“Welcome!” she said. “God’s blessing upon you!”
“Hello,” Fish felt awkward, as he usually did for introductions. “I'm Ben Denniston.”
They both smiled and nodded. “But most people call me Fish,” he added lamely. That was probably how Rose would have referred to him.
“Fish,” Sister Therese said suddenly. “That was a symbol used by the early Christians, wasn't it, Sister Carmen?”
“To represent the name of Christ,” Sister Carmen spoke with a deep voice indicating a powerful strength in her frail body.
“Is that why you chose it?” Sister Therese asked curiously.
He was embarrassed. “Ah, no.”
Sister Maria told Fish as she motioned for him to sit down on a red velvet seat covered with lace doilies, “Names are significant. Sometimes more than we know.”
“For instance, my parents named me after St. Therese, and I ended up becoming a nun, just like her!” Therese smiled, then added ruefully, “Though I sure took my time about it—I didn’t enter till I was thirty-seven! Have some cookies!” she offered Fish a dish from the marble coffee table, and he took one cautiously.
“Our Lord always has the proper timing,” Sister Maria reminded her sister. “As I’m sure you know, Fish.”
“Yes—I suppose,” Fish tried to say something polite. The parlor was very quaint and old fashioned. Except for his wristwatch and cell phone, they might have been sitting in the nineteenth century.
“So, you said you had a story to tell me,” he said.
“Were you aware that the Brier family has been in danger for some time?”
“No,” Fish said, disturbed. “What do you mean, danger? What kind of danger?”
“The danger here.”
“Here? But they live in New Jersey,” Fish said.
“That’s why they live in New Jersey,” Sister Maria said significantly. “That’s why the father moved them there. He never wanted any of them to come back.”
“But Rose came back,” Sister Carmen said. “As soon as she came back, we knew that she would be in danger, because of her name. Her father’s name.”
All of the sisters were nodding, but Fish sat staring at them, completely bewildered.
“Did you know Daniel Brier, Rose’s father?” Sister Carmen asked, murmuring a prayer for the souls of the faithful departed which the other two nuns also intoned, crossing themselves.
“No,” Fish said, hurriedly joining them for the last hand gesture of the Sign of the Cross. As a convert, he was late coming to the habits that were reflexes to the cradle Catholic. “He died some years before I met the family.”
“You know that Daniel and Jean Brier both went to Mercy College as undergraduates?” Sister Carmen continued.
“Yes. I did.”
“That was shortly after we lost our convent, so for a time, we three nuns would go to Mass at Mercy College. That was where we got to know Daniel, or Dan, as we always called him. He was a fine young man, intelligent and eager and curious, very much like Rose.”
“I can imagine,” Fish said, thinking additionally that Mr. Brier sounded like Paul Fester.
“He graduated before Jean and took a job at the local paper while she finished school,” she said. “He wanted to be a reporter. He liked to ferret things out, and asked good questions. Well, while he was on the job, he apparently started investigating an issue that had to do with the hospital here. He never told us what it was about, but he seemed to regard it as very important, because he frequently asked us to pray that the articles would get published. I took it that the articles were quite controversial, and I suspect it had something to do with the pro-life issue. Dan, like a lot of Mercy College students, felt strongly about life issues, and he was frustrated by the editorial bias of the paper he worked for.”
Sister Maria touched her sister’s shoulder delicately. “Sister, you should mention that Dan was helping to take care of his mother.”
“Oh, yes,” Sister Carmen said. “Rosanna Brier. She was a friend of ours, but she had been confined to her home for some time with Alzheimer’s disease. Her husband had already died some time ago when Dan was in high school. Dan was born late in his parents’ marriage, but he was quite close to them both. Rosanna was a wonderfully sweet woman; very charming even after her disease had progressed. After Dan married Jean, they had baby Blanche right away, but she had heart problems, and for a time they were quite worried about her. I expect her condition is better now, but you can understand how difficult that can be for an infant.”
