Robert Browne - The Paradise Prophecy

“Look, I don’t blame you. You’re a skeptic. I probably would be, too, if I were in your shoes. But I come from a long line of people who were acutely aware that there’s a lot more going on out there than most of us want to acknowledge. And what I witnessed, first hand, only confirms that.”

She lifted her brows. “So do I have to keep chanting, or are you going to tell me about it?”

LaLaurie took a moment to gather himself, as if what he was about to say didn’t come easily to him. He was dredging up a memory that he’d just as soon leave buried for a couple lifetimes.

He drained his glass and signaled to the bartender for another.

“What I saw was nearly identical to what happened to Gabriela. There was never any indication that Custodes Sacri was in the picture, but the body was in the exact same condition, and the exact same symbol was burned into the mattress beneath it.”

Despite her doubts about good and bad angels and psychic energy and all other forms of supernatural hogwash, Callahan felt herself getting excited again.

Was this the breakthrough she’d been hoping for? Was it possible that whoever had killed Gabriela had killed before?

“Do you have any idea what that symbol signifies?”

“Hubris, vanity, arrogance-take your pick. Whoever left it has a very high opinion of himself.”

“And you’re sure the symbol on that mattress was the same?”

“I have eyes, Agent Callahan. I’m not mistaken.”

Her heart was thumping. “When and where did you see it?”

“About two years ago,” LaLaurie said. “In my own house.” He paused, a somber look on his face. “On the night my wife, Rebecca, burned to death.”

Batty had never told the story before. He had played it on his interior movie screen enough times to make him permanently nauseous, but he’d never said it out loud. Had never given voice to the horror.

“We were living in Ithaca at the time. My book on Milton had been published to good notices a couple years before, and I’d accepted an associate professorship at Cornell while I slogged through the next book.”

“That’s a long way from Trinity Baptist College.”

No doubt about that, he thought. A lot had changed in the last two years.

“A return to Louisiana wasn’t even on the radar then. We’d settled into a fairly routine life and Rebecca was feeling a little restless. She had her degrees in philosophy and religious studies but she wasn’t working, and as ashamed as I am to admit it, I was too busy to pay much attention to her.”

He often beat himself up for not realizing this at the time. Maybe if he hadn’t neglected Rebecca, she’d still be alive today.

“Sounds like a pretty typical marriage to me,” Callahan said. “How did you two meet?”

“In a dream.”

It took a moment for the answer to compute, then her eyebrows went up. “And how exactly does that work?”

“Sometimes I dream things. See people.”

“And your wife was one of those people?”

He nodded. “I was a graduate student at Princeton then. In the dream I saw Rebecca standing on the steps of Nassau Hall and was a little shocked when she turned and stared right back at me. Said my name. I found out later that she was psychic, too.”

Callahan looked confused. “I don’t follow.”

“We were sharing the same dream.”

Batty remembered that dream with great clarity, and the sudden stab of excitement he’d felt when he later saw Rebecca standing on those very steps and realized that she recognized him.

Dream sharing wasn’t uncommon between sensitives, but it usually took a coordinated effort to make it work, and this one had been spontaneous and exhilarating. It didn’t hurt that the girl he’d shared it with was breathtakingly beautiful.

Callahan said nothing, but Batty knew she was adding another item to her growing list of absurdities.

The waiter finally brought him his drink and he took a sip before continuing. “Anyway, back to Ithaca. Rebecca and I had settled in and she was feeling restless, but she’d always had this vast curiosity-another trait we shared-and she turned it toward the occult and angelology.”

“Angelology? That’s a new one.”

“Not really. People have been studying angels for centuries.”

“Is this where all your good angel/bad angel stuff comes from?”

Batty nodded. “There are as many theories about angelic spirits as there are tires in a junkyard, but Rebecca never did anything half-assed, and when she dove into it, what she discovered was that these so-called ‘beings of light’ are really no different than their dark brethren.”

“How so?”

“They’re all fallen angels. Cast out of heaven by their creator.”

“Even Gabriela’s favorite?”

He nodded again. “Michael, Raphael, Uriel-all of them. At one time they were right down there in the fire alongside Beelzebub, Mammon and Moloch. The only difference is that Michael and the others decided to ignore Satan’s call to arms and go their own way. Decided to honor their creator rather than fight against him. So a myth was born, promoting them to Archangels. The same myth that’s sold to schoolkids every Sunday. But the truth is, they’re not much different than us. Just struggling to do what’s right.”

Callahan took a healthy sip of her wine, then sighed. “I think my brain is about to implode.”

“Imagine how I feel. Rebecca became more and more obsessed with this stuff and told me she’d started hearing voices in her head.”

Callahan stiffened slightly. “That’s exactly what Gabriela’s boyfriend told me. But he claims a lot of people hear voices when they pray.”

“A lot of sensitives hear them, too. So I didn’t really give it much thought until she came to me one night and said she was afraid she might be in danger. She’d been experimenting with conjurations and was worried she may have summoned up a malevolent angel.”

“Or maybe attracted some psychopath who thought he was one.”

“You go ahead and hang on to that, if it makes you feel better. But I was there, and I’m here to tell you that this was no human stalker. There was a presence in our house. Something watching us.”

He remembered waking up next to Rebecca and feeling that presence right there in the darkness of their bedroom, the faint smell of sulfur in the air. But oddly enough, the malevolence didn’t seem to be directed at him. Only at Rebecca. And as he watched her sleep, he knew something had to be done.

“So we dove headfirst into the literature,” he told Callahan, “looking for an incantation to rid the house of any dark spirits. But we were working with the original Latin text and we were both a little rusty at that point.”

“So you got it wrong,” she said.

He nodded. “ I got it wrong, and Rebecca paid the price.”

He was quiet a moment, mentally reliving that night. The dark angel plaguing Rebecca had become more aggressive in the last several hours, rendering her confused and nearly incoherent, begging for the thing to leave her alone.

He told Callahan this. Then he said, “I can’t imagine it was much different for Gabriela.”

Callahan didn’t respond, but it was evident by her expression that he’d struck a chord.

“It must have been two in the morning by this time. I kept trying the incantation, even tried the standard Catholic exorcism rights, but this thing had grabbed hold of her and wasn’t about to let go until she gave in.”

“Gave in?”

“That’s how they operate. They can’t make you do anything you don’t want to. So they work on you from the inside-tempt you, seduce you, play mind games with you, throw hallucinations at you, scare the ever-loving crap out of you . . . It’s like they’re waterboarding your brain until you finally succumb. And the weaker you are, the faster you fall.”