Quicksilver(95)

“Sister Theresa has indulged me by bringing you here,” I said. “She knows my torment. She saved my life back in the day, when the world seemed grossly misshapen to me and I wanted no place in it.”

I watched her, and she waited without comment, as if a mutual silence in this situation was not peculiar.

“You know about that, Sister Margaret?”

“It was a time of great distress for all of us.” She put her hands together as if remembering the concept of prayer.

I stopped pacing and sat on the edge of a desk. “Now those dark waters have pulled me under again. I’m lost, and I come to you.”

Her mouth hardly moved as she spoke, the words issuing from her as if from a ventriloquist projecting her voice into a stage dummy. “I have no . . . no capacity.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

“I’m a simple person. Everyone knows that about me. I have many limitations. I have no capacity for anything but faith. Sister is the therapist, the better listener, with a kinder heart than mine.”

I saw Sister Theresa’s brow furrow as the younger nun spread the humility too thick.

After another silence that the interrogee did not interrupt, I said, “I’m sure you remember Annie Piper.”

“Of course.”

We shared another wordless moment. If she was only who and what she seemed to be, only human, then she was an odd duck.

She realized that she needed to offer more. “A tragedy. Annie is often on my mind.”

“Yes, I imagine she is.” What I told her next was true, as far as it went. “She’s been found.”

Sister Margaret glanced up and quickly returned her attention to her hands in their pale press of supplication.

“Sister, don’t you wonder where she was found?”

She nodded. “I want to know, but I’m afraid to hear.”

“Why would you be afraid?”

“After all these years . . .”

“Yes?”

“How could the news be good?”

“Now is when you need that capacity for faith. Annie has been kept at a remote location in Pima County, a place called the Oasis.”

She met my eyes again.

“Keiko Ishiguro has also been kept there. To be used. To be raped and otherwise abused.”

Sister Margaret covered her face with her hands.

When it seemed that she might remain in that posture for as long as allowed, I said, “We don’t have hands so that we can hide from the ugliness of the world, Sister.”

As she lowered the fingered veil, the look she gave me was fashioned poorly, too extreme in its representation of a shy and simple person. She was as blank faced and empty eyed as a simpleton, and she definitely was not that.

“Sister. Legis naturalis propugnator. What does it mean?”

Her pose of vacancy dissolved, her slack features grew taut, but she feigned bewilderment.

“Aluf shel halakha. What does it mean?” I asked.

She knew but would not say, as if the words were an incantation with which she would destroy herself.

I stepped in front of her and held out one hand.

She stared at it until she understood that I would not relent. Once again assuming the role of the demure and compliant servant of Truth, she did as I required and took my hand.

From his retreat under the desk, Winston was watching Sister Margaret. Now I viewed her—and she viewed herself—through the dog’s eyes. Shocked, she tightened her grip on me, and she was so unsettled by this development that her power of masquerade faltered. Winston saw, I saw, Sister saw two of her fingers morph into slender tentacles, and I felt one curl around my wrist—supple, slick, cold.

I recoiled, broke contact, involuntarily declaring, “Nihilim!”

That one word caused Sparky to take a step toward us, and it triggered a more spectacular—and unexpected—response from the thing that was pretending to be Sister Margaret. It ceased its impersonation. The penitent face of the religieuse collapsed into the greedy hookworm maw, as though it ate its own false countenance. Something pale and spiny whisked around and around deep within its toothless mouth, perhaps a sharp, rendering tongue. With a hiss, the creature shot up from the chair. The six members of each transformed hand seized the other office chair, hurled it. Sparky dodged, and we reached for our holstered pistols. The beast quickened into action, knocking Sparky aside. The old warrior’s head caught the corner of the desk as he fell in thick spatters of blood. Stranger than all the devils of all our dreams seeking whom they may devour, the Nihilim tore open the door and disappeared into the foyer.

The creature must have taken intense pleasure in its deceit, living among the sisters as one of them, singling out some of their favorite children for death and suffering. I wondered who else—in addition to Annie, Keiko, Litton—might have been victims of the thing called Margaret. And who would be next?

Half of the sisters roomed on the ground floor, but all of the orphans and the rest of the nuns resided on the second level. The beast was strong, its talons sharp, its purpose bloody destruction. Free in the building, it would kill every child it came across, to declare that no heart was sacred and that violent death was the only reward for innocence.

I found myself in the foyer looking toward the open staircase that curved through shadows up to the second floor. The creature seemed to be making for them, but then pivoted to the right, into the main ground-floor hallway, and disappeared.