Darkest Hour Read online

  “I am mad at you,” I said, turning around to look at him. The sight of that sparkling sea had dazzled my eyes, though, so I couldn’t see him very well.

  “What do you mean?” Jack stopped jumping. “What do you mean you’re mad at me?”

  Look, I wasn’t going to screw around with the kid, okay? I just wish everyone had been as straight with me when I was his age. It is possible I wouldn’t be so quick with my fists if I didn’t have this pent-up inner rage from having been lied to so much as an eight-year-old. Yes, Suze, of course there’s really a Santa Claus, but No, there’s no such thing as ghosts. And then the clincher, No, this shot I’m about to give you isn’t going to hurt a bit.

  “That ghost you exorcised?” I said, facing him with my hands on my hips. “He was my friend. My best friend.”

  I wasn’t going to say boyfriend, or anything, because that wasn’t true. But the hurt I was feeling must have shown in my voice, since Jack’s lower lip started to jut out a little.

  “What do you mean?” he wanted to know. “What do you mean, he was your friend? That’s not what that lady said. The lady said—”

  “That lady is a liar. That lady,” I said, coming swiftly toward the bed and lifting up my bangs, “did this to me last night. See? Or at least, her husband did. All she tried to do was stab me with a knife.”

  Jack, standing on the bed, was taller than I was. He looked down at the bruise on my forehead with something like horror.

  “Oh, Suze,” he breathed. “Oh, Suze.”

  “You screwed up,” I said to him, dropping my hand. “You didn’t mean to. I understand that Maria tricked you. But you still screwed up, Jack.”

  Now his lower lip was trembling. So was his whole chin, actually. And his eyes had filled up with tears.

  “I’m sorry, Suze,” he said. His voice had gone about three pitches higher than usual. “Suze, I’m so sorry!”

  He was trying really hard not to cry. He wasn’t succeeding, though. Tears were spilling out of his eyes and rolling down his chubby cheeks…the only part of him that was chubby, except maybe for his Albert Einstein hair.

  And even though I didn’t want to, I found myself wrapping my arms around him and patting him on the back as he sobbed into my neck, telling him everything was going to be all right.

  Just like, I realized, with something akin to horror, Father Dominic had done to me!

  And just like him, I was completely lying. Because everything was not going to be all right. Not for me, at least. Not ever again. Unless I did something about it, and fast.

  “Look,” I said, after a few minutes of letting Jack wail. “Stop crying. We have work to do.”

  Jack lifted his head from my shoulder—which he had, by the way, gotten all wet with snot and tears and stuff, since my dress was sleeveless.

  “What…what do you mean?” His eyes were red and squinty from crying. I was lucky nobody walked in right then. I definitely would have been convicted of child abuse or something.

  “I’m going to try to get Jesse back,” I explained, swinging Jack down from the bed. “And you’re going to help me.”

  Jack went, “Who’s Jesse?”

  I explained. At least, I tried to. I told him that Jesse was the guy he had exorcised, and that he had been my friend, and that exorcising people was wrong, unless they’d done something very very bad, such as tried to kill you, which was, Jack explained, what Maria had told him Jesse’d tried to do to me.

  So then I told Jack that ghosts are just like people; some of them are okay, but some of them are liars. If he had ever met Jesse, I assured him, he’d have known right away he was no killer.

  Maria de Silva, on the other hand…

  “But she seemed so nice,” Jack said. “I mean, she’s so pretty and everything.”

  Men. I’m serious. Even at the age of eight. It’s pathetic.

  “Jack,” I said to him. “Have you ever heard the expression ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover?’”

  Jack wrinkled his nose. “I don’t like to read much.”

  “Well,” I said. We had gone out into the living room, and now I picked up my purse and opened it. “You’re going to have to do some reading if we’re going to get Jesse back. I’m going to need you to read this.”

  And I passed him an index card on which I’d scrawled some words. Jack squinted down at it.

  “What is this?” he demanded. “This isn’t English.”

  “No,” I said. I started taking other things out of my purse. “It’s Portuguese.”

