Fury From Hell (17 page)

With a strangled groan of helpless frustration, she decided to call him.  Despite her misgivings, she trusted Feinster.  If her friend felt Chad was good for her, then Jennifer would try to see what Feinster saw.

Jennifer wondered if Feinster knew about her childhood or figured it out.  But Feinster was so good at interrogations and listening to what was said, and more importantly, for what was
not
said.

Jennifer let it all go.  She would soon see Feinster and be able to gauge for herself what her friend did and did not know.  Knowing she couldn’t put it off any longer she took out her cell and dialed his number.

“Hey Lady.  Long time no hear.”

“You’ve got a short memory.  It hasn’t been that long.”

“It’s been long enough,” he said with a smile in his voice.  “How’s everything?”

She didn’t know how to answer him without lying. “It’s going...”

“How evasive is that?  I’ll leave that alone and just ask one more thing before you let me go.  Do you like fortune telling?”

“Huh??”

“Well, since you’re an atheist.  I wondered if you might get a kick out of a cool little deck of cards my sister gave me.  She’s into that kind of thing and — well, I just wondered.  Do you?”

“Uh…I dunno.  I never had my fortune told and…uhm…”

“Okay then we
so
have to do this!  Okay, where are they?”

She heard him pulling open drawers and moving heavy objects around.

“Uhh…Chad?  This is not exactly the best time…”

“Oh!  Here they are! Okay, I’ve got to shuffle them — ”

“Chad?  Why would an atheist do fortune telling?  Just because I don’t believe in God?  I…uh…don’t quite follow.”

“Well, I — I thought that maybe you’d like a peek at the unknowable.  You — unlike a lot of people, you don’t pray, or wish for things.  You just — live, right?  Wouldn’t it be — a change of pace to get information from another source for a change?”  He paused and waited for her reply.

Blinking several times before responding Jennifer cleared her throat as she thought about the recent events in her life.

“Chad…what if I don’t like the information?”

“Come on!  Don’t be silly.  It’s just for fun.  Ready to try it?”

“Over the phone?”

“Why not?  This way, when I give them to you you’ll be a pro at how to use them!”

“Use them?”

“What are you?  A parrot?  What?  Afraid to try something outside of your normal routine?”

“You have no idea of how wrong you are right now.”

“Okay, so maybe you’ve gone out on a limb recently.  Think of this as calming down and being conservatively out of the box.  Okay, tell me when by say 1 — 2 — 3.  Okay?”

“Why?”

“Pulling three cards.  My sister says this is the express reading.  The normal reading is like all of the cards.  There are 36 of them.  How the heck you get a reading from thirty-six cards beats me but my sister swears by this 3-card reading.  So, ready?  Give it to me.”

“I don’t know, Chad.  Maybe this is not such a good idea.  By the way, is this your normal — interaction with a girl you’ve just met?”

“It’s not every day I meet a self-proclaimed atheist.  If you don’t believe in God, or Hell, or angels, or that there’s anything after we die.  What’s the big deal about this reading?  For you, this should simply entertainment.  Right?”

Something deep inside of Jennifer twisted.

Fury Abatu was stock-still as a deep unseen force surged past it traveling up to the host’s brain.  Abatu felt a tremor within its core and gulped.

Jennifer felt a curious tingle in her fingertips and toes as if she rubbed her feet on the carpet and then touched herself.

“Shuffle — 1.  Okay, just a minute — 2.  Now just go ahead and pull the third one.”

“Okay, got all three.  Let me look in this little book.  You had me pull numbers 16, 36 and 19 in that order.  So, the first one, number 16, is the Stars card.  Basically, this is a good fortune card.  See?  What were you worrying about?  Uhm, it says ‘good fortune and favorable outlook in all endeavors’ and when this card is surrounded by bad cards that this suggests a sequence of harmful events and unfortunate coincidences…”

“Hmm…so what are the other cards?  They’re good cards right?”

“Well the next one has a cross on it — that can’t be bad, can it?  Let me see.  That’s number 36.”

Jennifer heard the flipping of pages, a sharp intake of breath then silence.

“Chad?  What’s it say?”

No answer.

“Okay Chad.  You’re scaring me.  What does it say?  Tell me.”

