RoseBlood(42)

A bundle of nappy, grayish fur shoots out from the tangle of my boots and skirt, and into the splay of LED light.

“Diable?” I ask tentatively, almost breathless. The cat jingles as he backs up and snarls. His ears—disproportionately large, like a bat’s—spread low on his head.

I lean forward, elbows pressed to my knees, and laugh, relieved to find the cat’s as real as me, and not a ghost at all.

Diable responds with a deep, throaty yowl, his yellow-green eyes locked on me. He’s obviously not as impressed to be sharing the space. His tail twitches. It’s a strange, hooked shape—as if it was broken at one time and never healed right—so thin it resembles a coat hanger wrapped in fraying felt.

“Wow. You really do look like an SOS pad,” I tease and hold out my hand for a peace offering.

He sniffs a breath across me, and sneezes on my palm, as if to assure me he might look like a soured dish sponge, but I smell like one.

I grin. He’s probably right. I’ve been overwarm ever since stressing in the cemetery, and being in here makes it worse. The air is too close—claustrophobic. Moving the book light to the bodice of my dress, I peel out of my soggy sweater and drape it across the roses in the tub to distance myself from what happened at the grave—at least for the moment. Next, I tug off my headband and use it to bind my wet hair into a ponytail, leaving only a few ringlets plastered to my temples and the nape of my neck.

Diable loses interest and trots out of my beam’s radius.

I kneel and move the book light’s neck to search for what the cat was playing with at my feet when he tripped me. A clear plastic wristband, like people wear in a hospital, scrapes beneath the toe of my boot. I shift, and something else rolls beneath my heel: a flexible, transparent plastic cord, about six inches long. Droplets of red liquid cling to the inside. It reminds me of IV tubing, fresh off a patient. My stomach turns.

These items are so intimate . . . reminders of Ben and Dad. It’s too timely, after having thought of them both today. Maybe I’m losing my mind to guilt.

I prod the tubing with a fingertip, proving to myself it’s real, and another theory takes shape. Maybe whoever pulled the prank on me used this chapel for preparations. This could be from the roses that were bleeding—part of the mechanism within their stems. Determined to make my case, I retrieve both items and drop them into the tub alongside everything else.

I’m itching to leave and hole up in my dorm room where I can piece together the events in the garden and cemetery, but the lightning continues to torch the surroundings in intervals. I have to wait out the storm.

Diable’s confident jingling in the shadows gives me comfort. He’s not the least bit unsettled, so there can’t be anything dangerous here. Resituating the light on my bodice, I move the neck around to scope out any more clues.

There aren’t any hiding places. No benches . . . no prayer altar and no pulpit. Nothing one would expect to find in a traditional house of worship—just a spacious, empty room with an air of gloom and loneliness drifting with the dust particles from the cathedral roof. Along the left half—the back of the chapel—the floor has caved in over time, sloping downward. A thick ground cover coats it like carpet.

Following Diable’s jingles, I inch closer to the right side—the front—where nature’s progression has been slower. Weeds have pushed their way up from cracks in the foundation, just like the vines across the walls, but in sporadic intervals. I take small steps as my slick boots skate atop a gritty film of dirt on the stony surface.

The cat’s silhouette leaps up to perch on what was once a baptismal. I join him at the oval basin. The brick edge hits me mid-thigh. A pool of murky water glitters inside—some nine feet in diameter—reminding me of a well. It seems unusually wide and deep. The scar on my knee throbs, and I’m reliving the dreaded memory . . . kicking my way out of a wooden crate that held me underwater.

I shake off the uneasiness; let it run down my spine like droplets of melting ice.

There’s nothing to fear here. It’s a baptismal. People stood in it. The water can’t be very deep. It’s an illusion created by the darkness. The beam attached to my dress shimmers along the glassy surface. Its bright reflection moves in ripples as something stirs inside.

Diable notices the ripples, too. He seems intrigued. His long, pointed ears tilt forward and he balances on the basin’s lip, tapping the water with a paw and emitting a long, low mewl that starts deep in his throat and ends with a sharp-toothed snarl.

The water bulges as though something is surfacing. My skin goes cold and clammy.

It’s got to be a fish . . . or a frog.

I back up a step, because I’m lying to myself. Whatever is causing the water to churn is too big to be either. I read once that rats are good swimmers. With their aquatic ability and flexible bodies, they can make their way up from city sewers into toilets. I ease back another two steps, my pride the only anchor keeping me from bounding away in fear.

“Hey kitty . . .” I gulp. “Did you trap a rat in there?” Diable’s eyes stay pinned on the eddying currents, leaving my words to hang in midair, taunting my raging imagination.

I’m not a skittish girl. Last summer, I was the one who took the biology class pet home. No one else volunteered to take care of our Mexican red-knee tarantula for three months. But Sister Scarlett and I got along famously. Especially at feeding time. For some reason, I was intrigued by the way she trapped her prey against the wall of the terrarium, by the way she danced around the hopping cricket until it was so entranced with terror and fascination, it froze in place and practically begged for her to eat it.