THIRTY-SIX
Michelle Calvin tried to remember the last time she had been in a church. Was it her sister’s wedding? No, she had been in a church since then, hadn’t she? But when? She couldn’t recall.
As a child growing up in Savannah, Georgia she had been dragged to mass every Sunday, forced to sit in that sweltering, airless church on Margery Street. When she finally ran away at seventeen, never to return, Sunday became a day to do nothing but recover from Saturday night.
And there had been some serious Saturday nights.
She remembered. The last time she’d set foot in a church had been four years earlier, at her grandmother’s funeral. It was held at St Gregory’s, and the turnout was sparse to say the least. Her grandmother didn’t have many friends. Grandma Rita had been what people in her day called a loose woman – three husbands, more boyfriends than she could keep track of, a taste for Jack Daniel’s and a somewhat less than puritanical view when it came to backseat sex.
In many ways, Michelle had turned out the same.
But that was another life.
Now that she was in real estate, now that she had a career with a capital C, it had all changed. Three years earlier, at the ripe old age of twenty-six, she had turned her life around. It had taken one too many scrapes with the law – including a brief stint in jail and two years of AA – but she had finally gotten her act together. She had nearly lost her only daughter in the process, but somehow convinced the court that she had put her wicked ways behind her, and retained custody.
This job – its stability, its respectability, its ticket to better things – meant everything to her. Michelle Calvin was on the rise. And the sky, as they say, was the limit.
Michelle thumbed the combination on the lock box, removed the keys inside, unlocked the side door. Ahead was a short hallway with two doors on the right. The building was old, and had that musty smell of disuse. She walked into the central space which, she imagined, was once the main room of the church.
She hadn’t read up on the property, but she believed that this had one time been used as a chapel. When the old hospital next door was torn down they left this structure standing. Over the past few years it had been used for storage by the archdiocese, but no longer as a place of worship. The archdiocese sold the building to a company headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio who were now looking to unload it.
Michelle checked her watch. The buyer she was supposed to meet was ten minutes late. She’d give it another ten, then make the call.
As she took out her BlackBerry, a noise came from just behind her. She spun around. The woman had walked into the building and crept up behind her without a sound.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’
The woman was well-dressed and accessorized. This told Michelle she was probably a serious buyer. Very good news. ‘Not at all,’ Michelle said. ‘I just didn’t hear you come in.’
They shook hands, talked about the weather for a few moments.
‘Have we met before?’ Michelle asked. The woman looked vaguely familiar.
‘I don’t believe so.’
It would come to Michelle. For the moment she gestured to the space, which was lit only by the light coming through the tops of some high, dirty windows. The rest of the windows were boarded up. There were no fixtures in the main room. ‘They’re definitely ready to sell,’ Michelle said. ‘They’ve been sitting on this for quite some time.’
‘This was a church,’ the woman said. It was a statement, not a question.
‘Yes,’ Michelle said. ‘I believe it was a chapel when the hospital used to be next door. I don’t know if it was ever a regular church, a church where people came to mass on Sundays.’
Michelle wondered why she added that. It looked like the woman was going to buy, and if Michelle had learned anything from Ray Rudolph, who was her boss and mentor, it was that anything you said after a client said yes began to talk them out of the sale.
‘Is there a basement?’
Michelle consulted the listing. ‘Yes, there is,’ she said. ‘But I’ve never been inside before, so I’m not sure where the stairs are. You look around, I’ll do a little exploring.’
Michelle walked to the far side of the main room, and there found a hallway. She walked down the corridor, and to the right discovered a small room that had probably been used as a kitchen at some point. She saw capped gas pipes coming up through the old tile floor. Beyond this room was another door. She opened it, and saw stairs leading downward. There was a light switch. She tried it, and was happy to see that the current owners had not yet turned off the juice. The listing said there was electricity, but you never knew.
‘I found it,’ Michelle said.
No response.
Michelle was just about to call out again when she turned to find the woman already standing next to her. Michelle tried to conceal her surprise.
‘Would you like to see the basement?’ she asked.
‘Very much.’
Michelle silently prayed that the basement would be somewhat presentable, as in no broken water pipes, no homeless people, no rats.
They slowly descended the stairs, Michelle on point. The basement was the same size as the main room above, broken into two sections by a half-wall. There were no ground-floor windows, just a pair of bare bulbs in grimy porcelain sockets. In one corner was an old stained mattress.
While Michelle mentally prepared to close the deal, she suddenly felt a sharp pain on the left side of her back, just below her shoulder blade. It felt as if she had been stung by a bee. She turned around. The woman was holding a hypodermic.
Had this woman just stuck her with a needle?
Michelle Calvin did not have long to think about it. Her central nervous system answered the question for her. She felt it first in her legs, a deadness that seemed to rise up from the floor, claiming every part of her body.
‘What … what did you do to me?’
The woman did not answer. Instead she stared straight ahead, past Michelle, at the smaller second room, bathed in darkness.
‘There is someone who wants to meet you,’ the woman said. ‘He has waited a long time.’
Michelle Calvin slumped to the floor, her mind swirling red.
Then, blackness.
An icy draft. She was on a mattress. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound emerged. In fact, Michelle Calvin could not tell if she had even opened her mouth.
Was this a dream?
No. Michelle knew it wasn’t, the same way she knew it was a dream sometimes, a realm in which there was an otherness to her senses, along with the belief that it all could end by opening her eyes.
But Michelle Calvin’s eyes were already open.
This was really happening.
‘She was a princess, you know,’ the woman said. ‘She was branded a whore because she dressed in finery and painted her face and body.’
My God, Michelle thought. No.
The woman knelt beside the mattress. ‘You made a promise,’ she said. ‘Like the others.’
What promise?
‘You made a promise, and now he will take his due.’
The woman began to slowly undress Michelle. Michelle could do nothing to stop her. Piece by piece the woman removed her clothes, folding them neatly on the floor next to the mattress.
When the woman removed the last of Michelle’s clothing she took a white cloth from her bag and put it over Michelle’s eyes.
Michelle heard footsteps. How much time had passed? She had no idea. She couldn’t see, she couldn’t move. She couldn’t fight.
‘Thyatira,’ came a whisper. ‘Jezebel.’
Seconds later Michelle felt the mattress sag. First one side, then the other. Someone was on the bedding with her. Someone was kneeling over her.
‘If you let me keep my daughter I will do anything. I will even make a deal with the devil,’ the voice whispered in her ear.
Michelle began to cry. Those were her words. She had gotten her wish and now she was going to pay for it.
‘Ego te absolvo,’ the whisperer said.
The moments of Michelle Calvin’s life blistered through her mind – shadow-ridden images, long-forgotten voices, coils of memory unfurling at hellish speed.
‘A peccatis tuis.’
Michelle felt a fingertip at the base of her throat. The touch was gentle, probing, almost sensual. Try as she wanted, Michelle could not recoil from its touch.
‘In nomine Patris.’
The finger was replaced by something else. Something cold.
‘Et Filii.’
In the last second of her life, in the hollow place between two breaths, Michelle Calvin knew what it was.
‘Et Spiritus Sancti.’