“Dan must have had a terrible time trying to handle all that on a reporter’s salary,” Fish remarked.
“Yes, it was hard, but I think that living with his mother helped them out,” Sister Carmen said.
“And—the danger?” Fish queried.
Now Sister Carmen looked at Sister Maria, who cleared her throat.
“We want to tell you what we witnessed at Rose’s christening party,” Sister Maria said. “Rose was born just at the time that he was working on this story, his ‘top-secret’ story, as he referred to it. She was baptized at Mercy College, and afterwards, they had a party at a parish hall near here. We were all at the little reception, and Baby Rose, who had been so good during the baptism—just as peaceful and wondering as an angel, became fussy with all the noise and excitement. Dan was walking her up and down in the vestibule of the hall, because she was crying, and I was walking with him. We were taking turns.”
She leaned forward and touched Fish on the knee. “And then, just as we were getting her calmed down, the door opened and this woman walks in, wearing a raincoat, hat, and dark glasses. She walked over to Dan, and said, ‘Are you Daniel Brier?’ And he said he was, so I took the baby from him, thinking that he might want to talk to her alone. But he stood right where he was. I witnessed the whole thing.”
Now she paused, and started again, even more slowly. “I gathered that she knew about the article he was writing, and that it was on the hospital. I could tell from the way she talked that she worked there. Now, it wasn’t anything in her manner. She was quite nice. But I could tell from Dan’s reactions that what she was saying was sinister. He just sort of went stiff. Rose began crying again, so it was difficult for me to hear as well,” she added apologetically.
“But I heard her say, ‘You realize how unwise it would be to alienate the medical establishment in this area?’ And then the woman looked at the baby, and I didn’t like the way she looked at her. Her mouth was sort of tight. She said, ‘You expect to see her grow up, don’t you?’
“And Dan sort of bristled and said with a smile, ‘What are you saying, ma’am?’
“And she said, ‘Your first child had a heart murmur, didn’t she? And your mother has Alzheimer’s. We know your whole family’s medical history.’
“And then she said, ‘Are you having your children immunized?’ And he said, ‘That’s none of your business.’ And she said, ‘You know that infants occasionally die from routine immunizations, for no apparent reason?’
“And Dan said, ‘What’s your point?’ And she said, ‘I’m only observing that someone with your responsibilities should be very careful about the kind of medical care that his family members get. If your story is published, I can’t assure you that you’ll continue to get optimum care.’
“And Dan said, ‘You’re threatening me, aren’t you?’ And the woman looked at Rose again and said, ‘You just applied for a birth certificate for her at the hospital, didn’t you? They’ll remember her name. This hospital has been around a long time. Hospitals outlive most of their patients—and most people.’ And Dan said, ‘I think you’ve said enough. Get out of here. Now.’ And she went.”
There was an audible sigh of relief from the sisters as Sister Maria finished her story. They all turned to Fish, who was silent, trying to take this all in.
“So are you trying to say that Rose is in danger because she’s at Robert Graves Memorial Hospital?” he asked cautiously
.
“Yes. But we also think that it could well be that they are the ones who put her in the hospital in the first place.”
“So you’re saying her fall wasn’t an accident?”
“Yes.”
Fish stared at them. “But I was there at the barn with the police. There’s no evidence of any foul play.”
“But Rose is in the hospital now, isn’t she?” Sister Maria asked.
“Well, yes, of course,” Fish said. “And as far as I can tell, they’re giving her optimum medical care. And Jean’s a nurse. She’s been reading all of Rose’s charts and following all the medications they’ve been giving her. She would notice if they were neglecting her. But seriously, are you trying to say that because Rose was an infant here some twenty years ago, that a bunch of doctors with a grudge against her dad would remember her name and deliberately maltreat her?”
“It’s possible,” Sister Maria said.
Fish tried not to sound sarcastic. “Well, yes, it’s possible, but is it probable?”
“We have laid out some important information for you. You and the police can investigate from here,” Sister Carmen said.
