Nancy K. Duplechain - Dark Trilogy 02 - Dark Carnival (6 page)

“What guy?”

I peered through her
driver’s side window.  He was gone, his paper coffee cup left behind.

“Never mind.”

She looked at me
concerned.  “Everything okay?”

“Yeah.  Ever get the
feeling you’re being followed?”

She smiled at me.  “I’m
sure it’s nothing.”  She pulled out her phone and called Miles to tell him that
we had no luck finding the mask. He told her to bring me to the convent.

On the way there, Nadia
and I had a long chat about everything from paladins to politics.  I was
surprised to find out that, for a nun, she was mostly socially liberal.

“What made you
decide to be a nun?” I asked.  “No offense, but you really don’t fit
the nun type.”

She laughed and said,
“I guess not.  But I’ve always felt the calling, even when I was a child.  I
went to a Catholic school, and there was a convent on campus.  I remember our
second grade class taking a tour of it and, as soon as I walked through those
ornate wood doors, I could smell fresh-baked bread.”  When Nadia spoke,
her eyes lit up at her fond memory.  “Our tour guide was this short,
round, little old lady named Sister Pearl.  She had granny glasses and a huge
smile and was delighted with all us kids.  After the tour, she gave us cookies
she had made.  That day, I knew I wanted to be a nun.  And, as I grew up, I
understood more about what they do, how they devote their lives to God.  When I
discovered my ability, I knew that it was a gift and the best place to use it
was with a convent.  Even though I’m not technically a nun, it’s pretty close.”

“So, you never had
any doubts?”

She paused for a
reflective moment, her dancing eyes stopped, and a sad smile worked the corners
of her mouth.  “Once.  In high school.  There was a boy, and it took a lot
of convincing, but he finally got me to go out with him.  We dated for awhile
and … well, he was the only one who ever made me have doubts.”

“What happened?  Did
he break your heart or something?”

“No.  I broke
his.”

“You left him for
another guy?”

She nodded.  “God.”

“How’d he take
it?”

“Angry at first.  But
he’s still my best friend to this day.”

I smiled.  “Happy
endings are nice, aren’t they?”

She laughed.  “Yes, they
are.”

There were about twenty-five of them, sick and
feeble alike, in line for some miracle.  They had blind faith, something that I
hadn’t had since I was thirteen when my mother died.  I had lost my faith soon
after that.  Now, it was something I still struggled with.

The first to step forth
was an elderly man of about eighty.  He regarded me with kind, hopeful eyes.  “It’s
the cancer,” he said softly, steadying himself with one hand on his walker,
lifting his shirt with the other hand, placing it over his pancreas.  “They
said it’s spreading too fast.  Nothing they can do.”

“I’m sorry,” I said,
unable to look him in the eyes.

He whispered a chuckle.  “Don’t
be sorry.  Just take it away.”

I nervously looked over
at Miles, who nodded his solemn approval.  The man came closer to me with his
shirt still lifted.  I placed one hand over his pancreas, closed my eyes and
concentrated all my energy on this one area of his body.  My hand began to
tingle, but would do no more.  I concentrated harder, picturing a healthy
pancreas, healing green light surrounding the area.  Still nothing more than a
tingle.

“You’re not trying hard
enough,” Miles said to me, softly but sternly.  As soon as he said it, the
tingling went away, my concentration replaced with self-disappointment.

I removed my hand.  “I’m
sorry,” I said to the old man.  He hung his head in defeat.  Miles then got up,
dipped his hand in the holy water he always kept with him, and placed a wet hand
over the man’s pancreas.  After a minute or two, he removed his hand and told
the man to return to the doctors, that the cancer had shrunk enough for them to
remove it.  Grateful, the man left.

Miles looked at me and
sighed.  “I know I shouldn’t expect so much from you so soon.  When you are
healing, you must remember that the power comes from the very core of your
being.  You must feel the energy moving through you and into the other person.”
 Miles nodded to one of the nuns, Sister Wendy, to let the next person in line
come forth.

I had heard her coughing
for the past several minutes.  She was maybe sixty-five or so.  “Bronchitis,”
she said.  “Damned doctors can’t make it go away.”

Miles nodded for me to
start.  I took a deep breath and placed my hand on the woman’s lungs.  “I don’t
have insurance.  Those blood suckers took so much money I can barely pay my
rent.”

“Please stop talking,” I
said.

“What’s the matter?  Can’t
take a little distraction?”

“Actually, no.”  I closed
my eyes, trying to concentrate.

“Maybe this guy should do
it.  Pretty sure he has more experience than you.”

I removed my hand from
her lungs and stared at her.

“Madame, please be
quiet,” said Miles.  She heeded the stern look in his eyes and shut up.

I put my hand back and
closed my eyes.  I breathed deeply.  I imagined a healing light pulsing through
my core and into her lungs.  My hand began to tingle, a little more than last
time but would go no further.  I opened my eyes and removed my hand.  I shook
my head and looked down at the floor.

