Darkest Hour

  Father Dominic said he could, of course, and we left. I noticed Paul giving me the old hairy eyeball as we said our good-byes, but I figured it was because he was hacked at me for turning down his dinner invitation.

  I didn’t know it was for entirely different reasons. At least, not then. Although, of course, I should have. I really should have.

  Anyway, Father D. lectured me all the way home. He was way mad, madder than he’d ever been with me before, and I’ve done some stuff that’s gotten him plenty peeved. I wanted to know how he’d figured out I was at the hotel and not back at the paper helping CeeCee write her story, like I’d said I’d be, and he said it hadn’t been hard: He just remembered that CeeCee was a straight-A student who surely wouldn’t need my help writing anything, and turned his car around. When he found out I’d left ten minutes earlier, he tried to think where he would have gone under similar circumstances, back when he was my age.

  “The hotel was the obvious choice,” Father Dominic informed me as we pulled up in front of my house. No ambulances this time, I was relieved to note. Just the shady pine trees and the tinny sound of the radio Andy was listening to in the backyard as he worked on the deck. A sleepy summer evening. Not at all the kind of night you’d think of when you heard the word exorcism.

  “You are not,” Father D. went on, “precisely unpredictable, Susannah.”

  Predictable I may be, but it has apparently worked to my advantage, since right before I got out of the car, Father D. went, “I’ll return at midnight to bring you down to the Mission.”

  I looked at him in surprise. “The Mission?”

  “If we’re going to perform an exorcism,” he said tersely, “we’re going to do it correctly, in a house of the Lord. Unfortunately, the monsignor, as you know, is sure to frown on such a use of church property, so while I dislike having to resort to subterfuge, I can see that you will not be swayed from this course, and so it will unfortunately be necessary in this case. I want to make certain there’s no chance of Sister Ernestine or anyone else discovering us. Therefore, midnight it will have to be.”

  And midnight, therefore, it was.

  I can’t really tell you what I did in the meantime. I was too nervous, really, to do much of anything. We had takeout for dinner. I don’t know what it was. I hardly tasted it. It was just me and my mom and Andy, since Sleepy had a date with Caitlin, and Dopey was with his latest skank.

  The only thing I know for sure is that CeeCee called with the news that the story on the dys-functional de Silva/Diego family was going to run in the Sunday edition of the paper.

  “It’ll reach thirty-five thousand people,” CeeCee assured me. “Way more than our circulation during the week. More people subscribe to the Sunday paper because of the funnies and all.”

  The coroner, she informed me, had come through with a tentative confirmation of my story: The skeleton found in my backyard was between one hundred and fifty to one hundred and seventy-five years old, and belonged to a male of twenty to twenty-five years of age.

  “Race,” CeeCee went on, “is difficult to determine due to the damage to the skull from Brad’s shovel. But they were certain about the cause of death.”

  I clutched the receiver to my ear, conscious that my mother and Andy, over at the dinner table, could hear every word.

  “Oh?” I said, trying to keep my tone light. But I could feel myself getting cold again, just like I had that afternoon in the photocopy cubicle.

  “Asphyxiation,” CeeCee said. “There’s like some bone in the neck they can tell by.”

  “So he was…”

  “Strangled,” CeeCee said matter-of-factly. “Hey, what are you doing tonight, anyway? Wanna hang? Adam’s got some family thing he has to go to. We could rent a movie—”

  “No,” I said. “No, I can’t. Thanks, CeeCee. Thanks a lot.”

  I hung up the phone.

  Strangled. Jesse had died from being strangled. By Felix Diego. Funny, I had somehow always figured he’d been shot to death. But strangling made more sense: People would have heard a shot and come to investigate. Then there’d have been no question about what happened to Hector de Silva.

  But strangling someone? That was pretty much silent. Felix could easily have strangled Jesse in his sleep, then carried his dead body into the backyard and then buried it, along with his belongings. No one would have been the wiser….

