Pockets of Darkness (16 page)

Twenty Two

Jimmy had been a random act of compassion on Bridget’s part, proof that she wasn’t quite as cold or badass as she tried to make people believe.

Bridget had spotted him roughly three years ago. He was with two other teens, panhandling on the platform—the same platform she’d stood on moments ago before transferring to the train taking her toward the museum.

She’d offered to buy the trio dinner at the sandwich shop that sat streetside above the platform—the popular 2nd Ave. Deli, which was oddly named because it was actually on 33rd Street. The other two beggars declined, picked up, and moved to another spot where they could mooch unbothered. But Jimmy had taken her up on the offer.

That’s how Bridget knew that Jimmy was an “honest beggar,” down enough on his luck to accept food, rather than money. Not a professional panhandler at any rate. The city had plenty of those, who treated begging as a full-time job and who raked in a good bit of unreported income and only sought monetary handouts. She’d read an article in the
Times
that said the average beggar on a NYC street made only $50 a day, but the really good ones made enough to buy a Mercedes and a nice house in the suburbs.

Jimmy had been overly skinny then, wrists and elbows protruding, all bones and hard angles, but he’d had the appetite of a linebacker. He wolfed down a big bowl of matzo ball soup, followed by two corned beef sandwiches, before coming up for air, saying “thanks, ma’am,” and engaging her in conversation over a piece of cherry pie.

Could the demon tell she was thinking about Jimmy? Trying to recall the good times with the boy in an effort to blot out the image of him being gutted on the weight bench?

The demon sat one row in front of her, gaze apparently drifting from one passenger to the next. There were eleven other riders in this car, many of them chattering, the words indistinguishable white noise coupled with the rattle and hum of the train.

Four women were together, dressed smartly, reasonably light on the jewelry, heavy on the makeup, and in long winter coats, maybe headed to a play or some society function; they had that look. Two teenage boys were in matching jeans jackets, one wearing garish checkered pants, his long hair in a ponytail. The other had a spiky black mohawk and a plethora of earrings—four in his left ear, five in his right, one in his nose, a couple in his eyebrows, a small silver hoop in the center of his lower lip. Earring Boy held the hand of the youth with the ponytail and leaned into him. The other five passengers looked to be on their own. A businessman with a leather briefcase, maybe a lawyer; two middle-aged women, one with mismatched shoes, grocery bags nested in a wire pull-cart; a subway worker that by his weary face hinted he was heading home from a shift; and a homeless-looking soul hunched on a seat at the very back, shoulders so rounded and head so shadowed under a hood that Bridget couldn’t determine an age or sex, could hardly tell the figure was breathing.

The demon seemed most interested in the teenage boys, who were talking close and conspiratorially. The one with all the earrings in particular had the demon’s attention.

Jimmy had spilled his life story to Bridget over a second piece of pie. He’d told her he had just turned fifteen, had dropped out of school after junior high, was the youngest of five siblings, all scattered to the winds in foster homes.… he hadn’t talked to any of them in a few years and suspected they were all probably old enough to be on their own now. He’d been shuffled from one foster home to the next since he was … Bridget remembered that he scratched his chin before settling on “five.” He couldn’t recall why they’d been taken from their parents, though he knew the police had visited the apartment often before all the kids were finally plucked.

Jimmy said he didn’t like any of his foster parents, though he admitted that none of them were “bad folks” and honestly had seemed to care. They made him go to school, follow rules, and those things had not appealed to him at the time. So he cut out after the third family he was stuck with and fell in with the city’s homeless population, which eventually led him under Manhattan. Jimmy had been Bridget’s introduction to the mole-world.

Bridget couldn’t recall just what had possessed her to offer Jimmy a “job” of sorts with her crew. Maybe she felt sorry for him, or saw something of herself in him … running away and joining a gang. He didn’t accept her offer at first; it had taken two more lunches when she ran into him panhandling again. And after a year and a half of doing odd jobs for her, she invited him to live in the brownstone and become a full-time part of her smuggling operation. Maybe it was because of Otter she’d reached out.

