Frank De Felitta - Audrey Rose

Janice wept. “I know, Father, and yet this has come into our lives … and I’m troubled.…”

The priest looked at her suddenly with eyes that had hardened.

“You’re so troubled,” he said sternly. “Do you think you would be in this trouble if you had held onto what you were given? To what God gave you? Christ promised from the very beginning that His spirit would be with the Church. And the Church has reacted wisely for two thousand years—the only human institution to have withstood time and spaces and revolutions—and has given us something solid to hold onto.”

“I’m all mixed up, Father.”

“Because you’ve been listening to the world. You’re floating here, you’re floating there, you must stop listening to all these alien forces; you’ve got to get hold of yourself, get back to basics, get back to what God has given you … you have to get back to home.” The priest’s face had reddened, and his hands were shaking. “You must get meaning into your life, a point!”

“Until this man came, there was a point to my life, Father.” Janice sobbed into her handkerchief.

“You can’t entertain these alien thoughts … they’re evil thoughts … Our Lord said, ‘If your eye scandalizes you, cut it out.” So this man has come into your life, he is evil! You mustn’t pay attention to him! You must cut him out of your life! He is a danger to you—”

“It’s my daughter, father … she is the one in danger … she has these terrible dreams, dreams that punish her … and he is the only one who seems able to relieve her.”

The priest raised a halting hand to her tearful face.

“You must return to the institution that Christ dwells in. It will help you ward off the powers of error, to withstand lies and deceits and all the snares of the evil one.”

He gazed at the woman sitting next to him, weeping bitterly, and his voice softened. “As a girl you were told to avoid the near occasions of sin, and you have let this man and his force invade you. You must turn your back on him; you must give yourself to the truth, the one Holy Catholic Faith.”

The priest rose, concluding the interview.

“I would suggest you go to your parish priest and make a confession and throw yourself on God’s mercy. Open your hand to Christ.”

He reached down to the bench and picked up his breviary and straw hat, but did not leave. He seemed unable to escape the strange and disagreeable situation and remained gazing down at the weeping young woman, who could only nod her head in agreement to his parting advice. He tried to put it from him, to simply walk away from it, but could not. A feeling of profound failure seized him. What did he know of the matters she had brought up, the problem she had laid at his feet? Reincarnation? A never-ending cycle of lives? It was childish, if not wicked. And yet how implicitly he believed in the miracles recorded in the Bible, how carefully he regulated his life by their messages. The old priest suddenly felt very confused and … useless.

“My dear woman, let me bless you,” he said with heart-felt compassion, gently pressing the palms of his hands against the sides of Janice’s wet face. “May Almighty God bless you,” he intoned, drawing the sign of the cross in front of her eyes, “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.”

Janice didn’t watch him leave. She stayed there alone, in the shadow of St. Andrew, waiting for her anguish to abate and her mind to compose itself before quietly rising and joining the stream of tourists circling the cathedral.

At ten minutes past three Janice left the protective sanctuary of the church and stumbled through the portals back into the bleak and alien world without.

The long walk home from St. Patrick’s Cathedral in a driving rain was a revivifying tonic for Janice. The sharp spears of rain striking her face had a cleansing, therapeutic magic to them, and Janice held up her head to receive them. They were reality: cold, stinging, painful, shocking her into a full and sudden awareness of herself and the world around her—the real, present, only world there was in her particular speck of eternity.

Drenched, she arrived at the corner of Sixty-seventh Street and stood a moment gazing up at the massive stone and glass façade of Des Artistes, glistening wetly in the faltering autumn light. Bill’s fortress, she thought with a grim smile. Their bulwark of defense against the enemy without had been useless against the enemy within. Somehow, in planning the building, the artists had failed to provide against intruders from the spirit world. Garlic and wolfbane should have been mixed into the mortar.

She found Carole and Ivy playing checkers on the living-room floor. Ivy’s cheek felt cool against her own. Carole remained to finish the game, then picked up her needle-point and went to the door, flashing Janice a high sign to accompany her.

“He insists on seeing you tonight,” Carole whispered in a kind of delight. “He said he knows that Bill is away, but that you and he gotta talk for Ivy’s sake.” Her face twisted into a funny fright mask. “Gee, hon,” she tremoloed, “why don’t you call the cops? Like Russ says, this guy’s bananas.”

Janice smiled wanly and said, “I may do just that if he keeps it up.”

“If you need help, give a yell. We’re having dinner with Russ’ brother, but we’ll be home by eleven.”

“Thanks, Carole, for everything,” Janice said, meaning it, but glad to see her friend leave.

Janice had failed to shop for food and had to scrounge together a supper for them out of odds and ends. She found a half-filled box of spaghetti in the cupboard and prepared it with butter and Parmesan cheese. They ate it with gusto at the dining-room table, along with canned Bartlett pears and glasses of milk. Afterward they watched television until eight thirty, then went upstairs.

While Ivy sat up in bed, reading her newest Nancy Drew mystery, Janice went about preparing the room.

“What’s that for?” Ivy asked, referring to the large four-panel screen Janice had brought in from her own bedroom.

“It’s for the window; there’s an icy draft coming through the edges of the panes. We’ll have to have them resealed.”

“I don’t feel it.”

“It’s there,” Janice said, spreading the screen to its fullest extension and raising it above the radiator. For some minutes, the sheer bulk resisted all efforts to force it behind the radiator, causing Janice to swear softly and Ivy laughingly to admonish, “Watch your language, Mother; there are children present.” But the screen finally found its way past the various pipes, and now a Chinese red and gold motif totally obscured the window.

“Hey, that looks nice,” Ivy said, surprised. “Can we keep it there?”

“We’ll see,” Janice said, as she packed layers of blankets around the offending radiator. “I don’t want a repeat of what happened last night,” she explained, moving about the room, tidying up, but mainly pushing the bulkier pieces of furniture off into corners, out of harm’s way, and setting the stage for possible action.

At ten minutes past nine, after tucking Ivy in with Panda and kissing them both, Janice turned off the light and left the bedroom, closing the door behind her. She then walked into her own bedroom, opened her little phone book to the letter K , and placed it facedown next to the telephone. Her mind briefly reviewed all she had done, and only after having assured herself that she had forgotten nothing did she allow her head to seek the softness of her pillow. She would rest. Not sleep, she hoped. She would remain dressed, and keep the light on, and just rest, as she waited.