  I guess I must have stood there looking down at the phone for a while, since my mom went, “Suze? Are you all right, honey?”

  I jumped and went, “Yeah, Mom. Sure. I’m fine.”

  But I hadn’t been fine then. And I certainly wasn’t fine now.

  I had only been to the Mission after dark a couple times before, and it was still as creepy now as it had been then…long shadows, dark recesses, spooky noises as our footsteps echoed down the aisle between the pews. There was this statue of the Virgin Mary right by the doorway, and Adam had told me once that if you walked by it while thinking an impure thought, the statue would weep blood.

  Well, my thoughts as I walked into the basilica weren’t exactly impure, but I noticed as I passed the Virgin Mary that she looked more particularly prone to weeping blood than usual. Or maybe it was just the dark.

  In any case, I was creeped out. Above my head yawned the huge dome you could see, glowing red in the sun and blue in the moon, from my bedroom window, while before me loomed the chancel in which the altar glowed, swathed in white.

  Father Dom had been busy, I saw when I entered the church. Candles had been set up in a wide circle just before the altar rail. Father Dominic, still muttering to himself about my need for adult supervision, stooped down and began lighting the wicks.

  “That’s where you’re—I mean, we’re—going to do it?” I asked.

  Father Dominic straightened and surveyed his handiwork.

  “Yes,” he said. Then, misreading my expression, he added dourly, “Don’t let the absence of chicken blood fool you, Susannah. I assure you the Catholic exorcism ceremony is highly effective.”

  “No,” I said quickly. “It’s just that…”

  I looked at the floor in the middle of the circle of candles. The floor looked very hard—way harder than the bathroom floor back at the hotel. That was tile. This was marble. Remembering what Jack had said, I went, “What if I fall down? I might conk my head again.”

  “Fortunately, you will be lying down,” FatherD. said.

  “Can’t I have a pillow or something?” I asked. “I mean, come on. That floor looks cold.” I glanced at the altar cloth. “How about that? Can I lie on that?”

  Father Dominic looked pretty shocked for a guy who was about to exorcise a girl who was neither possessed nor dead.

  “For goodness’ sake, Susannah,” he said. “That would be sacrilegious.”

  Instead he went and got some choir robes for me. I made a nice little bed on the floor between all the candles, then lay down on it. It was actually quite comfortable.

  Too bad my heart was pounding way too hard for me ever to have been able to doze off.

  “All right, Susannah,” Father D. said. He wasn’t happy with me. He hadn’t been happy with me, I knew, for some time. But he was bowing to the inevitable.

  Still, he seemed to feel one last lecture was necessary.

  “I am willing to help you with this ridiculous scheme of yours, but only because I realize that if I do not, you will try to do it on your own, or with, God forbid, that boy’s help.” Father D. was looking at me very sternly from where he stood. “But do not think for one minute that I approve.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but Father Dominic held up one hand.

  “No,” he said. “Allow me to finish, please. What Maria de Silva did was wrong, and I realize you are only trying to correct that wrong. But I am afraid I cannot see any of this ending happily. It is my experience, Susannah—and I hope you will agree that my experience is significantly greater than yours—that once spirits are exorcised, they stay tha
t way.”

  Again I opened my mouth, and again Father D. shushed me.

  “Where you are going,” he went on, “will be like a waiting area for spirits who have passed from the astral plane but have not yet reached their final destination. If Jesse is still there, and you manage to find him—and you understand that I consider this a very great if, because I don’t think you’re going to—do not be surprised if he chooses to stay where he is.”

  “Father D.,” I began, rising up onto my elbows, but he shook his head.

  “It might be his only chance, Susannah,” Father Dominic said somberly, “of ever moving on.”

  “No,” I said. “That’s not true. There’s a reason, see, that he’s hung around my house for so long. All he has to do is figure out what that reason is, and he’ll be able to move on on his own—”

  “Susannah,” Father Dominic interrupted. “I’m sure it isn’t that simple—”

  “He has a right,” I insisted through gritted teeth, “to decide for himself.”

