Taji's Syndrome (3 page)

Driving home, she pulled off the Highland Park Expressway and stopped at Steven’s school, taking a book from her purse and starting to read. She had four cars and a chauffeur at her disposal, but there were days when she liked taking her three-year-old Commadore and driving without fuss. Her mind wandered and she realized she had read the same sentence four times without any sense of what it meant.

“Hi, mom,” said Steven as he got into the car.

Irene stared at him, startled and surprised to see him. “You were dozing,” he explained as he pulled his seat belt into position and secured it. “Dull book?”

“A silly book,” she said, putting it aside and reaching to start the car.

“Oh.” He narrowed his eyes as she pulled into traffic. “How was the insurance company?”

“Smarmy, as usual,” she said, glancing quickly at him and seeing again the faint fuzz that grew on his cheeks and upper lip. He had already shaved once, and soon would have to again.

“Wasn’t that what you were expecting?” he asked, frowning. “Mom, can we go by the Gradestons’ place on the way home? Sean’s still out sick and I want to . . . you know.”

Sean Gradeston had been his best friend for more than four years; the two had played together and invented their own brand of raising hell. Now Sean was confined to the house, suffering from some unknown disease that sapped his strength and turned him from a tempestuous thirteen-year-old to a little old man in a kid suit.

“I sure do. We’ll stop for as long as Ginny will let you stay,” promised Irene. She carefully avoided asking how Sean was doing, since his continuing deterioration was a forbidden topic.

“Good.” He scowled at the traffic wending its way out through Highland Park. “Are they going to give you the money?”

“They can’t very well refuse,” said Irene. “It’s all in Neil’s will and all the documents are on file. They’re dragging their feet as much as the law permits. It’s a great deal of money, after all, and no one thought that Neil wouldn’t live past forty-six.”

“Yeah,” said Steven. “I liked him. He was a good jumper.”

Irene was familiar enough with her son’s jargon to know this was a compliment. “He sure was. I don’t like to think where we’d be now without him.”

“How about with my real Pa?” asked Steven.

“No way,” Irene said, and the vehemence of her words surprised her.

“Was he that bad?” Steven said with less certainty.

Irene did her best to take the sting away. “Not that bad, no. He just didn’t want any kids. In fact, he thought he couldn’t have any because of something that happened in Viet Nam. That was years and years ago. I heard,” she went on, saying nothing about the private detective she had hired to do the work, “that he ended up with a family of his own, eventually.” She knew that his wife was a teacher in a San Diego high school and that Tim Stevenson himself ran a gourmet market in La Jolla, the fourth business venture for him in ten years. Tim had three children and a hefty mortgage as well as two cars, a Dragon-class sail boat, a Schnauser, and an ulcer.

“Probably doing okay then,” said Steven with that curious mixture of longing and indifference that marked all his observations and questions about his father. “Remember about stopping at Sean’s.”

“I will,” said Irene, signaling early for the turn. “Sean will be glad you’re coming for a visit.”

“When he finds out about it, I guess he will,” said Steven. “I wish he wasn’t sick. Or maybe I wish I was sick along with him. It’s weird—one of us fine and the other so wasted that he can’t walk more than half a block without turning white and wheezing.” He folded his arms and stared out the window at the houses.

“He’ll get better. The doctors will find out what the matter is, and then they’ll take care of it. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that they couldn’t cure any of the kinds of leukemia, and now most of them are cured or under control and the few that aren’t can be slowed down.” She said this to give her boy hope. “Is this Golden Orchard?”

“Next corner,” said Steven. “I hope you’re right. I don’t want anything to happen to Sean.”

“Neither do I,” Irene said as she made the right turn onto the winding residential street. “When we get there, no matter how he looks, don’t you say anything about it, okay? He’s probably upset enough as it is.” She warned him more for his parents than for Sean, who took Steven’s ribbing with delight.

“Okay.” He cleared his throat. “There’s three more kids out with something like what’s wrong with Sean. One of the teachers said something about it at lunch. The Principal wants all of us to go to the nurse next week, in case there’s a bug going around. You know what that’s like.”

“I haven’t got a note about it,” said Irene, feeling real alarm for the first time.

