Fire Spirit (2 page)

The expressionless man came forward and took out a pair of electrician's pliers. He knelt in front of her and cut the nylon restraints around her ankles, and then cut her wrists free. This was even more frightening. If they were prepared to take off her restraints, they must be completely confident that she couldn't escape.

She wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her cable-knit sweater. She looked at the three men in turn, trying to see their eyes through the holes in their masks, trying to detect some humanity. But all she could see in each of them was a glitter, like the glitter of cockroaches underneath a sink.

‘You need to let me go,' she told them, with a catch in her throat.

The laughing man slowly shook his head from side to side.

‘That isn't an option, I'm afraid. It's almost five already and we're running right out of time.'

‘You can't keep me here! What do you want me for? My neighbor's expecting me back at five. If I don't show up, she'll call the police!'

‘Well, yes, I expect she will. But the police won't never find you.' He sniffed behind his mask. ‘Not until it's too late, anyhow.'

‘Please,' she said, ‘you have to let me go. I don't have very much money, but if it's money you want . . .'

The laughing man kept on shaking his head. ‘What you can give us, it's worth much more than money, let me reassure you of that. It's priceless.'

‘What is it then?' she demanded, more shrilly than she had meant to. ‘Is it sex you want? Do you want to rape me?'

‘Is that an invitation?' put in the scowling man. The expressionless man turned his face away, and let out a grunting noise that could have been a laugh.

‘Ever hear of
ex-
orcism?' asked the laughing man.

‘Of course I've heard of exorcism,' she retorted. Her voice was trembling but she was beginning to grow angry. ‘What the hell does exorcism have to do with me? I'm just an ordinary woman and a mother and all I want to do is go home and cook my children's supper for them. If you want a damned exorcism, why don't you call for a priest?'

‘Because it ain't no demon that needs to be exorcized, which is what priests do.'

‘Then what? And why do you need
me
?'

‘Because you're an ordinary woman and a mother and all you want to do is go home and cook your children's supper for them. You have all of the right qualifications. More than that, though, you
look
just right. Or nearly right, anyhow. Near as dammit.'

He crossed the room and picked up a red piece of cloth that had been hanging over the back of one of the armchairs. He held it up in both hands and she could see that it was a cheap red sleeveless dress.

‘Why are you showing me that?'

‘Because I want you to put it on.'

‘What?
Why
?'

‘Because it's part of the exorcism. Can't have an exorcism without all the required accoutry-ments, can we?'

She stayed where she was, breathing deeply, with her arms by her sides. ‘You really need to let me go,' she repeated.

The laughing man walked back toward her. He stood so close that she could hear the phlegm crackling in his sinuses as he breathed.

‘We don't want to hurt you, but I assure you we will, unless you do what we tell you.' He held out the dress. ‘There you are. It should fit you, pretty much.'

She looked up at him and then glanced at the other two men. ‘Where can I change?'

‘Right here. Right in front of us. That's part of the proceedings, too.'

She took the dress and hung it over the arm of the chair that was next to her. Then, very slowly, she pulled down the zipper of her quilted navy-blue squall. The three men stood quite still, watching her. She took off her squall and hung it on the chair next to the dress.

‘You don't have to take for ever,' said the laughing man.

‘
What do you want
?' she screamed at him. ‘
Just
tell me what you want
!'

‘Hey, don't get your panties in a bunch. You're already doing it. You're already doing what we want. We wouldn't object if you did it a little quicker, that's all.'

In spite of her determination not to be intimidated, tears began to slide freely down her cheeks. She bent over and pulled down the zippers at the sides of her brown leather boots, and took them off. Then she crossed her arms and lifted her oatmeal-colored sweater over her head.

‘Keep going,' said the laughing man. ‘Brassiere off, too.' The lisping old-fashioned way he said ‘brassiere' only increased her feeling of dread.

She shook her head. ‘No.'

‘Brassiere off, too, or we'll cut it off, and we won't be too careful.'

She reached behind her and unfastened the catch of her bra. She closed her eyes as she took it off, and tried to imagine that this was nothing but a bad dream, and that she wasn't here at all.

‘Come on. Skirt, too,' the laughing man ordered her.

She opened her eyes and she was still in the gloomy living-room, with the three masked men still watching her. With shaking fingers, she unbuttoned her skirt at the side, and pulled down the zipper of that, too. She stepped out of it, so that she was wearing nothing now but her pantyhose and her white lace panties. Although the room was so cold, she suddenly felt hot with fear and embarrassment.

‘We're waiting,' said the laughing man. ‘We don't have the patience of Job, you know.'

‘Please,' she wept. ‘I'll do anything.'

‘You bet your sweet bippy you will. Now come on, get on with it. Get them pantyhose off, and those pretty little panties, too.'

She did as she was told, and now she was naked.

‘Nicely trimmed topiary there,' said the laughing man, and the expressionless man let out another grunt of amusement. ‘Now how about putting on that dress?'

The dress was cheap, with stray threads and no lining, and it was too tight across her bust, but she managed to put it on and tug the hemline down to her knees.

‘Well, look at you! Excellent! You look so much like her, I could've sworn she'd come back from the cemetery.'

She said nothing. She was shivering, and she had no idea what the three masked men were going to do next.

The scowling man trampled across the mattress and stood very close to her, on her left-hand side. He smelled faintly of camphor, like pain-relief liniment. ‘You're right,' he said. ‘She could be her double, almost. But – you know –
prettier
, if anything. Not so goddamned
blotchy
.'

The expressionless man crossed over the mattress, too, and stood on her right. She looked from one to the other. They were both staring at her, but of course their masks were giving nothing away. She was so frightened that she was close to wetting herself.

