Her father carried her back to bed, and they called Dr. French, but by the time he arrived Angela was sleeping soundly, and her skin was cool and dry to the touch. He examined her, but could find nothing wrong. They showed him what they’d found on the bathroom floor, and he put some of it in a jar and sent it off to Dublin to be tested, but by the time the results came back everyone in the village knew what it was: Kathleen Kelly’s cancer, drawn from her body by Angela Lacey and then later vomited out onto clean tiles. Kathleen Kelly began to recover that very night, and now the doctors could find no trace of the disease that had been eating away at her internal organs. The child was still weak, but her hair had started to grow back, and that awful smell was entirely gone.
There had been other such cures since then, but none as dramatic as Kathleen’s. People continued to come to the door to ask for Angela’s help. Some even waited for her at the school gates, or congregated outside the church doors after Mass on Sunday, and she never declined to touch them or pray for them. But in recent weeks Father Delaney had made it clear that Angela was to be left in peace for a while, and rumors began to circulate about the arrival of priests from the Vatican who would talk with Angela and try to discover the nature of her gift. Father Delaney had asked her about it, of course, but she could give him no explanation. She had experienced no visions, seen no flickering images of Our Lady at night. No voices spoke to her from the dark, and she was untroubled by angels.
Or so she said.
Now here were the priests, drinking tea, eating cake, and each in his own way considering what he was being told. Faraldo was tugging at his chin, from which a few wisps of beard hung like pale, trailing ivy on old stone, yet his smile remained in place, and his eyes were placid. But Oscuro looked troubled, and even Manus had lost something of his joviality.
“Has your daughter been threatened by anyone?” asked Manus.
“What?” said Lacey. “Why would anyone threaten her?”
“People can act strangely when confronted with something that they don’t understand,” said Manus. “Fanaticism takes many forms.”
“Not in this village,” said Lacey. “No one would ever wish any harm on Angela. God, I think some of them would be willing to lay down their lives to protect her, especially after what she did for Kathleen Kelly.”
“If what you tell us is true,” said Oscuro, “her fame is already spreading. It will attract others: the desperate, the lost. There will be some who might hurt her without meaning to, and others who will arrive with only that intention in mind.”
“Oh Lord,” said Lacey’s wife. Clearly this was a possibility that she had never considered. She put her right hand to her mouth, and her husband held her left, rubbing it gently.
“Zacatecas,” said Oscuro, and the word appeared to cause him pain.
“Yes, Zacatecas,” said Manus.
“What is that?” asked Lacey.
“A city in Mexico,” said Oscuro. “A child, José Antonio, emerged from one of its suburbs.”
“Enough,” said Manus.
“No,” said Lacey, “let him speak. I told you already. We have a right to know these things, if they may affect Angela.”
Oscuro looked to Manus for permission to go on, and it was granted with a tired wave of the hand.
“José Antonio was said to have gifts not unlike those now being associated with your daughter,” said Oscuro. “He healed the sick, and caused water to flow from under stones in barren desert. He had the stigmata, too, but only on his wrists. The local bishop requested the assistance of the Vatican to corroborate what were already being described as miracles, but Mexico is a long and arduous trip, and it was almost a year before a Curia team could be dispatched. When the investigators arrived, the boy was gone, and nobody could say where he was. He was an only child who lived with his father, but their home was now uninhabited, even though many of the family’s possessions remained in place. The local police were of no help, and the parish priest confessed himself baffled by their disappearance.
“On the evening before the investigators were due to return to Rome, there came a knock on the door of the small inn at which they were staying. An old peasant stood before them—a vagabond, an outcast. He was covered in dust, and tired and filthy from the road. He said that he had walked many miles to find them, and claimed to know the fate of the boy and his father. The next morning, just after dawn, the investigators had their driver take them into the desert, with the peasant guiding them. He led them first to a cairn of stones, beneath which he said were the remains of the boy’s father. The driver dug, and sure enough, bones were exposed, but the investigators could not have said how long they had been down there, or whose bones they might have been.
“Then the peasant guided them up a rocky incline to a cave. They had to crouch to enter, and had the peasant not instructed them to bring torches, then they would have been entirely blind, for no light entered the space beyond the first few feet.
“And there they found José Antonio. He had been mummified and placed in an alcove surrounded by fetishes: statues, carvings, jewelry, even alcohol and cigarettes. The peasant showed them the hole in his skull where it had been fractured by a heavy blow.”
“He was murdered?” said Lacey.
“Yes.”
“But who would do that to a child?”
“His own people,” said Manus. “Or that’s what we think. Maybe his gifts were so frightening to them that they felt they had to kill him, or were so great that it was believed he should be returned to God. Either way, he died, and that was the end of it. So perhaps now you understand why we arrived in secret, and at night, and why care must be taken when it comes to Angela. We live in troubled times, and even the innocent are not immune from threat.”
Then Manus leaned across the table and gripped Lacey and his wife each by a shoulder, his big hands heavy upon them.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “This conversation has taken a dark turn. All may be well, though, and you should pray that it will be so. It’s time that we were on our way, and let you go to your bed. Tomorrow may bring illumination. But before we go, Father Faraldo and I would like to speak with Angela.”
