Cassie frowned at the inanity of the situation.
A disembodied voice just told me I have a nice tattoo
. She looked down at it, as if she even doubted the tattoo’s existence. It was a tiny half-rainbow that encircled her navel. She’d gotten it at a Goth parlor in D.C. with Lissa; they’d agreed to both get tattoos the same day.
“My sister has one too,” Cassie responded. “It’s—
“A garland of barbed wire around her navel,” Angelese answered. “You should see
my
tattoos.”
“Oh, angels have tattoos?”
“Sure, but mine are special. They’re devotional.”
Cassie smirked. Angelese never seemed to speak in anything but puzzles. “How did you know that my sister has a barbed wire tattoo around her navel?” she asked next.
“I’ve seen her a few times.”
The comment locked Cassie in place, unmindful of her nakedness. “You’ve
seen
my sister?”
“Um-hmm.”
“Where is she?”
“You know where she is. She’s in the Mephistopolis.”
Cassie was trembling. “Yes, but
where
in the Mephistopolis?”
“I’m not sure right now.”
“But you just said you saw her!”
“I saw her a few times, but I don’t know exactly where she was. We’re waiting for more intelligence reports about her. I trance-channel into Hell all the time, all the Caliginauts do.”
“What? You trance—”
“Think of it as an out-of-body experience, that sort of thing. Some humans can do it, and the same goes for angels. That’s one of the first things they teach us how to do when we’re inducted into the Order. We channel our spirits out of our physical bodies, can go anywhere, including Hell.”
“Why?” Cassie demanded. “Why would angels go to Hell?”
“Scouting missions,” she was simply answered.
Cassie pulled on her robe, knowing that someone would be by soon to escort her to the showers. Now she was intrigued in spite of her aggravation. “Your
spirit
has been to Hell?”
“My soul, yes.”
“But not your body?”
“No.”
“Why not? Why doesn’t God just send all his angels down there and depose Lucifer?”
“I can’t tell you.”
Cassie looked around the room, trying to decide where the voice had come from.
This is probably all bullshit. There’s probably a little speaker hidden in the room, and some prick’s having a real laugh right now.
But if that were the case, what had she seen last night? If someone was trying to trick her, or make her think she was insane, how could they have made her see the reflection last night in the water in her hands?
“You know I’m not a dream, Cassie, and you know I’m not a trick,” Angelese’s faceless voice said next. “You know that, right? You know that you really are an Etheress, right?”
“Yes,” Cassie finally had to admit.
“Good, ’cos if you didn’t know that, then we’d have a long road ahead of us, and there isn’t time.”
“Time for what—” Cassie shook her head in an abrupt frustration. “Look, this is really freaking me out. It just bugs me.”
“What?”
“What? Talking to a disembodied voice, that’s what. Maybe I’m weird but when I’m talking to someone, I’m kind of used to seeing that person’s
face
along with the conversation. Can we do that thing we did last night? What did you call it?”
“A Transference Charm,” Angelese reminded her. “Let’s just wait a minute and we’ll be able to do a better one.”
“Where?”
“In the shower. He’s coming now.”
More frustration. “How do you know—”
Three solid raps sounded on the door. “Hey, Cassie, it’s me, R.J. Lemme know when it’s okay to come in.”
Cassie’s brow creased; she sashed her robe. “You can come in now.”
The lock rattled as the door was unlocked. R.J. entered, smiling, his Notre Dame hat pushed up on his head. “Time for the good ole Personal Hygiene block.”
“Yeah, I know, and then Sustenance Block, right?” Cassie asked a bit sarcastically. “Why can’t you psych guys just call it breakfast?”
“Because Sustenance Block sounds much more therapeutic on the billing invoices.”
Cassie followed him out, her flip-flops flopping. One of her dead father’s life-insurance policies covered the bills here, overseen by his executors—a bunch of attorneys back in D.C.
“How are you feeling?” R.J. asked. He was tall, broad shouldered, and his shadow seemed massive as she walked behind him.
“How do I feel?” Cassie replied. More sarcasm was in order. “Like a perfectly sane girl being kept against her will in a private psychiatric clinic only because the bills are paid on time.”
“That’s the spirit,” R.J. chuckled. “Did you get a good night’s sleep?”
“No.”
“More nightmares?”
“Yeah.”
“Of your sister’s suicide?”
“Nope.”
The amiable psych tech looked over his shoulder. “You know, I am a qualified psychologist.”
“Really? Not just a Notre Dame fan?”
“I’m a Cincinnati Reds fan too. But you should still want your father’s executors to get their money’s worth. I might be able to help you interpret your nightmares. Then you can reflect on those interpretations. It’s called psychotherapy.”
“You really want to know what my nightmares were about?”
“Sure.”
“I dreamed of the time I took the sulphur-powered train from the Outer Sector at Tiberius Station to Pogrom Park. It’s near the Riverwalk section of the Mephistopolis. On the train, I saw a girl give birth to a mongrel baby that had fangs and horns coming out of its head. When its head was all the way out, it looked at me and barked, like a dog. I ran back to my cabin when the baby came all the way out and started nursing.”
“And you believe that,” R.J. said, not asked.
“Yep. I was there. I saw it. There’s nothing to disbelieve.”
“You know, Cassie, I
believe
that you believe that.”
Cassie just nodded with the same derision she’d known since they’d brought her here. “Yeah, I know, Dr. Freud. You believe that I believe the delusion.”
R.J. stopped and turned, touched her arm to elicit her attention. “It’s not quite that at all, is it? Your case is much more complex.”
“Because I’m passing all your damn polygraphs, right?”