“I see,” Fish said with a deep breath. “It’s an interesting theory, sisters, and I’m sure I’ll keep it in mind. But until there’s some further evidence, I’m not sure that your story proves anything except that someone at the hospital was mad at Rose’s father and made some empty threats.”
“But they weren’t empty,” Sister Maria said. “They killed Dan’s mother.”
“Excuse me?”
She nodded. “After the christening, Dan tried hard to get the story published. Then he and Jean and the girls went off to a wedding in another state, and while they were gone, his mother fell down and broke her ankle. One of the relatives watching her took her to the hospital, of course. And forty-eight hours later, she was dead.”
Fish blinked. “She died of a broken ankle?”
Sister Therese said, “They said she had probably picked up an infection in the hospital in her weakened state and died.”
Fish shivered, despite himself. “But did anyone make the connection between the threats and her death?”
“Dan did. He told us as much, and asked for us to pray. Then he put everything into pushing that story into print, but in the end, his editor refused point blank. When no other paper would take it, he got a job in New Jersey as quickly as he could and moved his family. A few years later, he called and told us that he had been getting his information from a nurse who worked at the hospital. She had just been killed in a car accident, and he asked us to pray for her soul and for her family. That was fifteen years ago. We pray for her still.”
Fish was becoming bothered that he had never heard mention of any of this before. If Rose had been aware of her dad being involved in such an exciting episode, she would have told him about it long ago. That and the curious aura of credulity of the three old sisters made him wary.
“Well, this is quite a remarkable story,” Fish said at last, trying to come up with some feasible response. “Certainly very disturbing, but it’s all circumstantial evidence. There’s no clear sign that—”
“Oh, but there is!” Sister Maria said, her eyes bright. “The devil manifested his plan for Rose Brier at her christening—through his chosen instrument.”
“And now his plan has begun,” said Sister Carmen. “And you must stop it, Fish.”
“I see,” said Fish, not seeing at all, wondering how soon he could leave the room. Father Raymond had warned him that some Catholics were weird, but he had never before encountered any on this scale.
“Search for the woman who came to the christening. She’s behind this. We’re positive.”
Fish suppressed a groan. “Well, just who is this woman, and do you have any evidence that she’s ever set eyes on Rose since she was a baby?” he asked skeptically.
“She must have worked at the hospital, and she’s probably still there. One of the doctors there. You will investigate this, won’t you?” Sister Maria said eagerly.
“I’ll check into it, certainly,” Fish said. There was certainly no harm in doing that. “But I’m not sure that it will do Rose much good, and that’s what her mother and family are struggling with most at this point.” He rose, and gave Sister Maria a slight bow. “Thank you for taking the trouble to contact me.”
“You must not doubt, Fish,” said Sister Carmen suddenly to him. “Rose can be woken up. You must wake her. It is God’s will.”
That was not helpful to hear. Not at all. “Thank you for your trouble,” he said again, and left.
Hers
Something had happened. When Rose roused herself from her mental slumber, she found that she could no longer hear. Frantically, she searched around for the beginnings of how to hear, but the passageways were blocked to her, as though walls had come down in the middle of the night, closing her off. She regained a hold on her mouth, and attempted to feel, at least with the tip of her tongue, but there was a curious fuzzy feeling there, as though her tongue had turned to cotton.
Perhaps she needed water? She had imagined that they were giving her water, in the hospital. A chilling thought came over her. How long had she been asleep? Had they decided to give up feeding and hydrating her? She knew that people in comas had been allowed to starve to death before, and now the prospect was alarmingly close.
Don’t imagine thirst, she told herself fiercely, or it will become unbearable. Imagining that one was starving to death, or dying of thirst, would become a real torture in this mental prison.
But of course, once the thought had occurred to her, it was difficult to push it out of her mind. She battled it for some time, but in the end, she relinquished hold of her tongue and mouth and resolutely shut herself off in order to regain her sense of proportion.
Whatever proportion it was possible to have, she thought ironically, when you’re shut off from your own body.