“She’s in her room,” said Mrs. Lacey. “I’d say she’s awake. I’m surprised that she hasn’t made an appearance already, to be honest with you. I’ll go and call her.”
“I’d prefer if we went up to see her,” said Manus. “It would be good to meet her first in her own environment. Such things, we’ve come to realize, are important.”
Mrs. Lacey stood. “I’ll make sure that she’s decent, and let her know that you’re on your way up.”
Manus thanked her, and she left. The four men remained at the table and did not speak until Mrs. Lacey returned.
“Angela’s awake,” she said. “You can go up and see her now.”
• • •
If Manus and the others had been expecting a girl out of the ordinary, they were destined to be disappointed. Angela Lacey was tall for thirteen, and bordering on pretty, but was otherwise unexceptional. Her bedroom betrayed nothing of the gifts that they had come to investigate, apart from a small, luminous statue of the Blessed Virgin on the windowsill. The room was small and furnished with a single bed, a bedside cabinet, a wardrobe and matching chest of drawers, and a small desk beneath the window. The walls were brightly painted in shades of yellow and blue and decorated with posters of bands and pop stars that only Manus could name, for the other two had no interest in such matters: ABBA was well represented, and he saw one of the detective fellows from television—David Soul, that was him.
Angela was sitting up in bed, wearing a dressing gown over her nightclothes. She looked curiously at the two priests who crowded into her room with her parents, but said nothing.
Father Manus introduced himself and his colleague, then asked Angela’s parents for permission to speak alone with their daughter for a few minutes. He assured the Laceys that they would not be long, and
would leave the door open just in case they might have any concerns. But those were more innocent times, and the Laceys did not give a second thought to the presence of two clerics in their daughter’s room, especially as the more forbidding Oscuro would not be joining them. He remained in the kitchen, and the Laceys went back down to join him.
• • •
Father Faraldo took the small chair beside Angela’s desk, while Manus remained standing.
“I knew you were coming,” said Angela. They were the first words she had spoken since the priests entered her room.
“Well, it was no secret,” said Manus.
“No, I knew you were coming tonight. I sensed it.”
Manus glanced at Faraldo, who merely nodded and smiled as though this, too, he had anticipated. He was counting the beads on his rosary, feeding them through his thumb and index finger like a man shelling peas.
“Your parents have told us a lot about you,” said Manus. “It sounds like you’re a very special young woman. You wouldn’t be fooling people now, would you, or playing tricks?”
“I ate Kathleen Kelly’s cancer,” said Angela. “It tasted like old liver. I took the ulcers from Tommy Spance’s stomach and turned them into pips that I spat into the toilet. They were no tricks.”
“Then children like you are rare,” said Manus. “Very rare.”
Angela regarded him with eyes that were more knowing than any teenager’s eyes should be.
“It won’t make any difference, you know,” she said.
“What won’t?”
“What you’re going to do. You think you can stop it, but you can’t.”
“You’re just a child, Angela. You have no idea what we can and cannot do. Aren’t you afraid?”
“No,” said Angela, as Faraldo rose from his chair, the beads shining like dark eyes in the lamplight. “I’m not afraid.”
• • •
Manus and Faraldo came down the stairs and returned to the kitchen. Manus looked grimmer than before, and Faraldo’s smile had faded. They asked for more tea, and for the next half hour they detailed to the Laceys the likely course of their investigation. This would probably be the first visit of many. There would be more doctors who would examine those who claimed to have been cured by Angela. Panels of clerics and theologians would be assembled. It might even be the case that Angela would be required to travel to Rome, he said, and when Mrs. Lacey replied that they couldn’t afford to go to Rome, something of Manus’s old spirit returned, and he grinned and told her the Vatican would pay for it all, and they would be well looked after.
“Do you think we might meet the pope?” she asked.
“We’ll arrange for you to be part of a general audience,” Manus replied, “and we can take it from there.”
Mrs. Lacey glowed.
• • •
It was shortly after eleven when the priests finally left. The rain had eased off a little, and a car was waiting for them at the end of the lane: a black Mercedes, with a man in a suit sitting behind the wheel. Lacey offered them the use of a couple of umbrellas to keep them dry until they got to the car, but Manus politely declined.
“It’s only a few yards,” he said. “We won’t melt. We’ll see you in the morning, and thank you again for your hospitality.”
The Laceys watched them get into the car and drive away. Mrs. Lacey went to check on her daughter, but Angela was already asleep, so she said a quiet prayer for her and followed her husband to their bed.