“They just sent them out yesterday. Mister Rosenblum, the biology teacher, you remember him? he said that there’s been some of the environmental types around looking for toxic dumps and that kind of stuff.” Steven straightened up as the Gradeston house came into view. “Wouldn’t that be oxic? Yeah, oxic toxic.” He indicated the open space in front of the Gradeston house, although Irene was already pulling into it.

“What’s this ‘oxic’?” Irene asked, hoping to get a little of her son’s attention before he went in to visit his friend.

“It’s . . . about armpits. You know how they stink.” He had already unfastened his seatbelt and as the Commadore pulled to a halt, he pressed the latch. “Back in a bit,” he said as soon as the car had stopped and the door released.

Irene watched him go, then locked the wheel and prepared to follow him.

—Adam and Axel Barenssen—

“You are not down on your knees,” Preacher Colney admonished the younger—by seventeen minutes—of the Barenssen twins.

“I . . . I’m sorry,” muttered Axel as he obediently dropped to his knees and joined his hands in prayer.

“I’ve done my best,” Kirsten, their aunt, declared fervently, her own hands knotted together and her lean, parched face set with unhappiness. “God laid His burden on me, and I have thanked Him for it.” She stared at her two nephews. “But they’re getting to be . . . ” The words stuck in her throat and she looked away from the two boys, as if they were too bright for her eyes.

“They are of a certain age,” Preacher Colney agreed, his expression ambivalent. “And you say that Satan is working in them.”

“I have seen it.”

From their place on the floor, Adam and Axel exchanged one quick look, a signal of outrage and frustration. “It’s not Satan,” said Adam, loud enough for the two adults to hear him. “It’s just puberty. That’s what they told me at school.”

Kirsten’s countenance became more severe. “That’s part of it. That lying! Anything can be explained by glands or chemistry or . . . I can’t think! I have begged my brother to remove his sons from that place. There are atheists and Jews and God-alone-knows-what there. I have pleaded with him to show his authority and forbid his sons to read what the teachers have given him.”

Preacher Colney had every bit as rigid an attitude as Kirsten Barenssen, but he had learned enough of the law that he did not relish martyring himself to the statutes of education in the state of Oregon. He had been a minister long enough that most of his naivete had worn off and been replaced with a degree of tolerance for human frailty. “Patience, Sister, pray for patience and God will see you through.”

“It’s puberty,” Adam said with more force. “It happens to everyone when they get to be our age.” His knees were beginning to hurt and he shifted his place on the floor, watching his brother do the same.

“God sends His trials to all of us,” intoned Preacher Colney. “And you are not the ones to judge what has been manifested through you. You are too young and if you are being used by Satan, you might not know it. Most of those who succumb to his wiles do not know they have fallen.” He raised his well-worn Bible above the two boys and began to pray; his voice was harsh, more demanding than imploring, and he shuddered as if fighting against an invisible wind. “Hear us, your children, O God Who has made all things, and come to our aid in our time of tribulation and suffering. We call on You in our need and our weakness, for You will not give us more than we can carry, and we bow our heads to this.”

“He’s getting worked up again,” Axel whispered to Adam. They were so alike that even those who knew them well often confused them. There was one marked difference between them, and that was the shade of their eyes:

Adam’s were dark blue, a smoldering shade between cobalt and prussian; Axel’s were a soft, light green. Right now their dissimilar eyes were locked as if that contact alone would block out all unpleasantness, uniting them against the world.

“Lord, hear us and grant us Your mighty arm as our protection against the work of the Devil, who ravens like a lion among Your flock. Cast out the evil that has entered the bodies of Adam and Axel Barenssen. Save them from the fires of Hell and restore to them the cloak of perfect innocence and purity which is the greatest gift of Heaven.” He directed his remarks to the old-fashioned light fixture on the ceiling, as if suggesting that God might find His work easier through electrical circuits.

“They’re not right anymore,” sighed Kirsten. “Things happen when they’re around. I have seen it.” She reached out and grudgingly supported herself on the back of an ugly, overstuffed chair.

