Radu-Chapter XXXVIII (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)

Previous Installments-
Part One
Prologue and Chapters I-X
Part Two
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
PartThree
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Radu-Chapter XXXVIII (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)
9 pages approximate
Raven watched the long haired bearded man, talking on the phone and laughing. She could hear what he said, but though his words and the sound of his voice seemed familiar, she struggled to comprehend the meaning of his words. He had a name. It was Gary. She knew him, and wondered if he remembered her. She only remembered one thing for sure. She never liked him. He was mean to her, back in some long ago distant past, a past she struggled to remember, when she was but a small girl. He would come into her room and do things to her. She did not like the things he did, but he did them anyway, and when he was finished, he would threaten her. She remembered telling the older woman one day, but the woman became angry with her, and even hit her.

The man was older now, but Raven knew it was he. The more she watched him, through his partially open curtains, the more she started to remember, and the angrier she became. She wondered how she would get to him in time. If she busted through the window, he would probably be able to get away, or perhaps someone would come to help him. Yet, she could not get through the door in time either.

She walked up to the door. She raised her hand, but she hesitated. She finally knocked on the door, and then she turned her back to the door. It opened, somewhat quicker than she thought it would.

“Yeah, what can I do for you?” he asked. She knew he would answer the door once he saw it was a female. She turned to face him, and he became suddenly rigid, his eyes wide with fear.

“What the hell? Who are you?” Either he did not recognize her, or it had not yet dawned on him exactly who she was. She always got that reaction when she went to the homes of people she knew. People acted as if she should not be there, for some reason. They would act shocked, and then afraid. Most of the time, they acted as if they did not know exactly what to say. A few times, they actually ran away from her. Most of the time, however, they were unable to do so. This made her happy, because she was hungry and needed food, like now. Raven was always hungry. Now, Gary suddenly, through his squinting eyes, seemed to recognize her.

“Raven? What in the hell? I thought you were dead. This can’t be for real.”

She shot out her arm in the space of a heartbeat, giving no thought to the sudden vise-like grip she exerted on the man’s throat, until she flung him back. She advanced towards him, laughing hatefully.

“What-do you want?” he asked fearfully from the spot on the floor onto which she flung him. She did so as though he were weightless, yet he weighed more than two-hundred pounds.

“I-need-you”, she said with a hideous, sadistic snarl. She smiled as she advanced toward the crumpled, trembling figure.

“Your mother-she’s upstairs. She’s sick. She’s probably calling the cops right now. Your brother will be-coming home-in just a few minutes. Please, Raven, you don’t want to do this.”

She cocked her head and gazed at him suspiciously. Most of the time, they merely screamed and begged. This one, however, was tricky. He was not to be trusted. She lowered her face down on top of the terrified man’s crotch, and bit deeply, as he screamed in tormented agony. Then, she rose. That would keep him in place for a while, she reasoned, as she crept up the stairs. When she made it to the big bedroom at the end of the hall, she could hear the weak yet frantic voice of the woman she recognized as the one who was supposed to be her mother, married for years to the abusive step-father who lay helpless on the floor downstairs. She looked inside and saw that she talked frantically on the phone. She had to move fast. The woman screamed as Raven pounced. She ripped open the woman’s nightgown and tore off her dirty, sweaty bra. She looked at her and laughed with a snarl as the blood and gore from her earlier conquest dripped from her mouth.

“Ra-Raven,” her mother said in trembling terror.

“Mommy,” raven said with delighted savagery, and bit fiercely into first one breast, flinging her head from side to side as she bit deeply, then moving to the other breast. She could barely hear the frantic footsteps bounding up the stairs. She recognized the sound of his stride. She could smell him.

“Raven, for God’s sake we have to get out of here.” Raven turned and growled as James Berry stood there, at the door, urging her to follow him.

“I just heard over police dispatch, your mother called the cops before you got to her. Come on, we have to leave.”

