The Influence(95)

The smoke was getting so thick that it was getting hard to breathe. She opened the window a crack, but she was afraid to open the door, and she suffered for another few minutes before putting on her heat protective gloves, opening the oven door and taking the cookie sheet out of the oven. She ran across the kitchen, threw it into the sink and, on the off chance that one of the cookies was still moving, turned on the water and tried to soak it. A gush of steam whooshed up, and, seconds later, when she could see, Jill discovered to her relief that blackened crumbs were all that was left of the angels.

The storm outside had gotten crazy. Lightning and thunder were nearly constant, and powerful wind was forcing water into the kitchen through the small space of open window. This was flash flood weather, and she would have turned on the outside lights to see if any water was running through her property if she hadn’t been afraid that she might see something else.

Turning around, she faced her mixing bowl on the table, where half of the dough she’d made was still resting. Not knowing what to do with it, only knowing that she was not going to bake it, she considered putting it in a plastic bag and dumping it in the garbage. But, on the off chance that the dough could become animated even without baking, she took the bowl to the sink, filled it with water, diluted its contents and dumped the runny mixture down the drain, letting the faucet run for a couple of minutes afterward to make sure it was gone.

There was no way she’d be sleeping tonight, and she definitely wasn’t going to bake anything, so she went back out to the living room and once again picked up her sketchbook. Even out here it was hazy and smelled like burnt cookie, but she was not about to open any doors or windows, so she turned on her swamp cooler for the first time since September, hoping its stale summer air would help dissipate the smoke, and settled down to draw.

She couldn’t draw, though.

And she remained on the couch with the pad on her lap, pencil in hand, listening to the storm, waiting.



****



“Hector.”

Father Ramos jerked awake at the sound of the voice. Lightning flashed, and in that brief second, he saw a figure in the corner of his room, a thing of darkness and dirt, a travesty that was neither dead nor alive but somehow both. Thunder followed instantly, only the thunder sounded like a giant’s growl, and in its aftermath, the thing in the corner moved forward, closer to the bed.

Father Ramos threw off the covers and scrambled off the opposite side of the mattress. Like Ebenezer Scrooge, he feared this apparition more than any other, though he knew not why.

“Hector.”

Hugging the wall, he tried to calculate whether he could make it to the door before the hulking figure blocked it off, but it was nearly impossible to determine with the quickflash bursts of lightning in the otherwise total darkness. The thing was closer to the other side of the bed, though, and that put it slightly farther away from the door than he was.

Taking a chance, Father Ramos ran for the doorway, made it through, and shut the door behind him, hoping against hope that those dirt hands would not have the manual dexterity to turn the knob.

Keeping a wary eye out for other surprises, he hurried toward the safety of the chapel, turning lights on along the way. Would the chapel be safe? he wondered. He had been accosted there before.

“Hector.”

The voice was in his head, not in the air.

Entering the chapel, he saw immediately that it was empty. He should be safe here. After all, he was doing God’s will.

But he wasn’t doing God’s will.

Father Ramos shut his eyes tightly, trying to will away the headache that was squeezing his brain.

He locked the door behind him and started down the aisle toward the front entrance in order to make sure it was locked. Halfway there, he slowed. Then stopped. On the wooden floor was his shadow…only it was not his shadow. Stretching out in front of him was the elongated silhouette of what looked like a hunchbacked ape with the neck of a giraffe. The sight would have been comical if it had not seemed so wrong, and Father Ramos took one step to the left, one to the right, trying to see if it was the angle of the light that was distorting his shadow.

It was not.

Someone—

something

—was knocking on the double doors in front of him, the sound not particularly loud, but obvious in its regularity against the randomness of the storm, and he hurried over to make sure they were bolted. His twisted shadow rose from the floor to the door at his approach, confronting him, but he ignored it, checking the doors, grateful to confirm that they were indeed locked.

The knocking continued unabated.

“Hector. Let me in.”

Jumpy, he turned around, certain that he would see that mud man behind him, but the chapel remained empty save for himself, and he walked slowly back up the aisle toward the altar, glancing from left to right, alert for any sign of movement, ready for anything. But nothing appeared, and though the knocking continued, and the voice—