“I’m not wearing a wire,” I told her.
Without answering me she sunk to her knees, her hands following, moving along my knees and calves. She looked up at me, her face in line with my crotch. I resisted the sudden desire to touch her hair, the side of her face. Claudia rose, nonchalantly spun around and strolled back across the kitchen. “You hear a fucking word I said, Plato? You think that was the first time I was ever around a killer, around violent bastards who did the most depraved and fucked up shit you’ve ever imagined?” She faced me again once she’d reached the counter. “Difference was, most of the people I knew fell into it one way or another, went looking for the dark and found it or just got dragged in—you see what I’m saying? But not Bernard. Bernard was born into it.”
I remained standing. “What are you talking about?”
“Another one of his addictions,” she said softly. “His mother.”
“What about her?”
“You’ve heard the stories.”
“Before he was born she was in New York City, got mixed up with a bad crowd, mob guys or something, and got pregnant. That was the rumor around town. She never talked about it in specifics and neither did Bernard.”
“‘Course not.” Her eyes nearly sparkled, and I couldn’t tell if she was genuinely amused or only making fun of me. “She went off and got mixed up with a bad crowd, that much is true. But they weren’t no mafia guys. The people she fell in with make the mob look like choirboys.”
“More of these people from this world you keep referring to?”
“Crazy motherfuckers who think their rituals can conjure the Devil himself, can blur the boundaries between this world and the one underneath. People who believe they can manipulate both worlds with rituals and hexes and spells and dark prayers.”
“This is what Bernard told you?”
“He didn’t know himself until his mother brought him into it. He was in his early teens by then.”
The same timeframe in which he had attacked Julie Henderson and begun his descent into madness, evil or whatever the hell it had been. “But his mother left all that and went to Potter’s Cove to have Bernard and raise him in a safe environment. She ran from these people, from this world, so how could—”
“She didn’t run, she moved back into the world like they all do.”
“Like all who do?”
“All of us who come up against them, who run with them.” Her eyes turned dead. “Demons, Plato. Fucking demons.”
In my denial, or inability to fathom what she’d said, I responded with a burst of nervous laughter. Julie Henderson had sworn they were all around us, and just like Julie, Claudia was either completely sincere, or completely out of her mind. Maybe both.
“It ain’t like some cult that dances around fires in silk robes and calls themselves Satanists so they can do drugs and fuck and listen to bad rock and roll,” she said. “I’m talking about the dark, man. The real dark and the real things that move in it, that live in it, you understand? This ain’t like some movie, it’s fucking real. They don’t use junkies like me, or street trash or even the innocent little girls who vanish from corner stores or parks or schoolyards or their own beds in the middle of the night—we’re just minor league players on the sidelines, around to be used and abused, demonic fucking toys. They scoop up the older ones like his mother, the small-town girls who go wandering into places like New York or L.A. looking for a better life. They show them the dark, show them the way then send them back to the world to give birth to the next wave.”
“The next wave of what?”
“Killers. Destroyers. The ones who devour.”
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. Bernard’s final words on the taped suicide note.
I suddenly felt confined in the tiny kitchen, like the walls were creeping closer. “This is ridiculous. For Christ’s sake, Bernard never even knew who his father was. His mother never told him.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“Probably because she had no idea who it was either.”
“Maybe it was because she knew exactly who it was.”
Anger swelled. “OK, so I’m supposed to believe there are demons walking among us like people and that they’re the ones responsible for all the evil in the world—not us, not human beings, but demons. They’re to blame. What’s next—garden gnomes? And let me guess, Bernard’s father was the Devil himself, right? Bernard’s Rosemary’s Baby now, is that it? Give me a fucking break. This is bullshit. I told you before; I’m not playing games. I need answers, goddamn it, not fucking fairy tales from the dark ages.”
“Oooo, big strong man making demands.” Claudia gave a mock shiver. “You’re the one who came to me, remember? You’re the one telling me about your dreams and visions and all that. You’re the one who wanted to know the truth, so listen real close, jack-off. I never said it was anything but people who are responsible for all the bad shit in this world. But people make choices—decisions—you understand? There are temptations, and once choices are made there are forces that influence people. Real forces. Some good, some bad, and they’re in constant battle with each other. They’re inside us, all around us, and you know it. We all know it because we all hear the voices in our heads, the whispers. We just learn to ignore them, to write them off, to label them with words like conscience. That’s the way of the worlds, Plato. This one, and the next.”
I ran my hands through my sweat-dampened hair. “Christ, I’m so confused.”
“That’s the shit Evil thrives on. Confusion. Deception. Uncertainty. Chaos. And the deeper you go the worse it gets, the more powerful it grows and the less sense it makes, because nothing ever makes sense in the dark.” Claudia stabbed another cigarette between her lips. “Welcome to the big leagues, asshole.”
“I knew Bernard’s mother,” I insisted. Skimpy bikinis and skimpier towels—slipping, shifting and falling—blended to suntanned skin slick with oil. “I knew Linda.” The bedroom at the top of the stairs—her room—the bed against the back wall, the mismatched nightstands on either side of the headboard, the clutter of overflowing ashtrays and empty liquor bottles. “She was eccentric but—” Garments stuffed into plastic clothesbaskets and strewn about the room as if thrown there or dropped there, an ironing board against one wall, a dressing table with mirror and closet against another. “—she was harmless, completely harmless.” Lipsticks and makeup, small bottles of polish and colognes and body sprays, tins of soap and powder rattling, clicking one against the other. “I knew her,” I said again.
“You knew Bernard too, what’s your point?” Claudia obviously sensed I was trying to recall the past without coming completely undone, but I couldn’t be sure if she meant to help or only make things worse. “She brought him into it the way you bring an innocent into it. Their little secret, got it? Things you don’t talk about, even with your best friends, because nobody would understand. It’s slow, a seduction. It’s not the truth she had to tell him, only lies and sacrilege masked in love and trust. She didn’t have to do anything else, no explanations or definitions of what he was or what he needed to do. She just positioned him, set him on the right course and let him go, knowing from the start that his path was already determined by destiny—or whatever label you want to give it—and that he’d find his own way. And that’s exactly what she did.” She threw a look my way that might have been pity. “I knew Linda’s kind too—dime a dozen. Sex, drugs and rock and roll, little devil stuff thrown in—why not, it’s trendy and harmless, right? I’ve seen the ceremonies, the gangbangs where they break in bitches like her. Father could be anybody—anything—but it don’t matter because what’s behind it, what’s holding their hands is pure fucking evil. Stupid cunts never have a chance; they’re in over their heads before they know it. When it’s over all that’s left is that same smiling Devil. By then Linda wasn’t no saint.” She plucked the still unlit cigarette from her mouth. “But then, I ain’t telling you anything you don’t already know.”