Raven looked toward the form of the now dead woman that lay upon the bed. She growled, but she followed. She knew she had to trust this man. He angered her, yet he watched out for her, and protected her. She had to do what he told her. They hurried down the steps. Gary lay there, groaning and begging for help.

“Oh now shit!” Berry said, annoyed Raven had so far left this one victim alive. He knew a bullet wound under the circumstances would look suspicious, but before he could think of what to do, Raven pounced once more on the man and finished him off as she bit deeply into his throat.

“Good, now let’s get the hell out of here,” he said commandingly.

They managed to leave well before the police finally arrived, and soon they were home. The sun would rise in just a couple of hours, and James knew he had to make preparations. He only had so little time in which to work. Therefore, he ran a hot bath. Raven watched him in terror. She knew what was coming. He would insist that she get inside the hot, sickening water, with the awful smelling soap. He would bathe her, as he always did, as if she was a little child, a helpless infant. She hated it, but knew it was for some reason required of her.

She shivered in terror when he motioned for her, and as she entered the bath, she whimpered. Then, she moaned loudly, and cried.

“You’ll never get used to this, I know Raven,” he said consolingly. “We have to do this though. You do know that, don’t you?”

She cried and growled as he washed her thoroughly. He lathered her hair and washed her from head to toe. She growled a warning when he washed her vagina, but he continued. Finally, he stood her under the shower and rinsed her off as she screamed loudly, as though she were dying.

He finally dried her off, and she continued to whimper and cry, but then she started to smile.

“There, that’s better. You feel better now, don’t you? You almost look human again. You almost look like a real, living, breathing human being.”

After he dressed her, she followed him down into the basement lounge. He opened a Samuel Adams and drunk, while she watched him from a nearby lounge chair. She almost even looked pretty, he thought, as he sat on the recliner listening to an old Pink Floyd tape to which she herself seemed oblivious. She walked up to him and, kneeling by the side of his lounge chair, she laid her head on his arm.

When the phone rang, he answered quickly. He did not want to disturb her, but she seemed almost unaware of anything and everything.

“What the hell is going on over there?” Toby asked him. “Where the shit is you?”

“I thought I told you to never call me on this phone,” Berry reminded him. “What do you want?”

“Are you serious?” Toby demanded. “Do you know what is going on? People are dying all over the place, dropping like flies. How long do you think The Man is going to be able to keep a lid on this shit? I been watching the news, and there’s been outbreaks of all kinds of different diseases, all over the place-in Bethesda, Annapolis, Wheeling, Louisville, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Indianapolis, all the way to New Orleans, and God only knows where else. You want to take a good guess where they’re saying the shit originated from?”

“Oh, I don’t know, would it be Baltimore?”

“Seventeenth Street, to be exact,” he replied. “They’ve got the whole hood shut down and quarantined, and a bunch of other places in different cities too. It’s starting to make waves. So what in the hell do you have to say, man? I made it out of there just in time. Now here I am with the guys holed up in this fucked up little cabin out in the middle of nowhere.”

“Toby-listen close and good”, Berry said. “Count your blessings. It should not be that much longer, maybe a year, two at the most. Just make sure you keep the place straightened up. I don’t want it to look like Seventeenth Street when I go up there, so tell Merc and the guys to lay off the graffiti, and make sure those bodies are taken care of.”

“What the fuck?”

“Look, I got to go. Like I said, whenever you call me, call me on my other phone. You got that?”

“Now look, motherfucker,” Toby shouted, but before he could continue, Berry terminated the call and turned off the ringer.

He no sooner did so than Raven raised her head and growled in a low, guttural tone that Berry came to associate with sudden, unexpected danger.

“It’s all right, Raven, it was just”-

Raven rose, however, and back away from Berry as she stared past him, growling more loudly as she snarled and barred her teeth. He looked over in the direction in which she stared while standing riveted to one spot, her body tensed even more than was usually the case. At first, he saw nothing but a vaguely human shadow that gradually took on the substantive form of Marlowe Krovell, his green eyes shining like two hellish emeralds.

“What are you doing here?”

“Now this is a very touching scene,” Marlowe said sarcastically. “Has she said her prayers yet?”