  “What’s that?” Jack asked.

  “It’s a language,” I explained, “that they speak in Portugal. Also in Brazil, and a few other places.”

  “Oh,” Jack said, then pointed at a small Tupperware container I’d taken from my purse. “What’s that?”

  “Oh,” I said. “Chicken blood.”

  Jack made a face. “Eew!”

  “Look,” I said. “If we’re going to do this exorcism, we’re going to do it right. And to do it right, you need chicken blood.”

  Jack said, “I didn’t use chicken blood when Maria was here.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Well, Maria does things her way, and I do things my way. Now let’s go into the bathroom to do this. I have to paint stuff on the floor with the chicken blood, and I highly doubt the housekeeping staff will appreciate it if we do it here on the carpet.”

  Jack followed me into the bathroom that joined his room to his brother’s. In the part of my brain that wasn’t concentrating on what I was doing, I kind of wondered where Paul was. It was strange he hadn’t called after that whole thing where he’d dropped me off at my house and there’d been all those cop cars and stuff in front of it. I mean, you’d have thought he’d wonder, at least, what that had been all about.

  But I hadn’t heard a peep out of him.

  Not that I cared. I had way more important things to worry about. But it was still kind of odd.

  “There,” I said, when we had everything set up. It took an hour, but when we were done, we had a fairly decent example of how an exorcism—the Brazilian voodoo variety, anyway—is supposed to look. At least according to a book I’d read on the subject once.

  With the chicken blood I’d procured from the meat counter of one of the gourmet shops downtown, I’d made these special symbols in the middle of the bathroom floor, and around them I’d stuck assorted candles (the votive kind, the only ones I could get at short notice, between the offices of the Carmel Pine Cone and the hotel; they were cinnamon scented, too, so the bathroom smelled sort of like Christmas…well, except for the not-so-festive fragrance of chicken blood).

  In spite of the amateurishness with which it had been thrown together, it was, in fact, a working portal to the afterlife—or at least it would be, once Jack did his part with the notecard. I’d gone over the pronunciation of each word, and he seemed to have it down pretty well. The only thing he couldn’t seem to get around was the fact that the person we were exorcising was, well, me.

  “But you’re alive,” he kept saying. “If I exorcise your spirit from you, won’t you be dead?”

  Actually, this was a thought that had not really occurred to me. What would happen to my body after my spirit had left it? Would I be dead?

  No, that was impossible. My heart and lungs wouldn’t stop working just because my soul was gone. Probably I’d just lie there, like someone in a coma.

  This was not, however, very comforting to Jack.

  “But what if you don’t come back?” he wanted to know.

  “I’m going to come back,” I said. “I told you. The only reason I can come back is that I do have a living body to return to. I just want to have a look around out there and see if Jesse’s okay. If he is, fine. If not…well, I’ll try to bring him back with me.”

  “But you just said the only reason you can come back is because you have a living body to return to. Jesse doesn’t. So how can he come back?”

  This was, of course, a good que
stion. That was probably why it put me in such a bad mood.

  “Look,” I said finally. “Nobody has ever tried this before, so far as I know. Maybe you don’t have to have a body to come back. I don’t know, okay? But I can’t not try just because I don’t know the answer. Where would we be if Christopher Columbus hadn’t tried? Huh?”

  Jack looked thoughtful. “Living in Spain right now?”

  “Very funny,” I said. It was at this point that I took the last thing from my bag and tied one end around my waist. I tied the other end to Jack’s wrist.

  “What’s the rope for?” he asked, looking down at it.

  “So I can find my way back to you,” I said.

  Jack looked confused. “But if just your spirit’s going, what’s the point of tying a rope around your body? You said your body wasn’t going anywhere.”

  “Jack,” I said from between gritted teeth. “Just reel me back in if I’m gone more than half an hour, all right?” I figured half an hour was about as long as anybody’s soul could be separated from their body. On TV I was always seeing stuff about little kids who’d slipped into icy water and drowned and been technically dead for up to forty minutes, yet recovered without any brain damage or anything. So I figured half an hour was cutting it as close as I could.

