.  I wondered if you might get a kick out of a cool little deck of cards my sister gave me.  She’s into that kind of thing and — well, I just wondered.  Do you?”

“Uh…I don’t know.  I’ve never had my fortune told and…uhm…”

“Okay, then we have to do this!  Right, now where are they?”

She heard him pulling open drawers and moving objects around.

“Uhm…Chad?  This is not exactly the best time…”

“Oh!  Here they are!  Okay, I’ve got to shuffle them —”

“Chad?  Why would an atheist do fortune telling?  Just because I don’t believe in God?  I…don’t quite follow.”

“Well, I — I thought that maybe you’d like a peek at the unknowable.  You — unlike a lot of people – you don’t pray, or wish for things.  You just…live life.  Right?  Wouldn’t it be a change of pace to get information from another source for a change?”  He paused and waited for her reply.

Blinking several times before responding Jennifer cleared her throat as she thought about the recent events in her life.

“Chad…what if I don’t like the information?”

“Come on!  Don’t be silly.  It’s just for fun!  Ready to try?”

“Over the phone?”

“Why not?  This way, when I give them to you you’ll be a pro at how to use them!”

“Give to me?  Use them?”

“What are you?  A parrot?  What?  Afraid to try something outside of your normal routine?”

“You have no idea of how wrong you are right now.”

“Okay, so maybe you’ve gone out on a limb recently.  Think of this as being conservatively out of the box.  Okay, tell me when by saying 1 — 2 — 3.  Okay?”

“Why?”

“Pulling three cards.  My sister says this is the express reading.  The normal reading is like all of the cards.  There are 36 of them.  How the heck you get a reading from thirty-six cards beats me but my sister swears by this 3-card reading.  So, ready?”

“I don’t know, Chad.  Maybe this is not such a good idea.  By the way, is this your normal interaction with a girl you’ve just met?”

“It’s not every day I meet a self-proclaimed atheist.  If you don’t believe in God, or Hell, or angels, or that there’s anything after we die.  What’s the big deal about this?  For you, this should simply be entertainment.”

But to Jennifer, it wasn’t.  This was confirmed when something deep inside of her twisted in her gut.

Fury Abatu was stock-still as a deep unseen force surged past as it traveled up to the host’s brain.  Abatu felt a tremor within its core and gulped.

Jennifer felt a curious tingle in her fingertips as if she had rubbed her feet on the carpet and then touched herself.

“Shuffle — 1.  Okay, just a minute — 2.  Now just go ahead and pull the third one.”

“Okay, got all three.  Let me look in this little book.  You had me pull numbers 16, 36 and 19 in that order.  So, the first one, number 16, is the Stars card.  Basically, this is a good fortune card.  See?  What were you worrying about?  Uhm, it says ‘good fortune and favorable outlook in all endeavors’ and when this card is surrounded by bad cards that this suggests a sequence of harmful events and unfortunate coincidences…”

“Hmm…so what are the other cards?  They’re good cards, right?”

“Well, the next one has a cross on it — that can’t be bad, can it?  Let me see.  That’s number 36.”

Jennifer heard the flipping of pages, a sharp intake of breath then silence.

“Chad?  What’s it say?”

No answer.

“Okay, Chad.  You’re scaring me.  What does it say?  Tell me.”

“You know, I think my sister’s into drugs, or something.  She told me this was fun.”

Very nervous now, Jennifer put some bass in her voice. “Spill it, cowboy.  What does number 36 say?”

“’This card is always a bad omen regardless of its location.  However, if this card is very close to the Key card then it indicates misfortune of short duration or of a temporary nature.’”

“Where’s the key card?”

“We didn’t use it because we’re doing an express reading.”

“I see.  Would that mean that the…misfortune would be of a — longer duration and possibly more permanent in nature?”

“I don’t know.”

Neither one of them spoke for a few moments.  Jennifer didn’t want to know but knew she had to find out.

“You have to finish and tell me what number 19 says.”  She heard more pages flipping.

“It’s the High Tower.  It says, ‘This card suggests the Questioner will live to a ripe old age.  However, if this card is surrounded by cards of bad omen, it suggests sickness may occur, or under certain circumstances, eventually complete disability or death.’  That’s it.”

They were both very quiet.  The only sound was the rattling of the train on its tracks.

“That was not entertaining, Chad.”

“Jennifer — I’m so sorry!  It’s just a pack of cards!  They don’t mean anything.  I’m throwing them out.”

She heard a light pelting against metal and a decisive thump.

“Okay, they’re in the trash which goes out tomorrow.”

“What’s the name of those cards?”

“Why do you care they’re — ”

“Name of those deck of cards, please.”

“Mademoiselle Lenormand of Paris.”