‘Well, now, the next thing you need is a drink,' said the laughing man. He reached into the pocket of his coat and took out a plastic bottle of Sobieski vodka. He unscrewed the cap and held it up. ‘Same brand
she
always favored. Only eleven bucks the bottle, that's why. Bring her here, fellas.'

The scowling man and the expressionless man took hold of her arms and frogmarched her into the middle of the mattress. They all found it hard to keep their balance, so that they looked as if they were trying to stand upright on the pitching deck of a ship. The laughing man said, ‘Come on, now. Think you can do what
she
used to do? Think you can match up?'

She couldn't find the words to answer him.

‘OK, then,' he said. ‘Let's have you down on your knees, shall we? Then we can see what you're good for, or what you ain't.'

The scowling man and the expressionless man forced her arms so high up behind her back that the tendons audibly crackled and she had no choice but to kneel. Under her bare knees, the mattress felt damp and lumpy, and it stank of stale urine and dried blood.

The laughing man came right up to her and held out the bottle of vodka. ‘Here . . . help yourself.
She
always did.'

‘I don't drink,' she whispered.

He cupped his hand to his papier mâché ear. ‘What? What did you say? You don't drink? But you
have
to drink! That's all part of the exorcism. Everything has to be played out exactly the way it was, right down to the very last detail. She never wore no underwear so you can't wear no underwear. She always wore a red dress like that, or some other dress that was very much like it, so you have to wear one, too.

He paused for breath, gasping behind his mask. ‘She
drank
. I mean, that was almost the whole reason it ever happened. She drank from morning till night. Sometimes she was so drunk she didn't even know who anybody was. Sometimes she didn't even know who
she
was.'

He held out the bottle again, prodding it against her lips. ‘Come on, be a good girl, drink.' But she closed her mouth tightly and turned her head away.

‘Well – sorry about this,' he told her, and nodded to his two companions. The expressionless man took hold of her hair and pulled her head back, while the scowling man squeezed her jaw so hard that she was forced to open her mouth, like a freshly-landed fish.

The laughing man poured vodka straight down her throat. It blazed all the way down her esophagus into her stomach, and when she tried to cry out, she breathed some of it into her lungs, so that she felt as if she were choking. The laughing man stood over her, waiting for her to finish coughing, but when she didn't, he nodded to his companions again and he splashed even more into her mouth, regardless of her coughing and her spluttering.

‘You may look just like her,' he told her, ‘but you sure can't take your booze the way she used to, and that's a fact.'

She retched and gasped for air, but he forced her to go on swallowing until the bottle was empty. He tossed it on to the floor, reached into his other coat pocket, and took out another bottle.

‘
No
!' she screamed at him. ‘
I can't
!
You're killing me
!'

‘Killing you? We're not killing you. All we're trying to do is show you a good time!'

Scowling and Expressionless pulled her hair again and opened her mouth, and Laughing splashed almost half a bottle more down her throat.

Eventually, however, they let her go, and she crouched on the mattress on her hands and knees, her stomach heaving, wheezing for breath. The men stood around her, watching her, saying nothing.

‘Why are you doing this?' she sobbed. ‘What have I ever done to you?' She raised her head.

The laughing man shrugged and said, ‘You never did nothing, sweetheart, except to be in the wrong location at the wrong time. For
you
, that is, anyhow.'

He reached into his coat again, and this time he took out a pack of Marlboro cigarettes. He shook one out, tucked it into the slit in his mask, and lit it. When he blew smoke, it leaked out of his eyeholes as well as his mouth, so that it looked as if his head was on fire.

He hunkered down in front of her and held out the lighted cigarette. ‘Here you are, take a drag on this. That should calm your nerves.'

She shook her head. ‘I don't smoke.'

‘You're still not getting it, are you?
She
smoked, so
you
got to smoke. This is an exorcism, don't you understand? Everything that she did, you have to do. You have to be her. What's the word . . . it's symbolical.'

He held the cigarette up to her mouth. She stared defiantly into his cockroach eyes, but he prodded it up against her lips again and again.

‘You know you're going to have to smoke it, don't you?' he told her. ‘Because if you don't, I'm going to be obliged to stub it out in your eye, and you wouldn't enjoy that too much, would you?'

‘I hate you,' she whispered.

The laughing man nodded in appreciation. ‘That's good,' he said. ‘That's
excellent.
That's exactly the way that
she
used to talk. You'd be right on top of her, giving it everything you got, and she'd look you straight in the eye and say, “you scumbag, I wish you'd have a heart seizure, right here and now, so I could feel you die inside of me”.'

He prodded her lips again, and this time she opened them a little so that he could insert the cigarette. The smoke drifted up into her eyes and stung them, and she started coughing again.

He watched her for a while, and then he said, ‘Come on now, sweetheart, you got to
inhale.
Otherwise you don't get that hit.'

She hesitated, and then she breathed in. She managed to hold the smoke in her lungs for only a second before she exploded into another coughing fit. She coughed so hard that she bent forward and pressed her forehead against the mattress, as filthy and evil-smelling as it was.

‘I'd say she needed a little more practice at that, wouldn't you?' said Scowling. ‘
She
used to get through two packs a day, no trouble at all. Sometimes three.'

The laughing man sat down in one of the armchairs and lit another cigarette. The expressionless man sat down, too, but the scowling man went to the window and parted the dark brown linen curtains so that he could look outside.

‘Still raining,' he said.

‘Close the goddamned drapes, will you?' the laughing man ordered him. ‘You want half the goddamned neighborhood to see that there's somebody in here?'

‘There's nobody out there, man.'

‘You never know. Just close the goddamned drapes.'