  “I agree,” Father Dominic said. “That’s what I’m trying to say, Susannah. If you find him, you must let him decide. And you mustn’t…well, you mustn’t attempt to use any sort of, er…”

  I just blinked up at him. “Father D.,” I said. “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, it’s only that…” Father Dominic looked more embarrassed than I had ever seen him. I could not, for the life of me, figure out what was wrong with him. “I see that you changed…”

  I looked down at myself. I had changed out of my pink slip dress and into a black one that had little red rosebuds embroidered on it. This I had paired with some totally cute Prada slides. I had had a hard enough time choosing an ensemble. I mean, what do you wear to an exorcism? I totally did not need Father D. dissing my duds.

  “What?” I demanded defensively. “What’s wrong with it? Too funereal? It’s too funereal, isn’t it? I knew black was all wrong for the occasion.”

  “Nothing’s wrong with it,” Father Dominic said. “It’s simply that…Susannah, you mustn’t attempt to use your, um, sexual wiles to influence Jesse’s decision.”

  My mouth dropped open. Okay. Now I was mad.

  “Father Dominic!” I sat up and yelled. After that, though, I was completely speechless. I couldn’t think of anything to say except, “As if!”

  “Susannah,” Father Dominic said severely. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean. I know you care about Jesse. All I’m asking is that you don’t use your”—he cleared his throat—“feminine charms to manipulate his—”

  “Like I could,” I grumbled.

  “Yes.” Father Dominic’s tone was firm. “You could. All I’m asking is that you don’t. For the good of both of you. Don’t.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I won’t. I wasn’t planning to.”

  “I’m delighted to hear that,” Father Dominic said. He opened a small, leather-bound book and began flipping through the pages. “Shall we begin, then?”

  “I suppose.” Still grumbling, I lay back down. I couldn’t believe Father D. had just suggested what he had—that I would use my sex appeal to lure Jesse back to me. Ha! Father D. was overlooking two simple things: one being that I’m not so sure I have sex appeal, and two, that if I do, Jesse had certainly never noticed.

  Still, Father Dominic had felt obliged to say something about it, which must mean he’d noticed something. Must be the dress. Not bad for $59.95.

  As I lay there, a slow grin crept over my face. Father D. had used the word sexual. About me!

  Excellent.

  Father D. began reading from his little book. As he read, he swung this metal ball that had smoke coming out of it. The smoke was from the incense burning inside the metal ball. Let me tell you, it stank.

  I couldn’t understand what Father D. was saying, since it was all in Latin. It sounded nice, though. I lay there in my black slip dress and wondered if I ought to have worn pants. I mean, who knew what I was going to find up there? What if I had to do some climbing? People might see my underwear.

  You would have thought I’d be pondering more profound thoughts than this, but I am very sorry to report that the deepest thing I thought about while Father Dominic was exorcising my soul was that when this was all over, and Jesse was home, and Maria and Felix had been locked back up in their crypt where they belonged, I was going to have to take a really long soak in that hot tub Andy was installing, because let me tell you, I was sore.

  And then something started happening above my head. A section of the domed ceiling disappeared and was replaced by all this smoke. Then I realized it was the smoke from the incense Father D. was waving around. It was curling like a tornado above my head.

  Then, in the center of the tornado, I saw the night sky. Really. Like the dome over the top of the basilica wasn’t there anymore. I could see stars twinkling coldly. I didn’t recognize any constellations, even though Jesse had been trying to teach them to me. Back in Brooklyn, you couldn’t see the stars so well because of the city lights. So other than the Big Dipper, which you can always see, I don’t know the names of any of the constellations.

  It didn’t matter. This wasn’t the sky I was seeing. Not Earth’s sky, anyway. It was something else. Someplace else.

  “Susannah,” Father Dominic said gently.

  I started, then looked at him. I had been, I realized, half asleep, staring up at that sky.

  “What?” I asked.

