Frank De Felitta - Audrey Rose

Janice’s heart was pounding. Her body was trembling.

“… as she screamed and screamed and tried to get out of the car and kept.…”

The paint of the car melting and pouring.…

“… beating her hands against the window.…”

Melting! The melting! The crowning and melting ceremonies, the woman had said.…

“… which was slowly being covered over by the melting paint.…”

Dear God in heaven!

Janice’s eyes darted to the wall clock. Four twenty. It was happening! It was happening! Now ! Her eyes shot across at Hoover.

He was standing.

The two guards standing nervously behind him.

His face was wet, florid.

His eyes were ablaze—

—seeming to search a distance beyond the sobbing girl on the stand, beyond the memory of that distant horror freshly revived, to a time and place where future sounds were struggling to be heard, where winds whipped cold and children laughed and sheets of snow, pouring white on black, came melting down in a hiss of flame.…

Watching from her window, Mother Veronica Joseph felt the acrid taste of fear rising in her throat. As it did every year on this day.

Pagan, unchristian, she thought anxiously, watching the rapt and intense faces of one hundred and twenty-seven virgins observing their sacrificial effigy—a labor of weeks—succumb to the all-consuming flames. Homage to Moloch, pagan god of fire. Heathen gambols on consecrated soil. Why did she permit it? Each year she vowed to eliminate it from the school program, and each year she hesitated doing so. Why?

The flames were gathering force now—licking and hissing against the snowman’s lower extremities—eroding his strength, vanquishing his pride, devouring his crowned glory. Creation. Adulation. Destruction. A primitive rite. Unthinkable.

And yet somewhere in Mount Carmel’s Christian past, it had started. With the Franciscan Brothers, the old custodian, Calitri, had once told her. In the time when Mount Carmel was a school for boys. Before the conversion. In the days when her own name was not Veronica Joseph, but Adele Fiore. Yes, it was the brothers. They had put flame to the very first effigy—the first of what would become a yearly tradition at Mount Carmel—a yearly event so rooted in the minds of each succeeding class as to become a fixed and immutable part of the school, like the very ivy that cloaked its stained and ancient walls.…

Ivy? Was that the Templeton girl? She was much too close to the fire.…

Yes, the brothers. Respectable, honorable men, who doubtless were ignorant of what they had started, were responsible for the desecration that assaulted her vision and her senses.

Observing the leaping flames eating away at the mammoth snowman, Mother Veronica Joseph felt a small consolation in the thought that it would soon be over; that soon the effigy would come toppling down in a steaming, hissing mountain of blackened snow and the tradition would be done for another year. Yes, Mother Veronica Joseph vowed, this would be the final year. The haulage and cleaning charges alone were enough reason to bring the tradition to an end.…

The nun’s eyes suddenly sharpened.

What was that child doing? Moving slowly toward the fire? Were all so fascinated by the flames they didn’t see her?

Yes, fire fascinates. She had not understood its power until this moment. Fire! Man’s age-old enemy! Satan’s pillow! The licking flames, like demon eyes, beckoning, beguiling—

Now she’s down on all fours! Moving ahead! Does no one see her?

“Stop!” shouted the nun, with a stuttering heart, but knew her voice was swallowed by the silences of the thick-skinned chancellery. Her fists beat at the leaded panes; she tried to budge the ancient windows but the rusted hinges held.

Dear God, dear Mary, the child was nearly into the flames, and still nobody noticed! Were they dreaming? Were they all mesmerized by the flickering flames? Seduced by the warmly inviting tongues of Satan’s fiery embrace?

“Stop! Stop her! ” screamed the nun, seizing a chalice and smashing the diamond-shaped panes of glass, inviting plumes of frigid air to batter her face and send her veil billowing behind her.

Dear Mary, Mother of God … she’s into the flames!

“THE CHILD!” shrieked the nun in the teeth of the blasting wind. “THE CHILD! STOP HER! STOP HER!”

Dear Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.…

They arrived at the hospital outside Darien in the uncertain gray of twilight. It was bitter cold, and it seemed to both of them that there would be snow, but, they did not discuss it.

They were met in the reception lounge just inside the main doors. Mother Veronica Joseph began talking even before Bill and Janice came to a stop, as did an elderly doctor—Dr. Webster—who quickly assuaged the pale and stricken parents in a calm, professional voice. Each went on talking animatedly, Bill and Janice trying to follow two streams of thought at once as they walked down the broad corridor, passing occasional nurses and other family groups clustered before half-open doors. The first dealt with what had happened—Mother Veronica Joseph’s low, stunned voice re-creating, in detail, her eyewitness account of the accident, which had erupted without expectation and which, but for the quick action of Mr. Calitri, might have ended in real tragedy. The other was more complex a stream, dealing with the extent and prognosis of Ivy’s injuries, which, they were assured, were mainly first- and second-degree burns, producing only a mild shock with no indication of a developing toxemia or septicemia.

“Lucky she was so well bundled and there was all that snow around,” Dr. Webster encouraged. “Her body was completely untouched. Her face took some heat; however, there’s no indication of respiratory tract damage; we don’t see singed nasal hair, she’s not coughing, and her throat doesn’t seem hoarse. No expectoration of blood or carbon particles associated with inhalation of fire cases, just some transient facial swelling, redness on the left check, singed eyebrows and a few small developing blisters.…” He chuckled. “Nothing permanent to mar her good looks.”

Janice, walking well ahead of them, strained to hear their conversation, but the distance and Mother Veronica Joseph’s constant prattle made it impossible.

“…I don’t mind your knowing, Mrs. Templeton,” the nun murmured softly and with a trace of self-righteousness, “that while nothing like this has ever happened before at Mount Carmel, it needn’t have happened this time. What I’m saying is that it was no accident. Your daughter literally walked, then crawled into that fire.”

Janice flinched. Then, with a shake of her head, she replied inadequately and with no conviction, “You must be mistaken. Why would she do a thing like that?”

“That I cannot answer, Mrs. Templeton. But I am not mistaken about what I saw. Understand, I am not saying that she was aware of what she was doing, only that it was no accident.”

Ivy was sitting up in bed, perusing a magazine somberly. Her face, beneath the glistening medication, seemed lightly sunburned. Her long blond hair was singed in a ragged bob. The sight of Janice and Bill stirred her bruised senses, and unwilled tears rushed to her eyes. Bill and Janice hurried to her bedside but were cautioned by Dr. Webster to desist from embracing her.

“It’s all right, baby,” Bill soothed, kneeling at her side and clutching her hand.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Janice held her other hand. For a time, Ivy could only look at her parents, back and forth at each face, in a lost, abject way and sob.