The train was pulling into the Jamaica junction stop. “Listen, Chad.  I’ve got to go.”

“I guess the date is off on Friday night…”

Some of her tension eased away and she smiled.

“So, I’m a crazy atheist now?  I’m supposed to kick you to the curb because I didn’t like the way the cards fell?”

He heard the smile and breathed a sigh of relief. “Maybe you are crazy.  I know if it were me, I’d be running for the hills.”

Jennifer laughed fully for the first time all day.  “A typical male response…if you don’t understand it — get rid of it.”

Chad chuckled, “Touché.  You’re being kind but I know this whole thing is probably creeping you out.  I’ll sign off now so you don’t have time to change your mind.  And I promise — I will never ask you to do another reading of any kind ever again.  Deal?”

Jennifer took a breath and let it out before answering. “S’fine, I’ve been asked to do a whole lot worse.”

“Really?  Should I be concerned, frightened, or properly chastised?”

“I’m a cop, ‘member?”

Jennifer clicked off before he could say anything else.  It was time to rest.  Her brain was foggy from sleep deprivation.  However, she needed coherency so she could try to explain the adventure that had been her weekend.  She tucked her phone in her bag, closed her eyes and commanded her brain to shut down and not dream.  With that resolve firmly in mind, Jennifer crossed her arms over her chest, twisted her legs up onto the empty seats next to her and demanded that sleep visit her.

Water flowed languidly over broken body parts allowing pale pink water to slide away from the cavernous abdominal cavity of the blonde-haired man who rested upon a blackened burnt bed.  The water was coming from the sprinkler system overhead.  However, it was the walls that caught her attention.

The charred walls had hundreds of human eyes embedded within their confines from floor to ceiling, and from width to width.  All of the eyes were a stunning cerulean.  The eyes blinked out of sync with one another making the miscreation seem as if it would tear itself from the foundation and lunge at the undead corpse.  With a minute nudge, Jennifer knew her sanity would snap if she continued to stare at the unspeakable image before her.  She cleaved to the invisible nook she found herself in.

Jennifer was everywhere, and nowhere, yet somehow she was unable to look away as the man’s empty eye sockets tried to find the presence he knew was somewhere in the room.  The delicate hole in his left temple had skin that bagged around it the dark empty space.

“Why?  Why did you kill me?  I just wanted to have a little fun.  It didn’t need to end this way.  Tell me…why?”

The empty eye sockets sought out every corner of the room finding nothing.  The corpse sat up and reached upwards to the center of the ceiling.  Jennifer felt the cold rage emanating from the man who was beginning to seem familiar.  She pressed herself back as far as she could against whatever barrier was at her back but the scabrous fingers still found her.  They began scratching, scraping and ripping through her shirt.  Jennifer felt her skin tearing and blood spurting.  She screamed…

She bolted upright gasping for air and pawed at her stomach, shocked it was intact.    The passengers nearest Jennifer, either sat up, or stood to see what had happened to the young woman.  They were peering at her over and around their seats with curiosity mixed with annoyance edged with fear. 

The conductor, panting, ran towards them from the other end of the car.

“Are you all right?  What happened?  Do you need medical care?”

Her heart thudded. Jennifer looked at all of the faces focused on her.  She managed to shake her head and spoke to him in a hoarse whisper. “I’m …okay.  Just — a bad dream.  I’m sorry I disturbed everyone.”

The conductor didn’t look convinced and said, “What’s your stop?  Maybe we can get someone to meet you there.”

“Bellerose.  My friend is meeting me there.”

“I’ll make sure to help you off, Miss.  You have a few more stops.  I’ll come and let you know when to get off, okay?”

Jennifer nodded grateful that the passenger mostly went back to their own private worlds leaving her to deal with the aftermath of her nightmare.  Trembling, she could still feeling the scrape of the dead man’s fingers upon her flesh.  Jennifer stilled and stared out the window.  She was now quite sure she had killed the blond-haired man.

***

“Bellerose!”

Jennifer jerked out of her stupor and looked around.  The train was slowing and coming into a station.  She saw Feinster leaning against her black Acura ILX Hybrid.  When the train stopped and the doors opened, Jennifer rushed out towards her friend while teetering on the edge of hysteria.

As if her friend sensed something was wrong, Jennifer watched Betty push off her car and begin walking towards the train platform.  Jennifer’s forward movement had dwindled to almost nothing because the tears had already started to fall.

Spotting the wet streaks, Betty closed the distance between them in seconds.  She hugged the younger woman rubbing her back and gently clucking her tongue as the train pulled out of the station.

***

In her driveway, Feinster cut the engine and turned to look at Jennifer.  “What happened?  And don’t lie to me.  I’ve never seen you like this.  Ever.”