“That’s part of it but I’m sure there’s a lot more. We’re going to find out. We really do want to help you, you know.” Then he smiled again. “Oh, and I’m not a Freudian. Freud was an erotopathic coke-head who was totally full of shit.”
Cassie laughed.
Thank God somebody in this joint’s got a sense of humor.
She passed a couple of closed doors with stenciled letters on chicken-wire windows. NARCO-ANALYSIS, one read. OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY, DISPENSARY, SLEEP-DISORDER LAB, read some others. A last one read ECT. She saw Dr. Morse sitting at a desk beyond the glass.
“Hey, R.J.? What’s ECT?”
“Electro-Convulsant Therapy.”
“You mean shock treatment?”
“Um-hmm. It’s not like in the movies, Cassie. It’s painless, and it’s still very useful in treating serious depression.” He looked back at her again. “But you’re not depressed, so you don’t have to worry about it, right?”
“You say so. So what
is
my diagnosis, doc?”
“Clinically?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re messed up in the head, that’s all. Everybody is.”
Another laugh. Cassie liked R.J. Dr. Morse was another story. She couldn’t say that she
dis
liked him, but he was definitely a stick in the mud. Aside from those two, though, she really hadn’t met anyone else. The med nurse, the “chaperon,” the janitor. They were just bodies here doing a job.
“R.J.’s got the hots for you,” Angelese’s voice suddenly resumed.
“He does not,” Cassie blurted.
R.J. turned back around, a cocked brow.
“Who
does not?”
Shitl
Cassie thought.
“Be careful,” Angelese recommended.
“You
can hear me,
he
can’t.”
I wonder why,
Cassie thought.
“Because you’re an Etheress,” Angelese reminded.
“Oh, yeah,” then Cassie bit her lip again. When R.J. looked back this time, Cassie just said, “Don’t ask.”
“Don’t worry, I talk to myself sometimes too. Everybody does.”
Yeah, but everybody does NOT talk to bodiless angels from the Order of the Caliginauts.
“You got that right,” Angelese said and laughed.
When they got to the small office closest to the showers, R.J. looked around and said, “Sadie must be at an examination. I’ve got an admissions interview right now, so I’ll see you at the chow hall when you’re done.”
“Chow hall?” Cassie tried to joke. “Don’t you mean Sustenance Facility?”
“You’ve had the food here. It’s chow. For what we charge per week for an in-patient, you’d think we’d have better food, huh?”
The food
was
pretty bad. “Then change to an obesity clinic.”
R.J. held a finger up. “Not a bad idea. See ya in a little while.”
Cassie was taken aback. “Hey. You mean you’re gonna leave me alone here? As in... by myself?”
“Sure.”
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll try to escape?”
“Nope. But, just so you know, we don’t call it ‘escape’ here. We call it ‘resident elopement.’ ” Then he pointed to a sign on the wall: DO NOT LEAVE ELOPEMENT RISKS UNATTENDED.
“Maybe I will escape,” Cassie goaded. “Then you’ll get fired.”
R.J. shrugged. “I hear they’re hiring at Wendy’s.” Then he walked away.
Probably just some behavioral psychologist’s trick,
Cassie considered.
Wants me to think he trusts me, then I’ll trust him.
“That’s not it,” Angelese said, unseen as always. “He just likes you. And you like him.”
“I do not!” Cassie insisted. “Jesus, he’s old. He’s like, thirty-five.”
Faceless chuckles fluttered about the small room. “How old do you think I am? You saw my face in the water.”
“I don’t know. Eighteen, nineteen.”
“Try five thousand.”
Jeez.
She was waiting for Sadie, the ward chaperon, but the woman wasn’t to be found. A television on the desk was on, the volume all the way down. There was also a copy of the
St. Petersburg Times.
Cassie immediately caught herself eyeing the front page.
ARMY SAYS MD EXPLOSION NOT TERRORIST BOMB, the top headline blared.
What the hell is that all about?
Cassie wondered. She picked up the paper but quickly noticed a more local headline lower on the page. MASS HYSTERIA IN DANNELLETON?
Dannelleton?
she realized.
That’s where this clinic is!
“Um-hmm,” Angelese answered her thought.
Cassie addressed the faceless voice. “You sound like you know something about it.”
“Um-hmm ... Turn the TV up.”
CNN was on; Cassie hiked the volume. A newswoman who looked more like an E-Channel hostess was reporting, “... strange and devastating explosion which completely destroyed the obscure library in Laurel, Maryland, last night. The bodies of five security guards and an unnamed civilian were recovered by local fire-department crews. Nearby witnesses reported seeing a small mushroom cloud expanding over the site at the time of the mishap, and rumors quickly spread that the facility had been the target of a terrorist bomb. But federal officials from the Army and Nuclear Regulatory Commission quickly dispelled such rumors, stating that no radiation was detected at the site, nor does the site display any characteristics of a terrorist attack. Later, county and state officials explained that the unfortunate accident was the result of a natural gas line rupture...”
“I don’t think so,” Angelese sniped.
“What are you talking about?” Cassie asked. She was getting annoyed.
“Turn on the local news now.”
Oh, well.
Cassie did so. This time a newsman who seemed to have forgotten to comb his hair was saying, “... the small but exclusive downtown area of Dannelleton ravaged by fire last night, amid reports of earth tremors, power failures including battery-powered police radio communication failure and cell phone failure, foul-smelling fog, and mass screaming—” The newscaster cracked a smile. “Pinellas County public health officials attribute these observations to a case of simple mass-hysteria which often occurs at night, during times of limited visibility, and during traumatic public crises. Meanwhile, the fire marshal and his team of investigators explained that the fires were caused by gas line rupture...”