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.…
22
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.
“What happened to me anyway?” she cried in a delirium of anguish. “What made me do such a thing?”
“It was an accident, baby,” Bill said in a soft, relaxing voice.
“No, Daddy, I did it on purpose. They say I walked into the fire, and I don’t remember anything about it.”
Bill’s expression tightened. “Who says you did that?”
Ivy’s eyes sought the stately black-cloaked form standing at the foot of the bed. “Mother did,” she said, weeping.
Bill ran a finger between his neck and his shirt collar.
“She’s wrong,” he said, then turned a hard, brutal face on Mother Veronica Joseph. “What do you build fires for anyway?” he rasped. “What kind of business is that in a convent? We send our children to you for peace and protection, and you build fires.”
In receipt of Bill’s anger, Mother Veronica Joseph made no reply. Silence quivered in the room until the old nun, her lips a thin, grim line, forced herself to speak.
“I’ll wait outside,” she said quietly, clutching her beads, and left.
Dr. Webster coughed and in a hushed voice conferred with the nurse who was in the room, attentive and constant, yet so unobtrusive as to have escaped Janice’s notice.
“What’s happening to me anyway?” Ivy repeated in a continuing moaning lament. “What’s happening to me?”
Janice considered the question—a question unanswerable to all but herself—and one other person. There was never a doubt in her mind about who had been behind this murderous escapade, as there now was no doubt about Audrey Rose’s ultimate intentions. As Elliot Hoover had warned, “She will keep pushing Ivy back to the source of the problem; she’ll be trying to get back to that moment and will be leading Ivy into dangers as tormenting and destructive as the fire that took her life.…” Yes, Audrey Rose clearly had no compunction about showing her hand and would continue to have none. The consideration of how easily they could lose Ivy made her shudder. “Audrey will continue to abuse Ivy’s body until her soul is set free.…” There was nothing to hold her, nothing to make her even hesitate. Unless—
Janice sat stunned by her own thought. Sitting erect, almost wooden, listening to the soft and mending sounds of Bill’s voice gradually restore and calm their fear-stricken child, she gravely hesitated to pursue the thought, knowing with certainty that there could be only one possible result from such an act. Had the answer come to her too quickly? It was, in its way, a bizarre and capricious answer; still, it blazed in her head, for it seemed the only right answer. Tread lightly, a voice within her warned. Consider deeply. The next moves are fraught with peril. The decisions of the next twelve hours could blow up your world.
They didn’t leave the hospital till nine fifteen. Neither was surprised to find that Mother Veronica Joseph had not waited. They encountered Dr. Webster in the reception lounge, chatting intimately with an elderly patient in a wheelchair.