“You should have waited,” Berry said. “You know you upset her.”

“Ahhhhh,” Marlowe replied. “How thoughtless of me.”

He approached the reanimated corpse of the tortured female, who growled a desperate warning for Marlowe to keep his distance. He kept his eyes peeled on her, however, and Raven slowly began whining, and then cringed as she backed away, though daring not to turn her back.

“Better not run, Raven,” Marlowe said. “It will be daylight soon, and you know what the sun rays do to your complexion. Me, I came prepared. My, but how I could have used sunscreen back in the day.”

Berry rose and approached Raven, who whimpered and made a futile attempt to hide while crouching beside him.

“Come on, Raven, I’ll see you to bed,” Berry said.

He led her to an adjoining room in the basement, where he opened a hidden trap door, which led to a long unused root cellar, the one where years ago he hid the body of his murdered wife before transplanting her carcass to the yard outside. He blessed Raven and uttered a quick prayer. He told her to have faith.

“Everything will be all right,” he said, as he handed her a dark cloth. “When you awaken tomorrow night, if I am not here, then this will lead you to me.”

He looked at her sadly then, as her eyes began to glaze.

“It will lead you to where you need to go,” he said, and she opened her eyes and smiled.

She took the cloth and fumbled with it as she held it up against her face. The exhaustion was now beginning to overtake her, taking precedence in fact over her fears. He prayed his regular nightly prayers, asking the Lord for protection over her.

“Watch over her this night, Lord God, and guide her and strengthen her, forgiving her for her sins in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ-amen.”

By the time he finished she was already asleep. He closed back the door and covered it with the throw rug.

“You are unbelievable,” Marlowe said. “Do you really imagine that is going to do her any good? Knock, knock, James-there really is nobody there, you know.”

“As long as she does what you want her to do, why should you care?” Berry asked. Marlowe looked at him in amazement.

“You have become too attached to her,” he said. “Do I have to remind you of who she was, of the things she did when she was alive-I mean really alive?”

“Anybody can change, with the Lord’s help,” Berry said, but he spoke weakly, and Marlowe noted he was himself pale and shaky.

“Just make sure she does what she is supposed to do,” he said. “You know, James, you really don’t look good.”

He stepped closer to the beleaguered and tortured detective, and gazed at him with a sarcastic smirk.

“You really don’t look good at all.”

Marlowe suddenly vanished, and it was as though he was never there save for the lingering scent of death, much different from the one exuded by Raven to which he had by now grown accustomed.

The sun would soon arise, and he had much to do this day. He almost stumbled out the door as he made his way to the car. Marlowe war right, after all. He did not feel well. Perhaps it was nerves, coupled with exhaustion. He had not really had a good nights sleep in many a night. He took way too many catnaps though the day, and they only made him feel worse when he awoke from them. The past two years seemed finally to be catching up to him.

He then remembered-the phone. He had to make another call, and he could not make it over his listed one, or his known cell phone. He made his way back up to the lockbox in his bedroom closet, cursing Toby as he went for being so stupid as to call him on the cell number he should have known by now not to call. He then cursed himself for allowing Toby even to have that number to begin with, as he looked at himself in the bedroom mirror. He looked like hell, he decided.

He made his way into the bathroom and rinsed his face. His eyes were so bloodshot he looked as though he had been on a weeklong drunk. He made it back to his car, got in, started it up, and left the driveway. As he did so, he made note of the van parked just four doors down the street from him, and across. Yes, indeed, he realized, today would be the day. He considered waving as he went by, but decided against it. He drove on, and wondered absently if they bugged his car. He decided that was wholly unlikely, and dialed the number. She answered quickly-a little too quickly.

“How are the kids, Geraldine?” he asked.

“They’re pissed!” she answered. “How in the hell do you think they are? I’m not thrilled either. Sitka? Really, James”-

“Well, it can’t be helped. When you get there, there is a house waiting for you, and there will be somebody there to take you to it. You will find everything there you need, including medicines-especially penicillin and other things that will protect you against these outbreaks that are going to only get worse as time goes by. They won’t be that bad up there, but you need to take every precaution.”