  “It’s time,” Father Dominic said.

  chapter

  fifteen

  Father Dominic looks funny, I thought. Why does he look so funny?

  I realized why when I sat up. That’s because only part of me sat up. The rest of me stayed where I was, lying on the choir robes with my eyes closed.

  You know on Sabrina the Teenage Witch when she splits into two people, so one can go to the party with Harvey and the other can go to the witch convention with her aunts? That’s what had happened to me. I was two people now.

  Except that only one of them was conscious. The other half was just lying there with her eyes closed. And you know what? That bruise on my forehead really did look disgusting. No wonder everyone who saw it recoiled in horror.

  “Susannah,” Father Dominic said. “Are you all right?”

  I tore my gaze from my unconscious self.

  “Fine,” I said. I looked down at my spiritual self, which appeared to me to be exactly the same as the person beneath me, except that I was glowing a little. An excellent fashion accessory, by the way, if you can get it. You know, that all-over spectral glow can really do things for a girl’s complexion.

  Plus something else. The bruise on my forehead? Yeah, it didn’t hurt anymore.

  “You don’t have much time,” Father Dominic said. “Just half an hour.”

  I blinked at him. “How am I supposed to know when half an hour is up? I don’t have a watch.” I don’t wear one because somehow they always end up getting smashed by some recalcitrant spirit. Besides, who wants to know what time it is? The news is almost always disappointing.

  “Wear mine,” Father Dom said, and he took off his enormous steel-link man watch and gave it to me.

  It was the first object I picked up in my new ghostly state. It felt absurdly heavy. Still, I managed to fasten it around my wrist, where it jangled loosely, like a bracelet. Or a prison shackle.

  “Okay,” I said, looking up at that hole above me. “Here goes nothing.”

  I had to climb, of course. Don’t ask me why I hadn’t thought of this. I mean, I had to reach up and grab the edges of that hole in time and space and boost myself up into it. And in a slip dress, no less.

  Whatever. I was about halfway in when I heard a familiar voice shriek my name.

  Father Dominic spun around. I leaned down from the hole—through which I could only see fog, gray fog that spritzed my face damply—and saw Jack, of all people, running down the church aisle toward us, his pale face white with fear, and something tr
ailing behind him.

  Father Dominic reached out and caught him just before he flung himself on my unconscious form. He obviously didn’t see my legs dangling from the enormous tear in the church ceiling.

  “What are you doing here?” Father Dominic demanded, his face almost as white as the kid’s. “Do you have any idea what time it is? Do your parents know you’re here? They must be worried sick—”

  “They’re—they’re asleep,” Jack panted. “Please, Suze forgot…she forgot her rope.” Jack held up the long white object that had been skittering along behind him as he’d run between the pews. It was my rope from our first attempt to exorcise me. “How is she going to find her way back without her rope?”

  Father Dominic took the rope from Jack without a word of thanks. “It was very wrong of you, Jack,” he said disapprovingly, “to come here. What could you have been thinking? I told you it was going to be very dangerous.”

  “But…” Jack kept looking at my unconscious half. “Her rope. She forgot her rope.”

  “Here,” I called, from my celestial hole. “Toss it up here.”

  Jack looked up at me, and the anxiety left his face.

  “Suze!” he yelled delightedly. “You’re a ghost!”

  “Shhh!” Father Dominic looked pained. “Really, young man, you must keep your voice down.”

  “Hi, Jack,” I said from my hole. “Thanks for bringing the rope. How’d you get down here, anyway?”

  “Hotel shuttle,” Jack said proudly. “I snuck onto it. It was coming into town to pick up a lot of drunk people. When it stopped near the Mission, I snuck off.”

  I couldn’t have been prouder if he’d been my own son. “Good thinking,” I said.

  “This,” Father Dominic moaned, “is the last thing we need right now. Here, Susannah, take the rope, and for the love of God, hurry—”

  I leaned down and grabbed the end of the rope, then tied it securely around my waist. “Okay,” I said. “If I’m not back in half an hour, start pulling.”