Preacher Colney interrupted his harangue and stared at her, a new recognition corning to him. “Are you still ailing, Sister Barenssen?”

“It’s them. It’s their work,” she told the pudgy minister. “They’ve brought this affliction on me as surely as they are the tools of Hell.”

“You have been to the doctor since we talked? You told me two weeks ago that you wanted to break your appointment. You kept it, didn’t you?” He could sense her stern resistance to his questions.

“I went, though it was a waste of time. They’re worse than pagan witch doctors, those men, with their machines and tests, as if that had anything to do with healing.” She raised her voice. “Where is the machine that can cast out the Devil?”

“What does your doctor say?” asked the Preacher, becoming concerned and wanting to keep the two of them on the matter of her health.

“He can say nothing. He does tests and he learns nothing. That’s because it isn’t a doctorable thing that’s wrong with me, it’s them.” She pointed at her nephews kneeling on the worn carpet. “They’re the cause. It’s their doing.”

Now Preacher Colney was distinctly uneasy. It was one thing to assume that the Devil might be getting into the bodies of teenaged boys—he had seen that often enough—but it was another to accuse them of causing illness. Little as he wanted to admit it, he knew that spinsters of Kirsten Barenssen’s disposition and age often endured mysterious and unfathomable maladies that neither medicine nor faith could treat. He looked down at the twin boys, white-blond and fresh-faced; he came to a decision. “Adam, Axel, leave me alone with your aunt for a little while. I’ll call you for informal prayers in a bit.”

The boys got to their feet at once. “Thanks, Preacher,” said Adam for them both, and they trudged out of the room, toward the kitchen.

“Don’t go far,” Colney admonished them, and then turned to Kirsten, seeing the shock he had expected to find in her eyes. “Before we go much further with this, Sister, I think we’d better have a talk.”

“About the boys?” she said. “I’ve told you all about them, but you’re not listening to me. You think I’m making it up.”

“No, not that,” he said, watching to be certain that the kitchen door was closed.

“I know what’s happening to me. I know that my faith is being tested and that my soul and my body are besieged by the forces of Hell. Won’t you help me? How can I fight them if you won’t help me?”

“Sister Barenssen, think; it might be a snare, a deception of the Devil to lure you to waste your faith and your strength where it is not necessary so that you will not be able to resist the true enemy.” He decided he would have to phone her physician and find out what the tests had revealed.

“You told me that I could call upon you, when I am tested. You gave me your word that you would help if—”

“Yes,” he said mollifyingly. “And I’m pleased that you did. But I think that we’d better discuss your health for a while first. It might have a bearing on . . . how we handle the trouble here.” He wanted to sound as neutral as possible, as removed from judgment as he could be without appearing to question anything that she had revealed to him.

“We handle the trouble by casting out the Devil. You’ve said that; Scripture says that.” She touched the Bible he held. “All my life I’ve clung to the Word, and trusted in it above all else. Now it is my only defense.”

“Of course,” said Preacher Colney in a soothing tone as he drew up a slat-backed wooden chair so that he could face her as they talked. “Just as we were promised.”

“Yes,” she said with inward passion. “Ever since God took their mother, I’ve watched over them. Now I see the Devil in them as my strength fails. I’m . . . I’m frightened,” she admitted, as if she were confessing to breaking all the Commandments at once.

Will Colney nodded, knowing that his reservations had been well-founded. “I want us to pray together for your health and strength before we try anything more with the twins. First things first, Sister Barenssen.”

“But the Devil—” There was terror in her eyes now, and her face was paler.

“The Devil will be with us forever; we can take time to pray together for strength,” he insisted, hoping that the repetition of the words would finally get through to her.

“I tell you that there is great danger in those twins. I knew it from the first.” She tightened her hands and then met his eyes. “Even before God took their mother, I knew that there was something wrong with them. It was their fault that she died.”

“She died in an automobile accident, along with thirty-four other people.” Will Colney knew that he would have to proceed carefully with this distraught woman.

“It was a judgment on them, on all of them. For their wickedness.” She wiped tears from her cheeks with the backs of her hands, and Preacher Colney was reminded of how an animal uses its paws. “And caring for her children was God’s judgment on me.”