“So how in the hell do you know all this, James?” the woman asked. “What exactly is going on?”

As he drove closer to his destination, he found himself suddenly too weak to be agitated at her. Still, he had to make sure she understood exactly what was at stake.

‘Look, have I ever let you down? If not for me, you would be either in prison or on lifetime parole for killing your husband. Well, things are going to be shaken up here in a few days, a couple of weeks at most. Somebody could very likely be heading to Colorado as we speak. My former partner is suspicious of me. Quite frankly, I think he’s suspicious of you as well.”

“We’re leaving tonight, James. I just hope the new identities you got us will do the trick, and I hope the kids can learn to cope with this change. This is a lot to put on your kids, James.”

“Just tell them I love them and I’ll see them soon,” he said. “If I don’t call you later on tonight, just-well, you know what to do.”

“Now you’ve really got me worried’, she said. “I’ve never heard you sounding like this before.”

They talked for a few minutes more as Berry tried to tell the former Geraldine Malone, whom he long ago saved from imprisonment by setting her up in Colorado under the identity of his supposedly separated wife, that everything was going to be fine as long as she followed the plan and made sure the kids did their part.

“By the time a couple of years have gone by, it will all be over. Everybody will be home free, and can start a new life. No more hiding, no more looking over our shoulders-no more constant worry and guilt. You just have to hold on for that long. Then, everything will be different. I can’t tell you any more than that right now, but you’ll see.”

He finally ended the call as he made his way to a deep ravine over the border into West Virginia. He opened the trunk of his car and extracted the skeletal remains of his wife, dead now more than eight years. He crossed himself and then he lifted them out of the trunk, and walked with them over to the ravine.

“Like you always used to tell me, Frieda,” he said. “This is the end.”

It was so incredible how it all worked out. Doris was also dead, and Marnie too. Voroslav, with whom he became involved after fucking both his wife and his daughter, fed himself a bullet. Phillip Khoska did likewise and clung to life by a thread. He had ridden along with them all, feeding them information while acting as a liaison between them, the mob, and the Seventeenth Pulse, who thanks to Grace he had embedded himself within while ostensibly investigating them. He liked to think that his services had been invaluable, and the death of his wife, while regrettable, was nevertheless an acceptable casualty. If only she had not come at him with that butcher knife, how different things might have been. The throwing of the vases he could overlook. Nevertheless, that final assault changed his life forever. He did not like where she seemed to be going with that butcher knife. He grabbed her wrists, flung her around, and suddenly the knife was in her abdomen.

Luckily, she only had four living relatives, only one of whom-her mother-gave a damn. He used her blood pressure against her, and she died a relatively quick and merciful death before she or anyone else ever knew his wife was no longer with him.

Eight long years passed, many of them spent explaining to his oldest son that his mother just had problems she needed to work out. After four years, his mother would of course come back into his and the other children’s lives, looking remarkably similar, albeit different in some ways, notably the extra fifty or so pounds. Now, it was nearing the end of a road that took many unexpected twists and turns. That was to say the least. He took one final look at the mummified remains, said ten Hail Mary’s, and tossed them into the overgrowth. He stood beside the road and prayed. He had one more thing he had to do, and so he made his way to Saint Anne’s Cathedral. He had an appointment with Father Chuck, and needed to see him before he began his morning mass.

The Priest was yet distraught over the deaths that had visited so many of his parishioners. There were the Dooley’s who had lost a precious son, newly baptized and consecrated, to the ravages of a wild vulture. Then, of course, there were the Chou’s, who lost a beautiful if troubled sixteen year old daughter in a way that was equally terrible, perhaps even more so. Father Chuck always wanted to keep a line in at the department, and James was his man, more so than the Baltimore chaplaincy. James kept him informed on many vital areas of interest, and the Priest appreciated his endeavors. James had always wanted to make a difference, to be more than just a faithfully attending parishioner. He wanted to contribute to the laity of the church, perhaps along the lines of a third order, one devoted to reaching out to the criminals, even the criminally insane. He visited prisons in his spare time, and psychiatric wards, distributing as he did the word of God, even lecturing at schools and offering assistance to families of defendants, perhaps the most pitiable victims of all. Yes, James made many worthwhile contacts as well, but this was to be expected, and no one was the wiser.