Refusing to look at her, Jennifer stared out the window across her friend’s front lawn and beyond to the neighbor’s lawn.  

“Betty, how well do you know me?”

“Pretty well, I think.  We’ve been through a few things.  Why?”

“What if I tell you I think I killed someone?”

“I’d laugh and ask you how much you’ve had to drink.  You didn’t kill anybody.  That’s a fact.”

Curling up into a ball in the passenger seat, she spoke in a muffled voice. “But I did.  I dreamt about him twice so far.”

Beginning to get unnerved, Betty reached out and touched Jennifer’s arm.

“What do you mean?  Could this be some sort of repressed memory?”

Jennifer slow blinked and looked over at Betty.  “You know about that?”

“You alluded to a bunch of things about your childhood — nothing specific — but I figured there had been abuse.  To stop it, I assumed you got violent,” she shrugged sheepishly when Jennifer peered at her with a baleful eye.  “I figure that stuff is coming back with the Barnes case being the trigger, ya know?”

Jennifer turned that over in her mind.

Fury Abatu peeked out, spied the other lady cop and quickly added its dark powers of persuasion to Betty’s assertion.  Misdirection at this stage of the possession would be in Abatu’s favor.

Jennifer felt a surge of hope.  A glimmer of life entered her eyes as she searched Betty’s eyes while sitting up slowly.  “You think that could be it?”

Betty shrugged, “It’s plausible.”

Jennifer thought back to the time years ago.  She searched her mind for an image of her uncle and after several blank moments, she remembered.  He was not blond.  He was a brunette with a medium build — except for the flabby paunch.  Her uncle was the opposite of the blond muscular man in her dreams. The remembrance brought with it a long-buried memory. 

A young Jennifer was running out the back door of her childhood home, barefoot.  She felt her heart thudding; heard the loud whump-whump of blood pounding through her arteries giving her the power to flee the man chasing her.

With effort, Jennifer pulled herself back and shut that particular mental memory door.  However, there was a hitch.  The hinges of the door wouldn’t fully close.  It remained open a crack allowing slivers of the memory to leech through into Jennifer’s mind.

Jennifer forced her conscious mind back to the present but shifted her gaze away from Betty’s.  Continuing her analysis, she realized the energy of the two men was not the same either.  Her uncle was a country bumpkin with a high school education and a trade school certificate in auto mechanics.  The blond man in her dreams had a refinement that only money and a foreign education could produce.  Jennifer sighed.

The Fury harrumphed.

“No, the man in my dreams is not my uncle.  They’re two totally different men.”

Jennifer did an internal check.  The memory door was still ajar.  It was going to take a lot of fortitude to fend off the random memory leaks.  Jennifer’s insides quaked.  She had worked so hard to bury it all.  But now, it was back.

Betty watched Jennifer’s eyes turn inward.  The older cop watched her friend’s eyes stare unseeing at a point somewhere behind Betty.  Worried, Betty got out of the care, went around and pulled Jennifer out.  Using the remote to lock the car, Betty kept a firm hold on her friend.  The shift from the car, to a vertical position, jarred Jennifer so that she refocused on her surroundings.

Betty opened the front door of the comfortable airy home with its sea green and white color scheme teasing the eyes everywhere one looked. 

Jennifer allowed herself to just observe without thought, or comment.

Crystal wind chimes in the shape of seahorses with golden eyes adorned the two bay windows in the living room and small crystal and rose quartz pentagrams surrounded by smaller individual semi-precious gemstones in varying hues dotted the tops of the coffee table and two short bookshelves.  Large and small pieces of obsidian were everywhere — flat pieces, round pieces, chips — it was everywhere.

Shimmery fabric with silver pentagrams embroidered on them peeked out from under thick books on a dark side table.   And, to top it all off, a huge shiny gold gong sat on the floor in a corner of the living room looking as if it came straight from Beijing the day before.  Other than the proliferation of these unusual objects, Betty’s home was exactly like any other middle-class home that was Ikea, and Home Goods, inspired.  There were the ubiquitous tasteful wool throw rugs scattered about the beautiful parquet floors and a comfortable, but utilitarian, sofa and loveseat combo.

Jennifer’s eyes took it all in.  A movement on the stairs drew her attention.  In a moment, she came face-to-face with the largest blackest cat she had ever seen.  It hissed at her raised its hackles and flew back up the stairs.

“Bastille!  What’s the matter with you?  Be nice and greet our guest.  Bastille!”

The cat did not return.  It only mewled once from upstairs and then went silent.

Flustered, Betty looked at Jennifer with a small shrug.  “I’m sorry.  He’s usually much friendlier.  I’ve never actually seen Bastille do that before!  Odd.”