She’d felt she had failed her own son, and believed it was far too late to rectify that with Otter … though now fate had given her another chance with that. So maybe she’d reached out some sort of helping hand to Jimmy at the time in an effort to balance the karmic scales. If she’d left him alone three years past he might still be alive.

Bridget tried to picture Jimmy sparring with her on the roof, wolfing down corned beef sandwiches, poring over textbooks because she demanded he study, waving his GED certificate under her nose.

But she couldn’t hold any of those memories for more than a heartbeat. In the end all she saw was his bloody, ripped up body on the weight bench and the demon munching on his heart.

“Jimmy. Mmmmm.” The demon looked over its warty shoulder and licked its lips.

It had been reading her mind! In the instant she’d thought that, Bridget discarded the notion—or rather, the essence of it. If the beast could read minds, it would have found a way to communicate with its previous attendants, or even with her. She wouldn’t have had to go to such lengths to connect with a Sumerian artifact and cobble together a conversation through it. Perhaps the demon could capture images or a focus.… Jimmy for example, and before that Tavio. Bridget had been thinking of basically nothing but Jimmy since leaving the brownstone. Likely the demon had some empathic qualities, but couldn’t make a solid mental connection. Tavio, the demon had plucked her ex-husband from her head and must have been able to hone in on him, find him, just like it had found the women important to Elijah Stone.

Images and connections, but apparently not complete or complex thoughts.

It was an important realization, and maybe something she could use to her advantage.

Bridget left at the 86th Street station, the demon following. It felt like the temperature had dropped a dozen degrees in the short time since she’d left home; a snowy-sleet mixture spit down. The sidewalk was slick and forced her to a slower pace than she would have liked. Her breath puffed away and she thrust her hands into her pockets, her fingers feeling cold despite the gloves, all of her cold and empty because of Jimmy. She briefly considered catching the westbound M86 bus that would drop her off right in front of the museum. Instead, she hoofed it the few blocks and jogged up the museum front steps, which had been thoroughly salted. The demon dogged her.

It was Friday, and the museum was still open. Fridays and Saturdays, and sometimes for special exhibits, the museum stayed open until 9 p.m.

“You’ll have less than two hours,” a woman at the big octagonal desk told her. “We start clearing the halls at 8:45 and—”

“I know. That’s okay, I only want to catch the exhibit on the medieval treasures from Hildesheim.” Bridget paid the $25 admission fee. She’d grabbed three ten dollar bills before she left, not wanting to have a wallet on her. The five remaining ought to get her a good-sized cup of coffee for the trip back. “I read about the exhibit in the
Times
.”

“I suggest you hurry then,” the woman said, supplying directions. “It’s a large display, about fifty works. Gallery five-two-one. You’ll find it one of the most complete and elaborate collections of church furnishings from Europe.” She prattled on a little more, Bridget catching something about Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim, bronze doors, a baptismal font, and illuminated manuscripts. She left the desk and rounded a corner, following the directions on the map the woman had pointed to, then taking a turn and heading elsewhere.

Bridget had heard a news spot about the exhibit and really intended to see it, just not tonight. Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim was supposedly the greatest patron of the arts in the Middle Ages and was said to have commissioned numerous illuminated manuscripts. The Golden Madonna was advertised as part of the display. Oh, to delve into something he’d worked on; that would be a historical mind-trip she’d like to take.

She loved the museum and had been through its entire two million square feet many times—though she’d never been able to traipse through everything in one visit. Her first visit had been with her parents when they tried to teach her about the Old Masters. But she was too young to appreciate the works then, and so was bored stiff. The highlight had been visiting the museum’s gift shop, where her father bought her a puzzle featuring a reproduction of Adolf Dehn’s Spring in Central Park. They’d put it together on the kitchen table, and she still pictured it in her mind, a watercolor view south from Sheep Meadow toward midtown Manhattan.