He even spent some time at the psychiatric unit of Johns Hopkins University, and when those patients were inadvertently released due to a bureaucratic snafu, James offered them his aid, and they willingly accepted. Now, they were all dead, and the Girl Scouts they unfortunately stalked-without his approval, of course-lay either dying or already dead from contact with the same contamination that now threatened the environs of Baltimore and beyond. Theirs, in fact, was the first case cited outside of Baltimore, and outside of Maryland. Fortunately, the two girls who knew of the cabin were among the first casualties, and were dead, having never revealed the whereabouts of the place.

As he pulled up to the Cathedral, however, James realized that not only was the secret safe, but that a good portion of it rested inside his trunk. He opened it and extracted the gallon jug of homemade wine. It was a special gift from him, courtesy of a man long dead, to the good Father and to other participants of a soon-to-be-held interfaith religious conference, soon to transpire within the backdrop of St. Anne’s Cathedral.

He made his way to the back of the Cathedral, but saw no sign of the Father. He would have to wait, and hoped it would not be a long one.

He was hot, weak, nervous, and sweaty. He had been through so much. After he sat in the back of the sacristy, he realized it would be exceedingly difficult to stand back up. He began to wonder if he could even go through this without passing out. He was dry and parched, and needed a drink. He heard movement, the sounds of the first attendees of the morning mass. There should not be that many, not on this morning-maybe ten at the most, maybe a little more. He found himself drinking the holy water, but though ravished by heat and thirst, it seemed to do him little good. Then, he saw the wine in the decanter, the wine that the Good Father would soon use for the mass. He lifted it up and took a large drink out of it. He wanted more, but he did not want to drink too much. He found another decanter, and drank some more. He repeated this several times, until he could no longer stand it. He picked one up and drunk the entire contents. He was burning with fever, and yet he felt so bitterly cold, and sick.

“Oh, God,” he moaned as he replaced the decanter.

“James, is that you?” he heard the familiar voice ask. “My God, man, are you ill?”

“I think I’m coming down with something,” he said. “It must be flu. I really shouldn’t be here, but I wanted to give you a gallon of that wine, the homemade kind you liked so much.”

“For God’s sake, son, that was not necessary. It could have waited. You need to see a doctor.”

“It’s not just for you. I wanted to make sure you shared it with the attendees at the inter-faith conference. I hear even a representative of the Pope will be here.”

“Well, the Cardinal will be here, yes, that’s true,” Father Chuck replied. “So will a good many others, representatives of various branches of the Jewish faith, for example, as well as the various Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist communities. Some protestant denominations will also be represented. Even Patriarch Daniel of the Romanian Orthodox Church is slated to attend.”

“Will you please share this with them, and ask them all for their blessings on my endeavors for those poor lost and tortured criminal souls?”

Father Chuck seemed obviously impressed, and even touched, by this grandiloquent gesture.

“I will be most glad to, my son,” he replied. “Many of them of course will not drink wine, but I am certain that those who will shall be greatly pleased with this remarkable vintage. Now, please, I beg of you, go home and get some rest, and call a doctor.”

Berry promised him he would do that, but just needed to sit back there for a minute. He wanted to listen to him perform the mass, though in his present state he felt he should not partake in it, and risk infecting the other parishioners. After the mass was over, he left, taking care to leave a note explaining he did not wish to also risk infecting the Holy Father with his presence, even though he was certain what now assaulted him was nothing more than an ordinary flu virus.

By the time he made it home, it was as he expected. He had company. Frank stood at the door. He steadied his nerves and hoped he could hide the extent of the illness that now ravaged him.