“You know I think my sister’s into drugs, or something.  She told me this was fun.”

Very nervous now, Jennifer put some bass in her voice. “Spill it, cowboy.  What does number 36 say?”

“’This card is always a bad omen regardless of its location.  However, if this card is very close to the Key card then it indicates misfortune of short duration or of a temporary nature.’”

“Where’s the key card?”

“We didn’t use it because we’re doing an express reading.”

“I see.  Would that mean that the…misfortune would be of a — longer duration and possibly more permanent in nature?”

“Ah…I don’t know.”

Neither one of them spoke for a few moments.  Jennifer didn’t want to know but knew she had to find out.

“You have to finish and tell me what number 19 says.” Sighing, she heard more pages flipping.

“It’s the High Tower.  It says, ‘This card suggests the Questioner will live to a ripe old age.  However, if this card is surrounded by cards of bad omen, it suggests sickness may occur, or under certain circumstances, eventually complete disability or death.’  That’s it.”

They were both very quiet.  The only sound was the rattling of the train on its tracks.

“That was not entertaining, Chad.”

“Jennifer — I’m so sorry!  It’s just a pack of cards!  They don’t mean anything.  I’m throwing them out.”

She heard a light pelting against metal and a decisive
thump
.

“Okay, they’re in the trash which goes out tomorrow.”

“What’s the name of those cards?”

“Why do you care they’re — ”

“Name of those deck of cards, please.”

“Mademoiselle Lenormand of Paris.”

The train was pulling into the Jamaica junction stop. “Listen, Chad.  I’ve got to go.”

“I guess the date is off on Friday night…”

Some of her tension eased away and she smiled.

“So, I’m a crazy atheist now?  I’m supposed to kick you to the curb because I didn’t like the way the cards fell?”

He heard the smile and breathed a sigh of relief. “Maybe you are crazy.  I know if it were me, I’d be running for the hills.”

Jennifer laughed fully for the first time all day.  “A typical male response…if you don’t understand it — get rid of it.”

Chad chuckled, “Touché.  You’re being kind but I know this whole thing is probably creeping you out.  I’ll sign off now so you don’t have time to change your mind.  And I promise — I will
never
ask you to do another reading of any kind ever again.  Deal?”

Jennifer took a breath and let it out before answering. “S’fine, I’ve been asked to do a whole lot worse.”

“Really?  Should I be concerned, frightened, or properly chastised?”

“I’ll let you figure it out over time.”

She clicked off before he could say anything else to make her insides shimmy even more.  It was time to rest now.  Her brain was foggy from sleep deprivation and she needed to have some coherent thoughts so she could try and explain what her weekend had been like to Feinster.  She tucked her phone in her bag and closed her eyes.  She demanded her brain to shut down and not dream.  With that resolve firmly in mind, Jennifer crossed her arms over her chest, twisted her legs up onto the empty seats next to her and forced sleep to visit her.

Water flowed languidly over broken body parts taking what little blood there was away from the cavernous stomach cavity of the blonde-haired man.  He was lying on a blackened and burned bed.  The water was coming from the sprinkler system overhead but it was the walls that caught her attention.

The charred walls had hundreds of human eyes embedded within them.  All of the eyes were a stunning cerulean.  The eyes blinked out of sync with one another making the miscreation seem as if it would tear itself from the wall and lunge at the undead corpse.  With just a nudge, Jennifer knew her sanity would snap.  The unspeakable image before her made her cleave to the invisible nook she found herself in

Jennifer was everywhere, and nowhere, yet somehow she was unable to look away as the man’s empty eye sockets tried to find the presence he knew was somewhere in the room.  The delicate hole in his left temple had skin that bagged around it due to all of the moisture in the room

“Why?  Why did you kill me?  I just wanted to have a little fun.  It didn’t need to end this way.  Tell me why!

The empty eye sockets sought out every corner of the room finding nothing.  The corpse sat up and reached upwards to the center of the ceiling.  Jennifer felt the cold rage emanating from the man who was beginning to seem familiar.  She pressed herself back as far as she could against whatever barrier was at her back but the scabrous fingers still found her.  They began scratching, scraping and ripping through her shirt.  Jennifer felt her skin tearing and blood spurting.  She screamed…

She bolted upright gasping for air and pawed at her stomach shocked it was intact.  Everyone in the railroad car had either sat or stood up to see what had happened.  They were staring at her over and around their seats.  The conductor, panting, ran towards them from the other end of the car.