Bridget came to appreciate the museum as a teenager, when she and some of her Westie pals would pickpocket the more affluent-looking tourists come to see whatever new exhibit was being promoted. She took time then to soak in the art and afterwards would spend her pilfered money on a dinner in an expensive restaurant. Restaurant? Her son had just inherited one; she’d try to talk him into selling it. Otter should go to college and pursue a solid career, maybe train for the Olympics swim team. Tavio had mentioned that once to her, that a swim coach said Otter should cast his eyes in that direction. A boy didn’t need to worry about running a restaurant.

Keep focused, Bridget thought. Keep your mind on the museum. She believed she knew as much about this museum as any of its employees did.

The museum traced its roots to 1866 in Paris, where a committee of Americans traveled with the notion of observing French art galleries so they could establish something similar in New York City. Civic leaders, artists, collectors, businessmen, and philanthropists pooled their talents and money, and in 1870, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its doors. A decade later the museum moved here, to Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street. The building continued to expand, the various additions encasing the original structure.

To this day, the place was one of the world’s greatest art centers.

She and Tavio had visited together a few times years ago. His favorite haunts had been the Florence and Herbert Irving Asian Wing, filled with calligraphy, sculptures, lacquers, and textiles, and the Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Gallery with rotating exhibits from the museum’s arms and armor collection. They only took Otter once, when he was six or seven, the boy finding the place stuffy and boring. However, she knew Tavio had taken him rather recently. Again Bridget chastised herself. Tavio had shown the boy some culture, and she’d shown him the inside of a warehouse filled with ill-gotten treasures.

She took advantage of a clump of people gathered past the entrance to the Kingdom of Benin Gallery, part of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas collection. Their numbers effectively cloaked her from the cameras, allowing her to slip around a corner and into a blind spot, the demon following her the entire way, babbling and oozing. She waited for another group of people to pass her position, and she melded in with them, going from blind spot to blind spot, losing herself amid tall men, until she eventually made her way to an employee area, which was thankfully unlocked, and folded herself into a large and mostly empty cabinet. Bridget fiddled with the catch on the inside so that if someone tried to open it they’d think it jammed or locked, but she doubted this late anyone would even come into the room. And if they did? Bridget was usually one to carefully plan, but tonight she was pretty much winging everything. Somehow the demon managed to squeeze inside the cabinet too, its stench overpowering. Her eyes watered and she breathed as shallowly as possible, checked the luminous dial of her watch, tugged off her gloves, unbuttoned her coat, and waited.

“We have to stay here,” she told the demon, though she knew it couldn’t wholly understand her. “Until well after this place closes.”

The interior of the cabinet wasn’t completely dark, a crack between the doors let in a little of the room’s fluorescent light. Enough to see the shape of the creature and to tell that all five of its dizzying eyes were open and regarding her; they appeared to have a ghostly luminescence. She couldn’t see the ooze that dribbled down its mottled hide, though she heard its soft trickle, and she heard it belch and smelled the resultant cloud of sulfuric gas, which was followed by what sounded like snoring. Bridget turned her face away and pressed it against a seam in the wood. The scent of varnish couldn’t compete with the rankness of the demon’s breath, but it helped.

She shut her eyes, tried to get the image of Jimmy’s bloody corpse out of her mind, and prayed that the demon would stay in the cabinet with her and not lose patience and disappear to rip out someone else’s heart.

***

Twenty Three

Bridget waited until nearly eleven. She was stiff from sitting in a cramped position, and she rubbed her thighs as she climbed out of the cabinet, the demon sluggishly following and growling. The employee room was dark, but enough light seeped in under the crack in the door that Bridget could orient herself.

She once again pictured the various halls of the museum, the route she’d taken to get to this room and where she needed to go to reach the bowls … and in the end what might happen if she got caught, all things that had tumbled through her mind while she’d waited in the cabinet. There were motion sensors, video cameras, alarms, and security guards to contend with, and her heart seized at the notion of being discovered inside this place. She wasn’t
this
kind of a thief, she told herself, at least not anymore. She didn’t break into museums. She brokered and smuggled and dealt under the table. She used connections and courted the black market.