• • •
Dawn came, bringing with it clear blue skies, although the morning was cold, and a dampness hung in the air. Lacey woke first, and washed and shaved. He dressed in his new shirt, knotted a tie, and slipped into a cardigan to keep out the chill. He put the kettle on to boil as he heard his wife moving around upstairs. They had slept later than normal, so it was already after eight when he began laying the table for breakfast. He’d bought some fresh bacon, and thought that he might fry some eggs with it. They usually only had a fry on Saturdays, but this was likely to be a long, busy old day, and he thought Angela might appreciate a little treat. He’d just put the bacon in the pan when he heard a knock at the door. He removed the pan from the gas ring and went to see who was there. He hoped that it wasn’t the three priests back already, maybe with Father Delaney in tow. He didn’t have enough bacon and eggs for all of them, and he was looking forward to his breakfast.
He opened the door, and the tubby form of Father Delaney looked up at him from the porch step. Behind him stood two unfamiliar middle-aged men wearing black suits and clerical collars, each carrying a leather briefcase.
“Francis,” said Father Delaney, “I hope we’re not too early. This is Father Evans and Father Grimaldi. They’re the priests from the Vatican.”
Upstairs, Lacey’s wife began to scream.
A DREAM OF WINTER
When I was a boy, I attended a school that stood by a cemetery. Mine was the last desk, the one closest to the graveyard. I spent years with my back to the darkness of it. I can remember how, as autumn neared its end, and winter gathered its strength, I would feel the wind begin to blow through the window frame and think that the chill of it was like the breath of the dead upon my neck.
One day, in the bleakness of January, when the light was already fading as the clock struck four, I glanced over my shoulder and saw a man staring back at me. Nobody else noticed him, only I. His skin was the gray of old ash long from the fire, and his eyes were as black as the ink in my well. His gums had receded from his teeth, giving him a lean, hungry aspect. His face was a mask of longing.
I was not frightened. It seems strange to say that, but it is the truth. I knew that he was dead, and the dead have no hold over us beyond whatever we ourselves surrender to them. His fingers touched the glass but left no trace, and then he was gone.
Years passed, but I never forgot him. I fell in love and married. I became a father. I buried my parents. I grew old, and the face of the man at the school window became more familiar to me, and it seemed that I glimpsed him in every glass. Finally, I slept, and when I awoke I was no longer as I once had been.
There is a school that stands by a cemetery. In winter, under cover of fading light, I walk to its windows and put my fingers to the glass.
And sometimes, a boy looks back.
THE LAMIA
The worst part of the aftermath was that she kept seeing him: when she walked down the street; when she went to buy a newspaper or milk; when she managed to work up the courage to leave the house for any length of time—to read in a café, to catch a movie, even simply to take a stroll in the park before the sun set, because she no longer liked being out after dark. She began to believe that she might be going mad. Surely he couldn’t be in all those places, not unless he was actively stalking her, but in her calmer moments she understood that this was a small city, and it was just bad luck that the person one most despised in the world, the man whom one least wished to see, should be he whose path seemed destined to repeatedly cross one’s own.
The trial had come close to breaking her, leaving her almost as bruised and humiliated as the original assault. Oh, the police had been kind to her, and the prosecution barrister had gone over all of it with her in advance—how she wanted to see him behind bars just as much as Carolyn did (although that couldn’t have been true, not unless he’d raped the barrister as well), how she would do all in her power to ensure that this was the ultimate outcome, but, you know . . .
And Carolyn did know, because after it happened—after he’d watched her dress, her tights laddered, her panties ripped, while he smoked a cigarette and asked if they could see each other again, I mean, Jesus Christ—she’d done the worst thing possible: she’d gone home and taken a shower, because more than anything else she wanted to rid herself of every trace of him, to scour him from her, inside and out. She’d still been a little drunk, too, but not so much that she didn’t realize what had just happened to her.
She’d told him “No” over and over again, and fought him as best she could, but he was bigger and stronger than she was, and treated it like it was some kind of game, smiling all the while, whispering that he liked a girl with a bit of fight in her.
It was so strange, at least to her, but it was clear that he didn’t think he’d done anything wrong, or perhaps he’d simply convinced himself this was the case in order to live with his actions. She couldn’t believe that, though. She’d seen it in his eyes all through the trial, and heard it in his testimony: he felt himself to have been truly wronged. He used the word consensual over and over, spinning to the jury a version of what had occurred that had credibility because he imbued it with his own credence. In the end, it came down to his word against hers, and the jury chose to believe him. That was how Carolyn saw it, even if the barrister tried to convince her otherwise as Carolyn wept in an anteroom after the verdict, a soft voice explaining that it was a matter of reasonable doubt, and there simply hadn’t been enough evidence to convict.
Now Carolyn was drifting through the wreckage of her life, tossed on gray seas, prey to tides of anger and depression. She was on a leave of absence from work, assured that her job would be waiting for her when she decided she was ready to return, but the office was growing impatient, and she was being gently pressured either to come back or to accept a payoff. The latter would be the end of her, she thought, because she still retained the hope that she’d be able to resume her previous existence. The weekly therapy sessions helped maintain what was rapidly coming to seem like a fiction, but only for a day or two, and then she’d begin to drift again. Her parents were dead, so she couldn’t turn to them for support, and her only sister lived in Australia. They spoke regularly over Skype, but it wasn’t the same, and so Carolyn’s isolation grew.