The Watchers (48 page)

Susanne said nothing as waves of golden light seemed to pour into the air around them, glinting fiercely off the sharp edge of the Gateway Arch. She continued to gaze at the sunrise in silence for a long while until finally she turned to Abby and said, “God really does answer prayer, doesn't He?”

Abby nodded.

Susanne Sherman's disappearance had just surfaced along the electronic fringes of the vast surveillance web stretched over the world, all for the purpose of locating and apprehending Abigail and her elusive companion.

Early morning fog might have concealed their escape, and Dylan's cunning had erased almost all odds of their being caught, but it did not prevent a tiny, invisible dot inside the lamination of Susanne's faded photograph from sending out a signal so weak yet so persistent that it could be traced in real time by highly trained operatives of the United States government.

Or, as in this case, the battered yet surviving organization with whom the operatives supplemented their appalling government salaries.

INTERSTATE 55, ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI
— JUST MINUTES LATER

While driving, Dylan glanced back at Abby's mother with a disarming grin. “Ma'am, I believe you're looking just a bit clearer and stronger with every mile we put between us and that place.”

“I am feeling clearer,” she said. “That's for certain. Thank you. Thank you for coming for me.”

“Mom, do you understand now that your seeing all these things all this time was actually a spiritual gift shared by thousands of other women?”

In fits and starts, while omitting whole chunks of her tale to avoid spinning off into hours of digression, Abby told her mother about the Watchers and what she had learned of their plight. The account ended for Abby with a single, crucial question.

“Who led
you
to Christ? Can you tell us about that person?”

Regret and sadness washed over Susanne's face. “I grew up in the last tatters of the old South, you know. A big ramshackle house over in Webster Groves. A swing, huge lawn, fried chicken, and pot roast for Sunday lunch. But part of that world was . . . I wasn't raised by my mom and dad. I was raised by Marcelle.”

“Marcelle? Was she African-American?”

“You mean
black
? I never heard of that other word.”

“Yes, that's what I mean.”

“Marcelle was definitely brown, or Afri . . . whatever you said. She was the great-granddaughter of slaves, who were literally sold down the river and separated, only they found each other and reunited after the war.”

“World War I?” Dylan asked, frowning.

Susanne gave him a look as if she questioned his intelligence.

“The War Between the States.”

“Oh.”

“Dylan's a Yankee through and through,” Abby explained with a smirk.

“What I'm trying to say is that Marcelle led me to Christ and taught me everything about the Lord and His ways.”

“Did you go to Sunday school?”

“Not for a long time. Marcelle was my Sunday school.”

Abby nodded, smiling to herself.

“In fact,” said Susanne, “Marcelle is also the one who blessed me. Out of the blue one day, as we were reading the Word and talking about ‘gawdly thangs,' as she used to pronounce it, she just up and laid her hand on my forehead and started praying something fierce. And something happened to me. I can't explain it.”

“You don't have to, Mom.”

“Now that I think of it, it's a funny thing. Because it's right after that blessing that strange things started to happen. A few months later I had the strangest dream, so odd I can even remember it now. I dreamed that I was the prophetess Anna. Meeting Christ in the Temple.”

“It's the sign that you have the gift,” said Abby. “It came to you through your spiritual family. Mom, as best I can tell, you might be the first white Watcher who ever lived.”

“Does that make you the second?”

“I suppose so.”

“Well, it hasn't been such a great thing for me so far. Right after I had that dream, I started seeing things. Spirits. Ugly creatures. I was only ten, so in Southern Gothic style, it was just written off as having a good, active imagination. I remember my father joking that as long as Susanne's ghosts were Yankee soldiers, he was all right with that. But then it got bigger. I started running away from seemingly empty chairs. I started talking to people, angels I guess, nobody else could see. I'd even give hugs to thin air. My parents got worried and thought that, without some kind of ‘modern intervention,' I'd become one of those mad Southern ladies. So the first thing they did was fire Marcelle and banish her forever. She was forbidden to talk to me. I don't think they had restraining orders back then, or I think they would have gotten one. Then they sent me to a hospital for disturbed children.”

“What was that like?” Abby asked.

She took a deep breath and continued. “Well, they started with lots of pills. Tranquilizers. Ten, twelve pills a day. Then the electroshock, which at the time was the worst thing I'd ever lived through. In between, we got slaps in the face, swats on the behind, some good shoves when we didn't cooperate. But you know what was the absolute worst part for me? Being separated from Marcelle. Not having her around to comfort and guide me, not to mention teaching me in ‘the ways of the Lord,' as she called it. Now
that
was torture.”

“How long did you stay there?”

“Eight months, if I recall. When I got out, I was one troubled teenager with a big chip on my shoulder. Then I went into a depression and started turning away from all that Marcelle had taught me. I stopped walking with God or reading the Word. I met a boy named Bobby in the neighborhood, and two months later I found out I was pregnant. He was from a good family and going off to an Ivy League school, so my folks arranged this quickie marriage. But as soon as you were born, he took you away with him to California. Next thing I knew, his daddy's lawyer had filed commitment papers with the state, and that got them full custody of you. And that's where I've been . . .”

Her voice had turned shaky, then trailed off.

After a pause, Susanne continued. “About eight years later the involuntary commitment expired and I got to come home. My daddy spent most of his savings getting a lawyer to bring you home and let me see you. Do you remember that?”

“I do,” said Abby. “I've replayed those days in my mind a million times.”

“I don't remember much of it, because it was a very difficult time. But the one thing I remember perfectly is the night you and I prayed

together for you to receive Christ into your heart and start walking with Him.”