She didn’t do …
this
.

But she was doing
exactly this
.

Excuses tumbled through her head that she might use if confronted—she got lost, hadn’t realized the museum closed … somehow hadn’t heard the repeated announcements, fell asleep in a lounge. She’d fallen down some stairway and hit her head, only now coming to. Hopefully, though, she wouldn’t need an excuse—all of which would be lame anyway.

“Aldî-nîfaeti. Unshackle,” the demon growled.

“Sure,” Bridget said softly. “Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti. Unshackle all the feckin’ Aldî-nîfaeti in this museum … if there are any.”

While she had no trouble accepting and reselling museum pieces—that someone else had stolen and brought her way—she had not personally taken a single object from a museum. Too risky maybe, or against some flimsy moral code that hovered in the back of her mind. But what was the difference between accepting stuff swiped from a museum’s basement across the ocean and from taking something out of a display case in the Metropolitan Museum of Art? If there were lines to be crossed, today she’d cross them and pluck something right out of an exhibit—three somethings according to Rob … if all went well.

The demon continued to hiss and babble, most of the words in the long-dead Sumer tongue she couldn’t fathom. A scattered few words she understood.

Prison.

Unshackle.

Jimmy. Mmmm.

Otter.

Aldî-nîfaeti.

Freedom.

Otter.

Freedom.

Aldî-nîfaeti.

Unshackle.

Michael.

Otter Otter Otter.

“Shut up you damnable gobshite and I’ll unshackle the Aldî-nîfaeti. But if you don’t shut up, maybe you’ll have to find some other sorry fool to—” Bridget stepped to the door, held her breath, and pressed her ear to it. Silence. She stepped out into a dimly lit corridor and started toward her target. The hallway smelled strongly of lemon floor polish and musty things.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art had serious safeguards, but Bridget figured that she was up on the technology. She worked her way through the halls, either tilting cameras or passing through blind spots, using a few of the large air vents to move from one area to the next, and making her way through stairwells used only by employees and security, pressing herself against walls the entire time. She saw and avoided half a dozen different security guards before reaching the wing where a sign read: Ancient Near-Eastern Art. Rob had e-mailed her about where precisely the bowls were in this hall, according to the museum’s interactive Internet site. He’d also noted in his message that there were two hundred and sixty-nine Sumerian pieces on display.

She stood where the shadows were thickest and took in the collection—cow and duck-shaped amulets, figurines, the feet from a broken statue, cuneiform tablets … and the bowls, everything eerily illuminated by the after-hours lighting.

The demon hopped at her side, chattered louder, and gestured with a talon at the case that held the bowls.

“Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti,” the demon hissed. “Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti. Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti. Unshackle—”

“Yeah, that’s why we’re here, eh?” Bridget had managed to disconnect the video feed from the chamber, was pleased there were no motion sensors here—that she could find, and disabled the alarm on the case.

“Gotta work fast,” she whispered. If someone was monitoring the various screens, they’d realize that the feed to this room was out and eventually would send someone to investigate. She just hoped that with so very many rooms in this place, it would take a while before anyone noticed the missing feed.

She pulled a small tool from her pocket and worried at the case’s lock, swung the side panel open—some sort of heavy Plexiglas that looked clear as crystal, and reached inside, over an ox-like figurine and to the first bowl, small and shallow, like something a kid would eat cereal out of. She gingerly lifted it, brought it out, and noted that the demon had stopped moving. All five eyes were wide and fixed on the bowl, its mouth drawn tight. Bridget carefully sat the bowl on the floor and reached for the second, this one twice the size of the first and deeper; it felt like it weighed three to four pounds.

