William Bell - Fanatics

“So I guess today’s the day,” I said to myself as an icy shiver crawled up and down my spine. The reckoning. The showdown. Today the atlas bone would be sealed up and sent back to Florence.

“Or not,” the ghost’s malign glare seemed to say.

Then the wind gusted and his form broke up like oily smoke and drifted off along the shore.

I gulped. The vision had lasted a few seconds at most, but the impact was like someone had cracked me on the head with a plank. I took a deep breath, pulled myself together, and went to the kitchen door.

RAPHAELLA ARRIVED IN TIME for minestrone soup and panini stuffed with egg salad salty with chopped olives. The three of us ate in silence. Mrs. Stoppini seemed preoccupied-and sad. Raphaella’s face showed the tension I felt. The moment she saw me she knew that I had seen the apparition.

After lunch Raphaella and I lugged the new packing crate from the shop to the library and set it onto a blanket we’d spread on the alcove table. The pleasant odours of glue and freshly cut spruce were swamped by the acrid stink of smoke hanging in the room. I returned to the shop for the power drill, screws, a jar of adhesive, and the strips of felt I had cut earlier for the surfaces where the braces would be in contact with the cross. Through the window I noticed whitecaps forming on the lake. Wind-thrown rain began to patter against the glass.

Raphaella was setting up in her usual spot, turning on her laptop and pulling pens and pads from her backpack. She placed the computer on the movable lectern I had made. We planned to retrieve the PIE from under the cabin deck at Geneva Park once the police presence there had died down. She didn’t seem to miss it much.

“I can feel his presence,” she said.

No need to mention who “he” was.

For what I hoped was the last time, I went through the familiar procedure. Put the first brass key in the lock and open the alcove cupboard. Reach inside, press the knot, wait for the click as the catch on the hinged bookshelf section released. Pull open the heavy door. Insert the second key and open the secret cupboard.

I peered inside. Each object-the cross, wooden box, Compendium Revelationem , manuscript file, and felt-wrapped cross-was just as we had left it. I turned toward Raphaella. She nodded encouragement. I lifted out the antique reliquary, laid it on the table by the crate, and pushed the cupboard door closed, leaving the key in the lock.

I had never experienced an earthquake, but the tremor that seemed to rise through the floorboards under my feet must have been similar. Raphaella stopped typing for a moment and gripped the edges of the lectern. The shudder beneath us subsided. I unwrapped the cross and carefully slid it inside the crate, snug against the braces securing the base and the horizontal beam. The fit was perfect. Inside the box the glass dome glowed as if lit from within.

The floor under me trembled again.

I removed the reliquary and stood it beside the crate, then began to paint quick-dry glue on the felt strips, using the brush attached to the inside of the jar’s lid.

Whack!

The door of the secret cupboard flew up and the file folder tumbled to the floor beside me. I concentrated on applying the strips of cloth to the braces in the crate, pressing hard with shaking hands. Raphaella went back to tapping keys. The rain beat harder against the window. I glued the last piece of felt, then picked up the file folder from the floor and placed it on Raphaella’s table.

Above my head a book sprang straight off the shelf, fluttered like a confused bird, and crashed to the ground. A second one followed. Then, volume by volume, the entire row of books streamed into the air and plummeted into a heap at my feet.

Raphaella shrieked, pointing to the fireplace. Behind the safety screen the pyramid of scrap wood I had set there the day before burst into a fierce blaze.

Forcing myself to work methodically, not to give in to fear, I tested the crate, finding that the glue had set. I gritted my teeth, clamped my jaws shut, muttered, “Here goes,” and gently but with as much determination as I could scrape together seated the gold cross in place. I slid the lid on and, glancing around, picked up the drill and a couple of brass screws.

“Garnet.”

The forced calm of Raphaella’s warning tore at my nerves. I whirled around to see her staring wide-eyed toward the other side of the room. The spectre stood by the escritoire, radiating hatred, his hood covering all but his blistered, ruined face. The air was thick with a miasma of burned cloth and wood and broiled, putrid meat. Savonarola raised his arm under the singed and rotted cape, pointing.

The folder on Raphaella’s table quivered. The string slowly unwound itself from the paper button. The folder suddenly sprang toward the ceiling, spinning end over end, spilling pages like feathers from a burst pillow. Sheets filled the air, a blizzard of paper streaming toward the fireplace, where every single page slipped behind the screen, flared for a split second in a tiny soundless explosion, then expired in a puff of black ash. In minutes the manuscript was gone.

With a sweep of his skeletal arm Savonarola pointed toward the alcove. An avalanche of books poured from the shelves, battering the heavy crate, sending it crashing to the ground, knocking the lid off. The cross broke free and tumbled among the fallen books. The table shook violently, rose from the floor, hung suspended for a second, then shot toward me, ramming my shoulder and knocking me to the ground, pinning my legs. A heavy book whacked against my head and I collapsed in a daze, craning my neck to keep my eyes on Raphaella.

She cringed by her table, mercilessly pummelled by flying books, struck repeatedly on her shoulders and head. She held up her arms to protect herself but the torrent knocked her to the floor, where she lay on her back, paralyzed with terror, her chest heaving. I heard a rumbling and a clatter, turned to see the chairs by the hearth tip and tumble across the floor, coming to a thumping stop against the doors.

The spectre began to float toward Raphaella, slowly, relentlessly, as if savouring what he was about to do. “Don’t!” I shouted, but he continued to glide toward her. Raphaella stirred, raised herself onto her elbows, crab-walked backwards, her eyes on Savonarola’s black form, until she bumped against the east wall.

Thin rivulets of flame, capillaries of fire, seeped from under the frayed black robe of the ghost and streamed toward her. She stared, wide-eyed, as the fire encircled her.

“Garnet!”

I struggled to free myself from the weight of the table and books, fighting to catch my breath. Something crashed into my shoulder. The crate lid spun toward me in a vicious arc. I ducked just in time and it smashed into the wall beside the window.

Savonarola stopped in front of Raphaella. He raised his arms. The robe fell back to reveal bones poking through burnt flesh. His piercing gaze bored into her.

“Don’t!” I pleaded again. “Take me! I’m the one you want!”

The spectre didn’t so much as turn my way. I remembered again how Savonarola had despised women-creatures to be lectured or scorned, originators of sin, agents of Satan. I hauled myself to my knees and tried to crawl over piles of books toward Raphaella. The flames around her crackled and smoked.

She cringed in the shadow cast by the dark spectre looming bat-like above her. Then, as quick as a thought, the terror suddenly left her face. She seemed-unbelievably-calm. She stared at Savonarola’s destroyed face. Her voice came, firm and strong.

“You can’t.”

The wraith seemed to shrink back a little.