“Frank, what are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry to have to spring this on you, James, but I have a warrant here to search your property.”

“Search my property for what?”

“For your wife Frieda’s body, to be blunt,” Frank replied. “Don’t bother to act surprised. I thought I recognized that woman that left with your children the other day. It was not her. It was really Frieda Malone, wasn’t it? Now, you can make this easy, James. You can tell me where she is, though I think I already have a damn good idea. You can also come clean and get this shit off your conscience. Maybe it was some kind of tragic accident, and you panicked. Maybe the woman you gave your wife’s identity to, is actually a good woman who just happened to take what she thought was the only way out of an abusive marriage at the time. I would like to think you would not just knowingly hand your children over to her care otherwise.

“You know we’re going to find her, James, eventually. She cannot hide forever, especially with three kids-your three kids. Please, Berry, do not put them through any more of this. Just give it up, and we can”-

Before he could continue, however, Berry was on the ground. When he awoke, he felt even worse than before. Frank was standing over him.

“I know I should have sent you to the hospital, but I had to talk to you first, and since I’ve already been exposed, I figure the hell with it. You are probably going to be in quarantine in a few hours, and I will be as well, I am very much afraid. I guess you know what we found?”

Frank was looking down toward an old trunk. Berry focused his eyes as Frank opened the lid, to reveal the contents of what amounted to a memorial time capsule, including pictures of his wife, from the days of their earliest courtship to their marriage and honeymoon pictures from Niagara Falls. There were clothes, some of their favorite recordings, other various souvenirs that told the tale of a marriage that could only have been happy on the surface.

“All of this is a hell of a thing to bury under a rose bush, James. You never really got over her, did you?”

“No, I never did. Will you please put it back?”

Frank promised that he would, but naturally, they would have to examine the contents closely. He was still under suspicion, after all.

“I’ll make sure it’s safe, and then when you’re able, you can put it back, if you would prefer, just to make sure everything is still there. If you want to talk about, we can do that too. If not, I guess I can understand.”

Berry thanked him as he focused his vision. There were others there, moving around, looking all over the house. They still suspected him. Frank more than suspected. In his own mind, Frank knew, almost everything. He had to get rid of them. He had been unconscious almost all day. Night was beginning to fall.

“Frank, you and the guys, you have to get out of here. You will not find what you are looking for. You are wasting your time and taxpayer’s money. If I wasn’t such a nice guy I’d sue the city.”

“We’re about done here. I’m curious about why you seem to use acetone in your bathroom, but other than that, and some unknown female’s hairs, not a lot here. Well, not apart from the evidence of blood we found on your kitchen floor. I guess somebody had a nasty accident with a butcher’s knife, huh?”

Suddenly, for the first time, Berry threw up while aiming for the garbage can Frank had strategically placed beside him on the sofa. This went on for over two minutes, and then, at last, Berry saw the evidence in front of his eyes. He opened his shirt to see the boils on his chest and arms, and felt them on his face.

“Like I said, we’ll talk later,” Frank said. Soon the ambulance personnel, all wearing protective gas masks and clothing, entered into the home of Lieutenant James Berry. Frank and the other members of the homicide and cold case units followed outside as they carried the helpless Berry to a waiting ambulance. Frank was careful to lock the door on the way out, but as he took one last look inside, as night began to fall, he could have swore he heard something. He felt as though someone somewhere was watching him.

He shrugged it off. As thoroughly as he and the other guys had gone over this house in the last several hours, there was no way they could have missed anything. Maybe he needed to see a doctor already, he thought, as he closed and locked the door. After he left, Raven stepped out of the shadows and looked for James. She did not like this. James was always waiting for her when she woke up at night. He always waited with kind words and a tender caress as he led her to her bath, which he made tolerable for her by adding acetone to the bath water. The scent of it calmed her down and it warmed her skin. By the time that it was over it made her feel good for just a while, until her hunger started to get the better of her. Then, James would take her for a ride and let her pick the spot she wanted to get out and hunt for food. He would wait, and if necessary, he would come to her aid. He would be there to take her back home. They would sit and wait until the hated sun rose, and he would make sure she was comfortable and secure for the remainder of the day. When he was around, she no longer lived and even slept in terror.