“One more,” she whispered. “One more.” This time she had to lean into the case, as the final bowl was well inside the cabinet, engraved cylinders on either side of it. Similar in size to the larger one she’d just brought out, this one looked thinner and quite fragile, and she held her breath when she cradled it with her gloved fingers, lifted it up and over the other objects in the case, and pulled it out. She sat this down, too, then reached back inside the case, removed the exhibit cards for the bowls and stuck them in a pocket, and then rearranged the other Sumerian pieces. With luck, the bowls’ absence might not be noticed right away.

Squatting, she nested the bowls inside each other and gingerly picked them up, headed away from the case. She stopped when the demon rushed by her and raised its gaze to meet hers. “Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti. Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti.”

“Not here,” Bridget whispered. “I’m not going to break a piece of pottery in here.” She wanted to get out of the museum as fast as possible and deal with the bowls outside, preferably a few blocks away, some nice dark alley. She wanted to delve into the pottery first with her psychometry, see exactly what was trapped inside.

Bridget wanted time to discover what—if anything—she’d be letting out. She started around the beast, but it moved and planted itself again, all eyes glaring defiantly.

“Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti.”

“Yeah, I get that. I’m going to do that.” Still she kept her voice to a whisper. “Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti, but outside. Eventually. Outside.”

“Mmmmm Otter.” The demon made a smacking sound.

“Pissmires and Spiders.” Bridget sat the bowls at her feet and gestured. “All right. All damn right. Go ahead and bust them to pieces yourself. Free your damnable Aldî-nîfaeti buddies.”

The demon skittered back, eyes on the nested bowls, acid bubbling at its lips. If Bridget could ascribe an emotion to the beast, she’d say it was nervous.

“You don’t want to touch the bowls, do you?” She nudged them closer with the tip of her shoe, and they rattled together, the edge of the lowest one flaking. “Maybe you’re afraid one of them will suck you up inside it.”

“Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti,” the demon snarled.

She nudged them closer still, all the while worrying that she’d been in the museum too long, that someone would notice the cut video feed to this room. “Maybe there’s some über-powerful witchery scrawled in the clay, something that threatens you.” A nudge even closer.

The beast slogged back, growling out a string of words she couldn’t understand. Its dizzying eyes narrowed. “Unshackle Otter from life.” It turned away. “Unshackle Otter. Mmmmmmmmmmm. Otter Otter Otter.”

“Wait, I’ll unshackle one of your buddies.” She picked up the smallest bowl and brought it down hard against her knee. The impact sent an image into her head, of the woman who’d fashioned the bowl, who spoke in the demon’s tongue, and whose face was deeply lined and hard-looking.

Bridget stared at the two pieces of the bowl, half-expecting to see some monstrosity filter out with the falling clay dust. But nothing happened. The demon fell silent and twisted its front claw against the floor, making a skritching sound. Acidic drool spilled out over its bottom lip and hissed against the polished marble. It shook its ugly head.

“Okay, so I did it wrong. Or it was empty, eh? So what am I supposed to do? You tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

“Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got that you feckin’—”

It made a gesture with its claws, and Bridget got the intent. She flipped one of the bowls over, so its rim was against the marble floor.

“Now what?”

The beast snarled and raised a claw, balled what amounted to its fist and drove it down, with the other claw it pointed to the overturned bowl. “Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti.”

“So break it while the bowl’s inverted.” In one of her psychometry delving she’d spied a bowl turned upside down in the corner of a room. All right, but—” She picked up the mid-sized bowl, studying the markings inside it, not able to see it very well because of the faint after-hours lighting. But she managed to spot two figures etched in the clay, odd creatures she guessed represented demons, their hands tied. Words that resembled bird tracks circled out from the center of the bowl and wrapped around the etched demons. Cradling the bowl against her with one arm, she used her teeth to pull off a glove so she could directly touch the clay. “All right, I’ll break the bowls, but I have to take a closer look first.”