  “But how—”

  “Oh my God,” I snapped at him. “Just do it, okay?”

  Jack glowered at me. Hey, just because we’re both mediators doesn’t mean we get along all the time.

  “Okay,” he said. Under his breath, I heard him mutter, “You don’t have to be such a witch about it.”

  Only he didn’t say “witch.” Really, it is shocking, the words kids are using these days.

  “All right,” I said. I stepped into the center of the circle of candles and stood in the middle of all the chicken blood symbols. “Here goes nothing.”

  Jack looked down at his notecard. Then he looked back up at me.

  “Shouldn’t you lie down?” he asked. “I mean, if it’s gonna be like you’re in a coma, I don’t want you to fall down and hurt yourself.”

  He was right. I didn’t want my hair to catch on fire or anything.

  On the other hand, I didn’t want to get chicken blood on my dress. I mean, it was an expensive one. Ninety-five dollars at Urban Outfitters.

  Then I thought, Suze, what is wrong with you? It’s just a dress. You’re doing this for Jesse. Isn’t he worth more than ninety-five dollars?

  So I started to lie down.

  But I had only managed to get down on one knee when there was a terrific thumping on the door to the suite.

  I’ll admit it. I panicked. I figured it was the fire department or somebody responding to to a report of smoke from someone whose bathroom vent adjoined Jack’s.

  “Quick,” I hissed at him. “Blow out all the candles!”

  While Jack hurried to do as I said, I stumbled to the door.

  “Who is it?” I called sweetly when I got there.

  “Susannah,” an all-too-familiar voice said. “Open the door this instant.”

  chapter

  fourteen

  If you ask me, Father D. way overreacted.

  I mean, first of all, I had the situation completely under control.

  And second, it wasn’t as if we’d sacrificed any small animals, or whatever. I mean, the chicken had already been dead.

  So all that stomping around and calling us names was really unnecessary.

  Not that he called Jack any names. No, most of the names were hurled at me. Apparently, if I am intent on destroying myself, that is one thing. But to force a small boy to aid in my self-destruction? That is just despicable.

  And my pointing out that the small boy was the one who’d created the need for me to behave self-destructively? Yeah, that didn’t go over too well.

  But what the whole thing did do was illustrate to Father Dominic just how serious I was about my plan. I guess it finally got through to him that I was going to do my best to find Jesse, with or without his help.

  So he decided that, under those circumstances, he had better help, if only to improve my chances of not hurting myself, or anybody else.

  “It will not,” he said, looking all tight-lipped about it as he unlocked the doors to the basilica, “be any fly-by-night operation either. None of this Brazilian voodoo business. We are going to perform a decent Christian exorcism, or none at all.”

  Really, if you think about it, I probably have the most bizarre conversations of anyone on the planet. Seriously. I mean, a decent Christian exorcism?

  But it isn’t just the conversations I have that are bizarre. I mean, the circumstances under which I have them are pretty bizarre, too. For instance, I was having this one in a dark empty church. Dark because it was after midnight, and empty for the same reason.

  “And you are going to have adult supervision,” Father Dominic went on as he ushered me inside. “How you could have expected that boy to successfully perform so complicated a procedure, I simply cannot imagine…. ”

  He had been ranting in that particular vein all afternoon. All the way up until Jack’s parents—not to mention Paul—had gotten back to the suite, as a matter of fact. Father D. hadn’t, of course, been able to whisk me off right away the way he’d wanted to, because of Jack. Instead, Jack and I had been forced to clean up the mess we’d made—it is no joke sponging chicken blood out from between bathroom tiles, let me tell you—and then we’d had to sit and wait for Dr. and Mrs. Slater to return from their tennis lesson. Jack’s parents had looked a little surprised to find the three of us sitting there on the couch. I mean, think about it: a babysitter, a boy, and a priest? Talk about feeling as if you were whacked up on Scooby Snacks.

  But what was I supposed to do? Father D. wouldn’t leave without me. He didn’t trust me not to try exorcising myself.