“Are you all right?  What happened?  Do you need medical care?”

Her heart thudded. Jennifer looked at all of the stricken faces around her.  She managed to shake her head and spoke to him in a hoarse whisper. “I’m …okay.  Just — a bad dream.  Sorry.”

The conductor didn’t look convinced and said, “What’s your stop?  Maybe we can get someone to meet you there.”

“Bellerose.  My friend is meeting me there.”

“I’ll make sure to help you off, Miss.  You have a few more stops.  I’ll come and let you know when to get off, okay?”

Jennifer nodded grateful that everyone else went back to their own private worlds and conversations leaving her to deal with the aftermath of the nightmare.  Trembling and still feeling the scrape of the dead man’s fingers upon her flesh Jennifer stared out the window now quite sure she had killed the blond-haired man.

***

“Bellerose!”

Jennifer jerked out of her stupor and looked around.  The train was slowing and coming into the station.  She saw Feinster leaning against her black Acura ILX Hybrid.  When the train stopped and the doors opened, Jennifer rushed out towards her friend while teetering on the edge of hysteria.

Sensing something wrong, Betty pushed off her car and walked towards Jennifer.

Jennifer slowed down as she got closer but the tears had already started.

Spotting wet streaks Betty closed the distance between them and hugged the younger woman rubbing her back and shoulders as the train pulled out of the station.

***

Pulling into her driveway, Feinster cut the engine and turned to look at Jennifer.

“What happened?  And don’t lie to me.  I’ve never seen you like this.  Ever.”

Refusing to look at her, Jennifer stared out the window across Feinster’s front lawn and beyond to her neighbor’s front lawn. 

“Betty, how well do you know me?”

“Pretty well I think.  We’ve been through a few things.  Why?”

“What if I tell you I think I killed someone?”

“I’d laugh and ask you how much you’ve had to drink.  You didn’t kill anybody.  That’s a fact.”

Curling up into a ball in the passenger seat, she spoke in a muffled voice. “But I did.  I dreamt about him twice so far.”

Getting more and more unnerved Betty reached out and touched Jennifer’s arm.

“What do you mean?  Who is it that you’re seeing?  Could this be some sort of repressed memory?”

Jennifer slow blinked and looked over at Betty.  “You know about that?”

“You alluded to a number of things about your childhood over the years — nothing specific — but I figured to stop the abuse you got…violent.  Maybe that stuff is coming back with the Barnes case being so close to what you probably experienced.  You know?”

Jennifer turned that over in her mind.

Fury Abatu peeked out, spied the other lady cop and quickly added its powers of persuasion to Betty’s assertion.  The demon was desperate for Jennifer to go with the new thought.  Misdirection at this stage of its possession would be in Abatu’s favor.  It was still
too
soon.

Jennifer felt a surge of hope.  Some life entered her eyes and she finally looked into Betty’s eyes as she sat up.  “You think that could be it?”

“Of course I do.  It’s perfectly plausible.”

Jennifer thought about it some more.  She thought back to that time which she wanted to forget but knew she had to revisit to move forward.  Jennifer searched her mind for an image of her uncle and after several tense moments, she remembered.  He was not blond.  He was a brunette with a slim build — except for the paunch.  Her uncle was totally unlike the blond muscular man in her dreams.

A long-buried memory flashed through her mind.  It was of her younger self running out the back door of her childhood home barefoot.  She felt her heart thudding; heard the loud
whump-whump
of the blood pounding through her arteries giving her the power needed to flee the terrifying man chasing her.

With effort, Jennifer pulled herself back from that time.  She shut down that particular memory’s door.  However, there was a hitch.  The hinges of the door wouldn’t fully close.  It remained open a crack allowing slivers of the memory to leech through.

Jennifer forced her conscious mind back to the present but refused to meet Betty’s eyes.  Continuing her analysis, she realized the energy of the two men was not the same at all.  Her uncle was a country bumpkin with a high school education and a trade school certificate in auto mechanics.  The blond man in her dreams had a refinement that only money and a foreign education could produce.  Jennifer sighed.