Bridget shut out the sound of her demon’s harsh breathing, and spilled her senses into the ancient bowl. A woman appeared in the back of her mind—most of her face hidden by cowl, shadowed thin lips quivered as she muttered in the very old language. Bridget could clearly understand the woman; her psychometry allowed for that. The woman used a tool to etch words into wet clay—what was becoming the very bowl that had survived the centuries and was in Bridget’s hand.

“Huseff, son of Nogress,” the woman intoned. Her words had a flat sing-song feel, like a chant or maybe a spell or counter-spell. Bridget wondered if the woman was reciting what she was engraving into the clay or if the spoken and written words were completely different. “From Huseff’s men-sons I heard the voice of the frail and of other men fighting and of angry weeping women. All are cursed and afflicted, pained by Yadun and Yaqrun and Azada. Yadun and Yaqrun and Azada, one will be taken with this bowl, seized by its scales and hair tufts upon their heads—”

“Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti,” Bridget’s demon snarled. “Else Unshackle Otter. Mmmmm Otter. Unshackle—”

Bridget’s mind bore in deeper and she continued to listen to the woman.

“—grab them by the tufts of hair about their heads, by their broken horns. Sahtiel help in the binding. Grab them by their high broken horns and say ‘remove the curses and the pain from the hearts of those you have raged against.’ I adjure you in the name of Prael the great and Ruphael and Sahtiel. Bother no more Huseff and his men-sons. Descendants of Nogress must be teased no more, cursed no more, demon-vexed no more. I am the healer and the binder. I turn away fetidness and sickness. I protect the descendants of Nogress, the men-sons of Huseff. I bind. I bind in clay and words. I heal and annul. With these words I coax and catch I bind. Weapon of clay, mother wet-earth, in the names of angels Sariel and Barakiel—”

“Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti,” the demon spat. “Mmmm Otter.”

“—free the hearts of Huseff and his men-sons from darkness. Ease the troubles of the descendants of Nogress. Protect this house from all vileness. Bind and seal and capture forevermore the Aldî-nîfaeti.”

“Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti,” the demon growled, apparently oblivious to Bridget’s delving into the pottery. “Unshackle.”

Bridget’s head pounded. Her connection with the clay bowl had gotten increasingly difficult and painful as the woman’s chanting continued. And with that last sentence it felt as if an ice pick had been driven into her brain, so hurtful the link had become. It was all Bridget could do to stay on her feet and hold the bowl. Psychometry came almost effortless to her with some pieces, but apparently when an object had been witched, it was another matter entirely. She fought for breath and struggled to keep the image of the woman in the forefront, watched from a distant place as the woman finished the engraving and ran a watery paint around inside the bowl so that the color collected where her tool had dug into the wet clay. Then she poured the remaining paint out onto the dirt floor.

Bridget’s chest was tight and she felt feverish. The demon paced and hissed, mumbled “Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti. Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti” like it was the chorus of a catchy pop tune.

“I will,” she told the demon. “Give me a moment more.” She wanted to see what happened next, pushing the image forward, leaning against the display case for support and watching the woman bake this bowl and others she must have inscribed earlier, all sitting in a brick oven. The woman bent, grasped this bowl in crooked fingers, and shuffled outside into the night, to a home that Bridget knew must belong to Huseff, through a door opened by a tall man. Two boys stood behind him. Bridget kept all her attention on the woman and bowl, and for a moment it felt as if she was the bowl and could feel the woman’s calloused sandpaper fingers against her skin and sense the arcane energy gathered anxiously in the clay.

“Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti,” the demon hissed. It nudged her leg, but Bridget managed to keep the connection with the clay.

The woman shuffled to a corner of the room, the floor of which was hard-packed earth. Ever-curious, Bridget wondered who Huseff was, and his sons … were they important? Of any consequence to their community or to history? Had they done something to be vexed by demons? Her knees threatened to buckle and she felt lightheaded; she was breathing so shallowly now, and she saw flashes of light behind her eyes, the headache caused by this connection almost to the unbearable stage.

“A little more,” Bridget whispered. “Please finish this.”