Miles let out a sigh.  He
used his holy water and healed her in about a minute.  The woman thanked him
and then sadly shook her head at me and left.  Miles looked at me, a quiet
frustration creeping across his eyebrows.

“Maybe I should try the
holy water,” I said.

“No.  It’s not your
element.  You need to call forth the power inside you.”

“I’m trying,” I said,
sounding more aggravated than I had intended.

The next person was a
woman in her forties with arthritis in her hands.  This time, Miles dipped both
his hands in holy water, held my hand and the woman’s hand and instructed me to
hold her other hand so that we formed a three-person circle.  He instructed me
to start healing first.  I tried and felt the tingling again.  The hand holding
the woman’s hand started to warm slightly.  Then I felt the hand holding Miles’
become very warm then very hot.  The heat traveled through my body and into the
woman’s hand.  A few moments later, she was pain free.

After she left, Miles
said, “I could feel you getting a little stronger before I took over.”

For a moment, I was
getting hopeful, but as more people came, I grew more discouraged.  We saw
about fifteen people that day, and my hand never seemed to get any hotter than
lukewarm.  Miles tried to hide his disappointment, but I could see it in his
eyes.

It was after 5:00 PM when
we left.  Miles brought me back to his house so I could get my car.  The
awkward silence was more than I could take.  He didn’t even have the radio on.  He
seemed very distant, and I could practically see the gears turning in his head
as he seemed to wrestle with some internal problem.  When we got back to his
house, he told me to come back tomorrow at one o’clock.  I told him okay and
then went back to Cee Cee’s.

About a mile or so before
Cee Cee’s, I stopped at a red light and glanced in the rearview mirror.  I
noticed a dark gray Charger behind the car that was behind me.  I froze,
staring at the car.  The windows were darkly tinted, probably beyond the legal
limit.  I couldn’t make out the driver of the car, but I had a feeling it might
be the guy from the bar and the café.

The car behind me blew
the horn, jolting me from my thoughts.  I looked up and saw the light had
turned green.  I drove off, still noticing the Charger behind me.  This time,
instead of trying to give him the slip, I continued on to Cee Cee’s.  When I
turned onto her street, I pulled over on the side of her shop instead of parking
in the back.  I turned around in time to see the Charger continue straight on
rather than follow me.

It was unnerving to be
followed, but I was relieved that he didn’t follow me right up to Cee Cee’s
store.  I parked around back and went up to her apartment.

When I entered, the smell
of left-over gumbo hit me right away, and my stomach started to growl—gumbo was
always better the next day.  She was watching TV and gave me a big smile when I
came in.

“Hey, my baby!  Supper
will be done in a little while.  I hope you don’t mind it being a little early
tonight.  I’m going somewhere later.”

“I’m going to gain so
much weight by the time I leave here.”

She laughed.  “Good!  Your
maw maw will know I took good care of you.  So, how did it go today?”

I sighed and took a seat
next to her on the couch.  “I don’t think I’m doing such a good job.”

She looked at me
sympathetically and patted my knee.  “You’ll get it, baby.  Just need a lot of
practice.  Miles know that.”

“He seemed pretty
disappointed.”

“That ‘cause he too much
a perfectionist.  You’ll get it,” she repeated.

After supper, Cee Cee
left, saying she was going to meet with a client and would be back in a couple
of hours, but didn’t say where she was going.  I chose not to be nosy.

I locked the door after
she left and did the dishes even though she said she’d be angry with me if I
lifted a finger around here.  But I didn’t like being a bad guest, so I looked
through her record collection and pulled out a Sam Cooke album—his greatest
hits collection.  I took the record out of the sleeve and carefully placed it
on the player that Cee Cee kept next to her altar.  I put the needle on the
first groove and then I put the record sleeve on the coffee table.  As the
music started, I placed the dishes in the sink and filled it with dishwashing
liquid and hot water. 

While I let the dishes
soak, I took a shower.  By the time I got out, got dressed and dried my hair,
the record was over, leaving just the white noise of the needle at the end of
the record and the hiss of the speakers.  I went back into the living room to
restart the record and then finish the dishes.

When I went into the
room, I stopped in my tracks. Something wasn’t right.  I took a quick glance
around, trying to figure out what was wrong.  The door was still locked.  The
dishes were in the sink, the faucet dripping every few seconds.  The TV was
off.  I remembered that we turned it off before supper.  The chairs were still
pushed under the table which I had done before I gathered the dishes.

The music
.

I picked up the album
sleeve from the couch and looked at the tracks.  I added up the track lengths
on side
A
, and it came out to roughly forty minutes.  I quickly ran
through my activities after I put on the record.  It took me less than five
minutes to put the dishes in the sink and run the water.  I spent about ten
minutes in the shower and another fifteen or so drying my hair and getting into
my night clothes.  That was only about thirty minutes.

Maybe the record
skipped?

I liked that explanation.
 I took the needle off the record, picked it up and examined it.  Not a scratch
on it.  Something else occurred to me, something that made me tense up.