Once again she felt at the walls that had blocked off her hearing, and tried to find a crack back through to the physical world. The thought of her mother, Blanche, Bear, and Fish standing around her, talking to her, without being able to hear them, was unbearable. She fought to keep herself from breaking down into anguish.
Eventually, she drifted into random thoughts once more, and realized she was getting weary. She let herself fall into the world of dreams where her prison seemed to dissolve.
In her dream, she was sitting in a rose garden, wearing a long blue dress with gold patterns worked all through it, vines and flowers and birds. And she leaned her hand languidly on the arms of the wooden chair, rubbing her fingers on a rose petal that had fallen into her open palm. She could smell its crushed scent, mingled with the spring air, the damp earth, and the roses blooming in the gentle breeze. She could feel sunlight on her hands and knees, and the kiss of the wind on her face as she leaned back in a wooden throne that was set beneath a rose tree. The song of birds echoed in the skies above. Above her she could see the branches swaying, heavy with blooms. She thought to herself, he’s coming. I know he’s coming. And felt a skip in her heart.
Perhaps she should rouse herself and make a garland of fresh roses to wear. But these roses had thorns, and perhaps that would be a crown that would be too difficult to wear. Should I or shouldn’t I? She wondered. But there was no need to move, or decide, until he came.
As she sat there, still, but fully aware and alive, she saw something moving in the grass near her throne. A long, thin, brown line, easing its way towards her. For some reason, she thought she should be disturbed by this, but she wasn’t.
Her eyes began to close. Soon she would be sleeping. But wasn’t she asleep, already? And wasn’t she asleep, even beyond this sleep? I’m dreaming about dreaming about dreaming, she thought to herself. Weird. Too many layers, too many labyrinths. She roused herself, tried to wake up. After all, wasn’t this what it was all about, waking up?
But something was twisting around her hand. She
felt its faintly rough, dry surface tickle around her wrist and up her bare forearms. She tried to raise her hand to throw it off, but she was pinned to the arm of the chair. A small head with shiny black eyes like pinheads passed through her vision, and she saw it dart from her arm to her stomach and she flinched. But it was too late. She was already caught to the chair by her stomach, then her chest, and then, with another flicker of the snake, her shoulders, and as much as she wrestled, she couldn’t move. One arm was still free, and she tried to pull off the brown coils, but they wouldn’t budge. Then something leapt over her shoulder and began pulling down on her upper arm. Her shoulder was pressed to the side of the throne, then her elbow, and then, after a frantic struggle, her wrist, her palms, her fingers were fastened relentlessly down.
It was over. There was nothing she could do now but lie still and watch and feel as the brown sinuous lines ran over her knees, her legs, down to her feet. When even her toes were captive, there was a pause. Then she felt the undulating cords start to creep up her body, towards her chest, her shoulders... a brown thick rope tightened around her neck, and her vision clouded. Something was snaking its way up to her ear, and paused by her neck as she strained and winced. There was a sharp, momentary pain, and then clouds of forgetfulness began to seep through her veins. She was no longer able to struggle. She could no longer feel the bonds, although she knew they were there.
A fog was passing over her. The sky darkened, and the cries of the birds, the pressing wood of the throne, the smell of the roses, the taste of her own tears died slowly within her.
HIS
“Jean, does Rose have three godmothers?” Fish asked Jean abruptly the next morning after church.
“Actually, yes, she does,” Jean said, blowing her nose, a bit startled. “I introduced you to one of them the other night, Sister Maria. She has two other nuns she lives with—well, she used to live with them, if Sister Carmen is still alive. My husband Daniel was quite fond of them when he went to school here, and he asked the priest if they could all be her godmothers, and he gave them permission. I think it’s Sister Maria who’s the official godmother—you’re only allowed one—but we asked the other two to be honorary godmothers. Dan’s college friend Philip was the godfather. I think he’s living somewhere in Nebraska now.” She looked at him curiously. That particular expression of hers reminded him very much of Rose. “Why do you ask?”