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I let the word trail off, since what I’d intended to say seemed downright rude.
“But you’re wondering what I’m doing here in Globe.”
About all I could do was offer him a lopsided smile. “I suppose so. That is, Sasha’s already gone back to Sedona. I think she’s going to have a memorial service for Brant there.”
“Those are her plans, yes,” Neil responded. “And I hope to be there for the service. But I’m here because I want to see the house.”
“Oh, no,” I protested. “It’s way too dangerous. After what happened to Brant — ”
He cut me off, but so politely that I couldn’t really be offended by the interruption. “I understand the risks, Ms. Marx. I have been called to other cases like this, so I know what to expect.”
I’m not sure if you do, I thought, but all I said was, “Selena. We’re not too formal around here.”
“Selena,” he repeated. “I really would like to see the place. It’s quite possible that I’ll be able to cleanse it for you. I understand your family was basically chased out of the place.”
Could he really clear out those pesky demons and make it so the house was habitable again? I knew I shouldn’t get my hopes up. But….
Well, fortune did favor the bold.
“I was just about to close up for lunch,” I said. “Let’s go take a look.”
I stood off to one side, watching Neil Halloran — Father Neil, he’d told me on the drive over, a parish priest from Flagstaff — stand directly in front of the porch steps and stare up at the house. He’d been there for several minutes, although I wasn’t sure why. Getting the vibe of the place? Working up the nerve to go inside?
No, that second possibility didn’t seem quite right. He exuded the same kind of quiet, steady strength I appreciated so much in Calvin, even though otherwise the two men couldn’t have been more different.
Well, I hoped Father Neil was better at catching those vibes than I’d been lately. For me, the house had all the emotional resonance of a bag of Top Ramen.
“Time to go inside, I think,” he said. He glanced back at me and added, “You can stay on the porch if you like.”
“No, I’m good,” I replied. Even though I really didn’t want to go back in the house, I also didn’t want to act the coward by hanging around outside while a priest walked into the lion’s den.
So to speak.
It was just after twelve. The demons had erupted around this same time on two other occasions, so I wondered if they would put on a show for Father Neil today.
Only one way to find out, I supposed.
I mounted the porch steps, then got out the key to the front door and unlocked it. As it swung open, a faint odor of dead skunk and roadkill drifted out.
The priest’s nose wrinkled.
“Oh, this is nothing,” I said, and stepped inside. “It was much worse the other day.”
That was nothing more than the truth. Yes, the stink still lingered, but I could tell it was only the dregs of that initial attack, and not a new blast of the smell. Father Neil followed me, nose still twitching a bit.
“You’ve never run into olfactory phenomena before?” I asked, hoping I sounded like I knew what I was talking about.
The corners of his mouth lifted slightly. “Oh, yes, but those were slightly different from this one. Generally, the odors accompanying a demonic attack tend to smell like rotting meat and feces. This is more like dead skunk.”
A fine distinction, but possibly a significant one. I didn’t really have an explanation as to why the smells here might be different, so I only said, “Most everything happened in the stairwell.”
Father Neil nodded and headed in that direction. The house around us was eerily quiet, with only the faint hum of the air conditioning in the background to break up the stillness. I made a mental note to shut it off, or at least push the thermostat up over eighty so it wouldn’t be costing my mother and Tom a mint to keep it running. I thought I’d turned it off the last time I was here, but maybe it was preprogrammed to run at a certain temperature, and my fiddling had only changed the settings temporarily.
I followed a few paces behind the priest, figuring that if something decided to push him down the steps, at least I’d be there to catch him, or maybe break his fall. True, he was tall, a little over six feet, but I thought I could probably still manage as long as I didn’t lose my cool.
He walked up the lower set of steps, slowly but confidently. But as soon as his foot touched the landing, the noises behind the wall let go, screeching and giggling and wailing. A few seconds later, the pounding started in.
It seemed he hadn’t been lying when he’d told me he’d experienced phenomena like this before. His entire body stiffened for just a second, but almost at once he was reaching into his pocket, holding up a cross.