The album sleeve.  It was
on the couch.  I had left it on the coffee table.  I started to tremble, frightened,
searching my mind for any possible explanation.  
Was I mistaken?  Did I put
it on the couch before I put the dishes in the sink?  No.  I put it on the
coffee table.  As soon as I took out the record, I put the sleeve on the coffee
table.  Cee Cee!  Maybe she came back to get something, picked it up to look at
it and put it on the couch.

It was the only logical
explanation I could allow.  Just the same, I grabbed a butcher knife from the
kitchen drawer and started going through each room, not caring about how
foolish I probably looked.  I searched in closets and under beds.  I was
shaking badly the whole time, but managed to perform a thorough search.  When I
deemed the apartment clear, I started to feel very silly.  I put down the knife
and called Cee Cee on her cell.  I just got her voice mail.  I left her a quick
message, asking her if she had come back to the apartment while I was in the
shower.  I hung up and put the TV on while I finished the dishes, every now and
then looking over my shoulder.

By the time I was done
with the dishes, it was nearly 7:00 PM.  Cee Cee still hadn’t called me back.  I
picked up my phone to call her again but decided not to bug her.  I called
Clothilde instead.  Lyla answered the phone and hearing her voice comforted me.

“Hi, Aunt Leigh!”

“Hey, sweetness.  How’s
it going over there?”

“Good.  Hey, guess what?”

“I give up.”

“I healed another animal
today.”

I should have been happy
for her, but I found myself feeling jealous.  She was healing animals left and
right while I could barely get my hand beyond lukewarm.  “Oh, really?” I said,
trying to sound happy for her.

“Uh huh.  A cat.  It got
hit by a car, and it was all bloody and gross and—”

“Lyla, I don’t need to
hear the details, okay?  But I’m glad you fixed it and made it better.”

“Maw Maw Clo said I can
keep it if I take good care of it and it stays outside so it can catch mice.”

“Well that was nice of
her.”

“You want to talk to her?
 She’s right here.”

“Yes, please.”

“Okay.  Love you!  Bye!”

“Love you, too.”

I heard her hand the
phone over, and Clothilde’s voice came through with an edge of warning.  “You
been behaving for Miss Cee Cee?”

“Yes, ma’am.  In fact I
just did the dishes for her.”

“Good girl.  And how’s
the training going?”

“Not so good.”

“Keep trying.  You’ll get
better.”

“Yeah, that’s what Cee
Cee keeps telling me.”

“Mais, it’s true!”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said.  “That
was nice of you to let Lyla keep that cat,” I added.

“I’ve been noticing too
many mice around here.”

“Well, I’m going to let
you go.  I just called to say hi.”

“Okay.  Call if you need
anything.  Good night, Leigh Leigh.”

“Night Maw Maw.”

We hung up, and I
continued to watch TV until Cee Cee got back home.  She told me she saw I
called but couldn’t figure out how to access her answering machine.  I asked
her if she meant voice mail, and she laughed and said that’s what it was.

“What’s the matter?  You
look a little spooked,” she said.  I told her about what happened with the
album sleeve.  She looked perplexed and then said, “I wouldn’t worry about
that.  Sometimes we trick ourself into thinking things happened that didn’t.  You
prob’ly put it on the couch and forgot.”

“I didn’t forget.  What
if it’s a
ghost
or something?” I whispered.  “What if it’s Les Foncés?”

“Trust me, baby, they
can’t get in here.  I have a special protection around my apartment.  Nothing
bad can come into my house.  I’d like to see it try!”  She laughed, but I still
felt uneasy.  “Now you had just put it on the couch and forgot.”  She smiled
reassuringly.

I smiled back and decided
to drop it, thinking she could have been right, even though that annoying part
of my psyche kept telling me I knew good and well that album sleeve was on the
coffee table.

About an hour later I got
ready for bed.  I brushed my hair and remembered something else.  My hairbrush
was on the bed when I got out of the shower.  Before I went in, my brush was on
the nightstand.  I set the brush down on the nightstand, feeling chills run
down my spine.  Could I maybe have left it on the bed and forgot?  I wanted to
tell Cee Cee, but decided not to.  I was feeling crazier by the minute.

I peeked under the bed
and in the closet once more before I closed my bedroom door and locked it.  I
decided to sleep with the lamp on, though I found it hard to fall asleep.  I
tossed and turned for about twenty minutes, my mind racing.  I flipped over my
pillow, and something flew onto the floor.  I looked over the side of the bed
to see a small black bag with draw strings.  I picked it up off the floor and
thought for a second if I should open it.  I had forgotten that Cee Cee said
she put something under my pillow to help me sleep better.  I carefully untied
the strings and opened the bag.  There were seven small items in it: some
holly, a sprig of mimosa, a marigold petal, a silver coin, a piece of amethyst,
a small hunk of rose quartz, and a black plastic charm made to look like three
letter
Z
s.