The two of them scuttled out of the sheriff’s office a few moments later, hoping not to catch the eye of anyone who might ask difficult questions like,Which one of you was doing all of that horrible demonic screaming in the sheriff’s office just now?Sherry grasped Father Barry’s elbow as soon as they were out the door and shepherded him a few yards down the street before it occurred to her that she didn’t know where she was leading him and released him again.
“I’m going to call the bishop,” Father Barry said. He looked a little pale and sweaty. “I’munderqualified for this.”
“You’d think that they’d at least teach you thebasics,” Sherry said, feeling aggrieved with the Catholic Church all over again. As if there weren’t enough wrong with them, they had to bogart all the anti-demon trainings. At the moment she’d give almost anything for a nice, modern, Unitarian Universalist exorcist. The Unitarian exorcist would probably be a Montessori school administrator with a master’s degree in social work with a focus in cross-cultural sensitivity in evil-spirit extraction. “You don’t have to be a doctor of demonology, but they could at least have given you the hour-long CPR certification course version, just in case there’s an emergency.”
“Demonology is actually—” Father Barry started, and then stopped, possibly quailing under the force of the look that Sherry was giving him. “I’ll call the bishop,” he said again. He was rubbing his hands on his thighs. “Do you think that he was really Lucifer? It sounded like he was just making that up.”
“It did sound a little…improvised,” Sherry said. “I’m not sure if we’re better or worse off than if I’d told it I was a druid or something. It definitely got more…aggressive after it asked aboutThe Exorcist. But maybe if I’d said that, we’d end up with some sort of prehistoric Iron Age god in Sheriff Brown’s body, and the bishop wouldn’t know what to do with it.”
Now Father Barry was givinghera reproachful look. “God is still God,” he said. “And the devil is still the devil, no matter what you call him.”
“If you say so,” Sherry said distractedly. “Do you think I should buy some crystals?”
“Crystals?” Father Barry asked. “What kind?”
“You know,” she said. “The kinds they have in the New Age store. For the…auras and things. To protect us against the demons.”
“Sherry,” he said. “I’m apriest.”
“Oh, right,” she said. “You can’t recommend anything that comes from the competitors.”
“I’m not avacuum cleaner salesman,” Father Barry said. “I havefaith, Sherry.” He paused. “Do they have ones for demons, specifically?”
“I’ll ask at the shop,” she said. “Would you like to come? We’ll probably both want some supplies. Or can you not be seen inside?”
“There’s lots of reasons to be in a New Age store,” FatherBarry answered after a pause. “They usually sell really reasonably priced candles.”
“I wouldn’t have thought of you as a candle man,” Sherry said, briefly distracted from the thrust of their conversation.
He blushed. “I like to host dinner parties,” he said defensively.
“Oh, really?” she asked. “Do you cook?”
“Yes,” he said. “Last month I made—” He stopped. “I don’t think it’s the time to talk about that, do you?”
“You might as well tell me about it,” she said as she started walking in the direction of Sun and Moon Boutique. “I could use the distraction.” Her head was starting to ache. “And if I keep thinking about Sheriff Brown I might scream.”
“All right,” Father Barry said eventually, and launched into a description of an impressively elaborate-sounding Tuscan-themed meal he’d recently prepared for five guests. Sherry was intrigued enough by this new twist in Father Barry’s persona—she’d envisioned him as solidly a hot dog and meat loaf kind of guy—that it really was a good distraction from what had just happened in the sheriff’s office. Really, it was hard to continue feeling anything about what had happened at all: it had been so horrible and so wholly bizarre that it already felt like a nightmare that she’d long since woken up from.
The woman who owned the Sun and Moon Boutique seemed as if she’d been waiting all day for a woman with a priest to walk into her shop and ask, “What do you have for evil spirits?” because when Sherry did exactly that, she sprang into action immediately without taking even a moment or two to gloat. Sherry left laden with crystals and herbs and special candles and bags full of salt that Sherry was assured wasblessedsalt and not just the regular non-iodized natural hippiesalt that you could buy for somewhat alarming prices at the grocery co-op in Albany. Then they parted ways, with Father Barry promising once again that he’d call his bishop to ask for help, and Sherry heading straight to the library. She needed to do some research.
The Winesap Library wasn’t particularly rich in books about the occult. Sherry grabbed what they had and then ducked behind the circulation desk to check herself out while Connie was in the restroom. She tried to be as fast as she could, but Connie caught her, anyway. “Sherry, I just heard about what happened to poor Alan, I’m so—” Her eyes caught on the cover of one of the books Sherry was checking out then, and she stopped. The title, in eye-catching bright red, read:When the Dead Speak.
Sherry felt her face go warm. “Thank you,” she said, and then shoved all the books into her gigantic purse and briskly trotted off. She was already well clear of the library when it occurred to Sherry that now she’d have to go back to her own demon-haunted house and spend the next however many hours completely alone.
She occupied herself for about half an hour with placing crystals in their designated spots around her house and pouring the special salt across the windows and doorways, which she immediately regretted. The salt might or might not repel demons, but either way it would get tracked all over her house and she’d have to spend an hour trying to vacuum it out of the rugs. Then she made herself a sandwich and started reading about hauntings and possessions. She’d never been extremely interested in horror stories—they gave her bad dreams—and their sudden relevance to her personal life didn’t make them into more enjoyable reading. By six o’clock it was getting darkin her living room, and she was rattled enough to shut all the books, turn on all the lights, switch on the usually neglected television for company, and pour herself a generous serving from her dusty old bottle of brandy.
At some point she must have fallen asleep, because she woke up to the sound of a man’s voice very close to her ear. “Woman!” the voice said. “This isn’t the time for you to sleep! It’s only just gone past six, woman, and I have yet to sup!”
Sherry kept her eyes closed. Whoever was speaking to her was a demon, presumably, and she didn’t want to look at it. It was probably hideous and would give her nightmares if she survived this encounter, and opening her eyes wasn’t very likely to improve her chances of making it out alive. She’d never been a fast sprinter or learned to do kung fu, and from her experience of reading Stephen King novels, she doubted that either of those skills would do much against an evil spirit, anyway. If she was going to die, she would die without having to look at some horrible monster’s disgusting drippy face first.
“Woman!” said the voice again. It was coming fromveryclose to her face. It was a deep voice, with aMasterpiece Theatresort of English accent. Not a particularly frightening voice, really. Sort of…jolly. “Get up! Time is passing by apace!”
Sherry cracked one eye open. There was no demon. All she could see, a few inches from her nose, was the familiar furry little visage of her fat orange cat. He was sitting on the arm of the sofa where the fabric was already pretty well shredded.
“Lord Thomas Cromwell?” Sherry said, astonished. Then the penny dropped. “Oh, no.”
“If you hadn’t wanted me here,” Lord Thomas Cromwell said, “then you oughtn’t have given the beast my name.”