“I remember. You put your hand on my head and prayed by yourself for a while.”

“Yes. Just the way Marcelle had shown me to do it. And do you recall what happened then?”

“Something. Something weird. I remember feeling this strange jolt, kind of like when I stuck my finger in that old light socket in the garage.”

“A bright light passed between us. Something incredible. But then your father stormed in to tell me that my time with you was up. He was very angry. He told me he was through putting up with this Negro witchcraft.”

“He said that?” Abby said.

Her mother nodded.

“Dylan,” she said, turning to him with a stricken look. “We have to find Marcelle. If this breach is going to get healed, we have to find Marcelle and close the circle.”

Susanne took her daughter's hand and held it over her heart. “That would be even more than I've ever prayed for. That would be a dream come true.”

Abby leaned her head against her mother's shoulder. They quietly savored each other's company, the flow of new time and the passing miles.

CHAPTER
_
70

Turning south, they soon found themselves in a sprawling suburb. Dylan stopped at an electronics store, where he purchased a “screaming” laptop computer and a high-definition camcorder. Then the three retired to the nearest coffee and Internet haven.

“Do they really want three dollars for a cup of coffee?” Abby's mother asked, incredulous.

“For a good one, yes,” Abby answered, chuckling.

“Maybe the coffee's expensive, but all the information in the world is free,” Dylan said. “Look. I just enter the word
Marcelle
in a search engine and the World Wide Web goes out and searches databases all around the globe. Oh no . . .”

“What's the problem?” Abby asked.

“Three and a half million hits is the problem. This won't be much help.”

“What does
hits
mean? When I was a girl, a hit was either the opposite of a strike, or a pull on a joint.”

“Mom! I didn't know you knew that.”

“Well, sweetheart, you didn't think I slept through my adolescence, did you?”

“A hit,” explained Dylan, “is a reference to the word you're browsing. So I found three and a half million references to Marcelle out there, which is far too many to investigate myself. Where did Marcelle live most of her life?”

“I'm sure it was Webster Groves.”

Dylan typed a bit. “Now we're down to one hundred hits. Problem is, they're mostly new and commercial sites. I'll scroll through, but it doesn't look like anything about an individual. Do we even know if this lady is still alive?”

“She would be well into her eighties by now,” Susanne said, after some reflection.

“Are there any childhood friends you could ask for a last name? Any old tax records?”

“Dead and buried. But you know what?” Susanne added. “Marcelle is alive. I know it's a cliché to say this, but if she had died, I believe I would have sensed it somehow.”

“Absolutely, you would have.” Abby struck the table with a loud slap. “That's it! You may think this is crazy, but I'm gonna do something bold. Maybe even redemptive.”

Dylan's eyebrows shot up. “What are you cooking up?”

“I know who knows this stuff. I'm gonna call my granddad.”

The three of them left the Internet cafe
and found a private place outside where they huddled around the phone. The dialing tone and beeps sounded over its speakerphone, then finally ringing. A static-like noise, followed by a male voice, gruff and somber.

“Heath Laidlaw.”

“Granddaddy?”

“Abigail? Abby, what's become of you? We've been so worried. You're all over the TV.”

“I'm fine, Granddaddy. And I'm starting to put a lot of very important pieces together. Try to guess who I'm with right now.”

“Don't play with me, Abby. I'm an old man.”

“I'm with my mother. Who I was told I would never find, but who's spent the last many years in a mental institution due to repeated commitments and interventions from her family.”

“Are you calling to bawl me out, Abigail? Because I'm a little too old to put up with that kind of guff.”

“No, Granddaddy. I'm not calling to condemn you or anything like that. But I did think you might want to speak to your daughter.”

A faint crackling of static played over the speaker for a moment. When his voice returned, it sounded like that of a different man.

“Susanne?”

“Daddy?” her mother said, sounding suddenly a half century younger.

“Sweetheart, I'm sorry. So sorry . . .” His voice sounded as if he might break into a sob. “Oh, I wish your mother had lived to see this day, Susanne. Are you there? Can you hear me?”

“I'm here, Daddy” came her reply.

“I was wrong, Susanne. I know that now, and I've longed every minute of every day, for the last twenty years, for the strength to tell you that. But you know sometime even your worst mistakes just kind of get cast into cement and become stone, and you feel there's nothing you can do to make it right. After your mother died, I sort of gave up, telling myself it was too late. I believed the worst, that you were doing so poorly, my telling you wouldn't matter. My taking you out wouldn't matter. And of course that wasn't true . . .”

Susanne leaned back in the sunshine and shook her head, clearly overwhelmed by all that was happening to her that morning. She blinked a few times as though absorbing what she had just heard took extra brain-processing time. She leaned forward, smiled faintly.

“I forgive you, Daddy. You sound sincere, and in Jesus' name I forgive you. You know that I still have a great deal to work through. But with His help I know I'll be able to forgive you. I just need a little time to do it fully, to adjust to everything. Okay?”

“Thank—”

The final word of his appreciation was swallowed in some kind of vocal garble.

“Thank you.” And now it was clear, despite the bad connection, that the man was weeping openly.

“Granddaddy,” Abby said, “I've been learning a lot about healing old wounds and breaches. And we're doing more, having a greater impact right now, than you may ever know. Confessing and forgiving each other is kind of like repairing broken veins and arteries that have gotten clogged over time and now threaten the life of the whole body. It's big stuff, Granddaddy. Even God takes heed of it.”