Now, he was gone. She had to find him. Something was very badly wrong. There were strange men here, going all through the house, looking through things, walking around, several times walking directly over her. What did it mean? She had to find James. She took the black cloth he earlier gave her, and inhaled its scent. Yes, James was there, but other things were there as well. She would find him. She had to find him.

Before she started, however, her nostrils flared at an unexpected scent. Someone was here with her. He was hiding from her, but she quickly sniffed his location, and saw his green, baleful eyes staring into her. She growled a low, guttural warning tone, and then hissed as she approached. Nevertheless, the figure did not move, did not seem to as much as flinch. She saw his green eyes changing as he stepped forth out of the shadows. As he did, he spoke her name lowly, almost in a whisper. That voice-it sounded so familiar.

“It’s me, Raven-Joseph. You remember me, don’t you? You and I were best buds, you know.”

The man had long brown hair that hung to his shoulders, with the sides dyed a crimson red. Yes, she knew him, but he seemed different somehow. His voice seemed somehow different, as though it was his, but not really his. It seemed to approach from a faraway place, and trailed off into a static tone. Still, it was he. It had to be him. She tried to smile.

“Jo-seph,” she stammered as she tried to form the sound of his name. “Ka-rin-ski.”

“Yes, Raven, it’s me,” the figure said with a slight smile. “We are all waiting for you to join us. You remember how close we all were, and how much fun we used to have.”

Raven lurched at this, however, and turned away in fright.

“No, Raven, it’s all right,” the familiar face said. “We are all happy. All of us are waiting for you to join us. Rhino is waiting, and so is Sierra, and Milo, and Spiral. You remember Larceny don’t you? She joined the group after you left. She is there too, and another girl, Spanky. So come on. Don’t you want to see all your old friends again? Just follow me.”

He was now at the door to the basement, beckoning her to follow him. She did so, cautiously at first. Something about his scent did not seem right. She knew though that she was supposed to trust him. Once upstairs, she followed him to the door that led to the back of the house. Once she stepped outside, however, he was gone. All that remained was a large bird, glaring at her with those same baleful green eyes she knew from somewhere and which she both feared and detested. She approached the vulture, but as she did, the creature spread her wings and lifted up into the air. She alit on a branch on the tree far above her head, and then called out to her. She kept walking toward the open field to the back of the house, until she heard once more the voice of the man who claimed to be her friend, the man named Joseph.

“Keep walking, Raven,” he said. “Just follow Cynthia. She will show you where to go. She will lead the way. Soon, we will all be together again.”

She looked up toward the sky as she walked, and saw the great bird, which would circle around her and above her, and would turn and call out to her. She would see its shining green eyes, and soon that is all she could see as she walked into the mists of the night. Soon, she saw the figures of a group of people, standing off in the distance. She saw Sierra. She saw Milo. She saw Spiral. She saw Rhino. She saw all of them, standing together in the distance until she once more saw Joseph Karinsky step up beside them beckoning her to come to them. She smiled as she continued walking.

As she finally made it to where they all seemed to stand in wait for her, they seemed to fade away as though they were never there. The bird, however, still hovered in the air above her, flying in circles as it continued to call out for her. There was a strange scent in the air, and she could hear the voices of Joseph, Milo, Sierra, Spiral, and Rhino, calling out to her in whispers, but their voices were indistinct now. She picked the black cloth out of her pocket. It seemed to be an altar cloth of some type, and its scent filled the air. The more she walked, the stronger it became, until finally, she saw where she needed to go.

It was a church. James had taken her by this church on several occasions and warned her about the man who lived and worked there. Now, it had a new steeple, a large cross that adorned the roof above the front doorway. The closer she got, the more pronounced and all-enveloping became the scent of the cloth. It was soon all around her. This was where James wanted her to go, but he was not there. She would go there and wait for him.