  So the three of us sat there while Father D. lectured us on the fine art of mediation. He talked for two hours. I’m not kidding. Two hours. I can tell you, Jack was probably regretting ever having told me about the whole I-see-dead-people thing by the end of it. He was probably all, Uh, yeah, about the dead people? Joking, guys. I was joking….

  But I don’t know, maybe it was good the little guy got the dos and don’ts. God knew I hadn’t been too lucid with my own Intro to Mediation. I mean, if I’d been a little clearer on the finer points, maybe this whole thing with Jesse would never have—

  But whatever. You can only beat yourself up so much. I was fully aware the entire mess was my own fault. That’s why I was so intent on fixing it.

  Oh, and the part about my being in love with the guy? Yeah, that had a little something to do with it, too.

  Anyway, that’s what we were doing when Jack’s parents walked in: listening to Father D. drone on about responsibility and courtesy when dealing with the undead.

  Father Dominic dried up when Dr. and Mrs. Slater, followed by Paul, came into the suite. They, in turn, stopped chatting about their dinner plans and just stood there, staring.

  Paul was the one who came out of it first.

  “Suze,” he said, smiling. “What a surprise. I thought you weren’t feeling well.”

  “I recovered,” I said, standing up. “Dr. and Mrs. Slater, Paul, this is, um, the principal of my school, Father Dominic. He was nice enough to give me a ride over so that I could, um, visit Jack….”

  “How do you do?” Father Dominic got quickly to his feet. Like I said, Father D.’s no slouch in the looks department. He cut a pretty impressive figure, all snowy-topped six feet of him. He didn’t look like the kind of guy you’d feel funny about finding in your hotel suite with your eight-yearold and his babysitter, which is saying quite a lot, you know.

  When Dr. and Mrs. S heard that Father D. was affiliated with the Junipero Serra Mission, they got all chummy and started saying how they’d been on the tour, and how impressive it was and all. I guess they didn’t want him to think they were the kind of people who came to a town with a his
torically significant slice of Americana attached to it, and then spent the whole time they were there playing golf and downing mimosas.

  While his parents and Father D. schmoozed, Paul sidled up to me and whispered, “What are you doing tonight?”

  I thought about telling him the truth: “Oh, nothing. Just having my soul exorcised so I can roam around purgatory, looking for the ghost of the dead cowboy who used to live in my bedroom.”

  But that, you know, might have sounded flippant, or like one of those made-up excuses girls use. You know, the old “I’m washing my hair” put-down. So I just said, “I’ve got plans.”

  Paul went, “Too bad. I was hoping we could take a drive up to Big Sur and watch the sunset, then maybe grab something to eat.”

  “Sorry,” I said with a smile. “Sounds great, but like I said, I’ve got plans.”

  Most guys would have dropped it after that, but Paul, for some reason, did not. He even reached out and casually draped an arm around my shoulders…if you can do something like that casually. Somehow, though, he pulled it off. Maybe because he’s from Seattle.

  “Suze,” he said, dipping his voice low, so that no one else in the room could overhear him—especially his little brother, who was clearly straining his neck in an effort to do so. “It’s Friday night. We’re leaving day after tomorrow. You and I might never see each other again. Come on. Throw a guy a bone, will you?”

  I don’t have guys pursuing me all that often—at least, not hotties like Paul. I mean, most of the guys who’ve liked me since I moved to California…well, there’ve been some serious relationship issues, such as the fact that they ended up serving long prison terms for murder.

  So this was pretty new for me. I was impressed in spite of myself.

  Still, I’m not a dope. Even if I hadn’t been in love with somebody else, Paul Slater was from out of town. It’s easy for guys who are leaving in a couple of days to give a girl the rush. I mean, come on: They don’t have to commit.

  “Gosh,” I said. “That is just so sweet. But you know what? I really do have other plans.” I stepped out from beneath his arm and totally interrupted Dr. Slater’s in-depth description of that day’s golf score—bogey, bogey, par, par. “Can you give me a lift home, Father D.?”