Jennifer stared at the spot on the stairs where the cat was a moment before.  She was trying to recall exactly what she had felt.  For a split-second, it seemed as if she could understand the cat and had communicated with it.  However, the message was not rational.  Jennifer thought the cat had said to go to a church and pray.

Blinking, Jennifer looked at Betty anew and asked the first thing that popped into her mind.  “What are you?  Some kind of witch?”

Her friend laughed nervously and left Jennifer’s side to set her bag down on the sofa.  Betty turned and fluffed the nearest pillow.  Then, Betty adjusted the perfectly straight tablecloth on the dining room table before answering.

“Something like that,” Betty answered.  “How ‘bout some lunch?  You look grey.  I bet you haven’t eaten today.  Come, let’s go into the kitchen.”  Without waiting for a response Betty hurried off.

Jennifer trailed behind her looking around with more scrutiny and saw for the first time that there were lots of Bibles in Betty’s home.  There were at least seven that she could see out in the open.  Jennifer entered her friend’s kitchen and wondered what surprises were in store for her in there.

“Do you like turkey burgers?  If not, I’ve got bison burgers and regular beef ones.  Or, we could do deli sandwiches.  I’ve got ham, pastrami and uh, chicken breast slices, I think.  What do you feel for?  Oh!  Grilled cheese and tomato — I can do that, too!  What’ll ya have?”

“You’re holding out on me.  What’s up with all the bibles?  Most people make do with just one.  You’ve got seven.”

Betty’s back was turned so Jennifer couldn’t read her face but her body went rigid.  Jennifer simply waited. 

After several long silent moments, Betty put down the knife and turned around.

“I was going to take you to a diner near the station but you were in such bad shape I brought you here figuring you needed solace…some privacy.  I didn’t think you’d notice in the state you were in.”

“Between the black cat, the multitude of Bibles, and the fifty million pentagrams, you had to know I’d be clued into something.  I was thinking.  Not dead! You’re a witch, huh?  Couldn’t get a white cat instead to shake it up a bit?”  Jennifer sniggered at her own joke, but stopped when she saw her attempt at levity fell short of the intended mark.

“I’m not that kind of witch.  I’m a white Wiccan witch.  Cats are familiars; they’re like friends that help us — no matter their color.  He came to me when he was a kitten.  A friend offered him to me.  He was black, but I didn’t care.  I don’t invite anyone from the precinct here…usually.”  She shrugged and continued.  “Cats are closer to the other world than we can ever get so Bastille was clearly trying to tell me something.  Or, maybe he was talking to you.”

Jennifer flushed a deep pink.  Things were definitely getting out of hand fast. “Feinster — news flash.  Cats can’t talk.”  Jennifer refused to look Betty in the eyes.

“Says who?  Did you see the way he hissed? He was scared when he saw you.  I’ve never seen that!  Why’s my cat afraid of you Detective Jennifer Holden?”

While speaking, Betty took measured steps towards Jennifer and was only a foot away from invading Jennifer’s personal space when she stopped. “What’s going on with you, Detective?”  Betty stared down into the younger cop’s eyes but all Betty could see was confusion mixed with fear.

“I…I don’t know.  That’s what I wanted to talk to you about today...”

“Well, the first thing I think we need to do is get some holy water and pray.”

“Wha…what?  That’s preposterous…and ridiculous!”

The Fury peered out taking notice of the scene and knew to stay in the background. The demon knew that the possession was more than half-way complete so the witch’s machinations should result in only minor discomfort to Abatu.  That is, if the witch were to try and cast a spell on the Jennifer host.  At this stage, the host would feel no pain…yet.  A few weeks from now?  The demon did not want to recall the pain a drop of holy water would convey.  In the interim, the Fury receded to the background and bided its time.

“Praying is ridiculous?  Why Holy Holden?  I’ve heard the rumors about you having no faith but we personally never talked about it before.  Do you believe in something — anything?  Because, in the job we’ve got, you need something to hold on to in the face of some of the shit we see.  This Barnes case is a rough one.  Ever thought that it may be messing you up more than you think?   Maybe you need some faith — not a therapist.”

“Feinster…”

“You like pushing people away when you need them the most.  Don’t push me away!  Let me in to help you.  Everyone can use help sometimes.  Right now, I think you need my help.”  Betty was standing nose to nose with Jennifer.

Beginning to chortle, Jennifer felt the hysteria taking over.  Too much had happened and this new side of her friend was too much for her.  Jennifer’s brain began shutting down.  It was slipping off its moorings and spinning off into the land where little green men from a purple-dotted planet ruled The White House. 

Jennifer slid to the floor in a dead faint.

***

Next Chapter: Chapter 12