Under the Light

Chapter 28





Helen


JENNY CARRIED A NEW AUTHORITY IN HER VOICE—when she said, “Let go of me” and tried to lift her arms, the women holding her released her instantly. Mrs. Caine shot her fingers into the little pitcher again and tried to splash Jenny with more holy water but missed and sprayed one of the ladies in the eyes instead. The woman jerked her head to one side with a shriek.

The other women backed away from Jenny’s chair as she rubbed feeling back into her wrists. I surveyed the room. Before I had taken only a glance, but now I stared down the women around me with a galvanized intention. I bore into these ladies’ thoughts, a kind of eavesdropping more powerful than anything the ears of a mortal could provide.

“Cathy, control your daughter,” ordered the woman with the pitcher.

“Excuse me?” said Cathy.

I noticed now a black mist hanging behind the head of the woman with the pitcher, just at her right shoulder. It throbbed and flared when she expressed anger. “If we stop what we’ve started now, it will be a grave mistake,” she said. Her cheeks were blotchy with red. “It’ll just get worse.” And the darkness behind her inked into such density that I could almost feel it sucking at the light in the room.

I came close to the woman’s left shoulder and whispered in her ear. “Heal thyself.” She shuddered on the inside, just a little, enough to turn the darkness that was attached to her a lighter color of charcoal gray.

“I thought Pastor Bob would be here,” said Cathy. “Why isn’t he here?”

When the woman with the shadow hesitated, the others stared at her—she was apparently the one who was supposed to have all the answers.

Jenny stood up and the woman’s eyes flashed with fear.

Cathy stood too, holding a protective arm in front of her daughter. “Beverly Caine, I’m going to ask you a direct question and I expect an answer. Did you know Judy Morgan was fornicating with my husband?”

The others gasped.

The dark cloud behind Mrs. Caine disappeared except for one small black flame that came to rest behind her sorry eyes, perhaps in the part of the skull where the ego lived.

“So I guess lying and keeping secrets are not necessarily signs of demonic possession,” Jenny pointed out.

“Oh, my Lord,” one of the other women whispered.

“Jennifer Ann,” another of the ladies scolded, “you’re speaking to your elder.”

“Eudora Franck,” said Cathy, “Be quiet.”

I drew closer to Mrs. Franck. She was embarrassed and annoyed and it made her thoughts vulnerable for a second. I saw an image pop up and sent it to Jenny.

Her mother’s mother, I called. In the garden.

Apparently she heard me. “If I’m possessed because I believe in ghosts,” said Jenny, “then we should perform an exorcism on Mrs. Franck, too, because she told my mom that after her grandmother died she saw an apparition of her in the backyard, isn’t that right?”

Everyone looked at Mrs. Franck, who seemed mortified. “I did see her,” she confessed.

“And if you think a demon’s living inside me because I had sex outside of wedlock,” said Jenny, “then my father and Judy Morgan must be possessed too.”

Cathy sat down in astonishment. I felt a waver in the confidence of another of the women. I glided over to the head of the one wearing the pink striped sweater. Again I told Jenny what she was thinking.

“And Mrs. Lowe, too.” Jenny nodded at her. “You slept with your husband before you were married, right?”

“Cathy!” Mrs. Lowe gaped at her. “I told you that in confidence.”

“You told me a secret,” Cathy agreed, “but not the one about my husband sleeping with your next-door neighbor.”

“Jenny, sit yourself down. You are in my house,” Mrs. Caine snapped. “Show some respect and do as you’re told.”

The darkness began to form again behind her shoulder, like a hornet’s nest of shadow.

“Sit,” Mrs. Caine ordered.

“No,” said Jenny. Cathy stared at her daughter as if she had never heard her say the word before. “Why should I? You have no respect for me.”

The cloud of negativity behind Mrs. Caine’s shoulder fluttered, and I blew it away. As it flew off through the wall, it made one of the little angel figurines in the bookcase below wobble in a little dance of joy.

Jenny looked down at her mother. “Mom, let’s go.”

“We did not give you permission to leave,” said Mrs. Caine.

“And I didn’t give you permission to humiliate me,” said Jenny.

Cathy did nothing more than vaguely reach for her daughter. Her fingers lightly brushed Jenny’s sleeve as the girl walked out.

An argument broke out anew, but no one followed Jenny, not even her mother. I was the only one who watched her march away through the door and down the walkway. She picked up her pace and was soon running. She didn’t look back as if she feared being chased—she just ran. I worried that she would revel in her new freedom and leap from a curb without looking for traffic, but she made her way smoothly block after block, running not in the direction of home, just away.

I was still nervous for her. Where would she find a safe place to land? But when she was passing a store where a woman was just leaving and they collided, I felt as if something had shifted.

The woman was carrying a large bag of books and file folders. She was dressed in an Indian skirt and had her strangely matted hair pulled back in a bright beaded headband. As Jenny clipped her shoulder, they both stumbled. Jenny caught herself and the woman dropped her bag.

“Sorry!” Jenny helped her pick up two books that had slid nearly to the curb.

“Where are you flying off to so fast?” asked the woman.

“I don’t know,” said Jenny, handing her the books.

“You don’t know?” The woman smiled at her. “Are you lost?”

“No.” Jenny thought for a moment. “I’m just running.”

“Do I know you?” asked the woman.

“I don’t think so,” said Jenny.

The woman shrugged. “Well, be safe.”

Jenny nodded and turned to go, but the urge to run had subsided, it seemed, because she walked slowly toward the next corner.

I didn’t know this woman, but she must have known Jenny after all, because she watched her back for a second and then called, “Hey!”

Jenny turned back.

“Are you my Runaway?”