Miscreated Read online

  Giselle needed César. India needed Alexis. Much more than Jimi needed either of them. Jimi was fine on his own.

  He maneuvered around the Belrose clan, the littlest of whom were trying to build a fort out of folding chairs. He avoided the de la Vegas and skirted around Father Dylan and Nora as they crossed to another corner of the room to bless it with holy water and drive away any uninvited elements with Nora’s silver bell. Jimi eventually made his way to the front of the room where the fountain was, a heavy stone thing that looked like a cross between a baptismal font and a birdbath. A glyph had been seared into the bowl of the fountain. None of the clergy he knew used glyphs; only Mortmaine did that. Jimi had no idea what the symbol meant, either—the Mortmaine were even more secretive than the Catholic Church.

  Jimi placed several remembrances he’d collected from Dez into the fountain: notes she’d passed him in class, blood that had spilled onto his shirt after she’d lost her ear in a cackler attack, several figurines Jimi had crafted. After Dez died, Jimi had occupied himself by making tiny winged reproductions of her the way she’d looked when he’d last seen her—in her Blue Fairy costume. He’d made hundreds of them and used to hang them on his ceiling so the light would filter through the wings and turn everything fairy blue. Most he’d thrown out last week, but the best of the figurines were at the bottom of the fountain waiting to be doused.

  Laurie, Dez’s little sister, drifted over and stood on the toes of her patent leather Mary Janes to reach into the fountain. She pulled out a figurine. “Can I have this?”

  “Ask your mom.”

  “She already did,” Mrs. de la Vega said, taking the figurine out of her daughter’s hand. “The answer is still no. Like I told your dad, we’re here to let all of this go.”

  “I wouldn’t play with it,” Laurie said. “I just want to look at it.”

  “Don’t sass me in church. It isn’t respectful. Oh my God, Jimi, are those real?”

  Jimi tossed the eyeballs into the fountain. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Where’d they come from?”

  “Some guy’s face.”

  “Jimi, you kids aren’t supposed to blind people anymore.”

  “You grownups aren’t supposed to spy on us anymore.”

  Mrs. de la Vega seemed torn on how to chastise him for violence without sounding pro voyeurism, so she changed the subject. “Did you get a little brother or sister?”

  Jimi shook his head. “It’s for the best. I suck at nurturing.”

  “You do not,” Mrs. de la Vega said. “You were sweet with Dez. Wasn’t he?” she asked her husband as he joined them.

  “Sweet as rhubarb.” He hustled his family away from Jimi as though worried they’d catch something deadly.

  As the de la Vegas joined the Belroses who’d filled nearly all the folding chairs, Father Dylan and Nora came forward. They carried the smell of the thurible from Mass on their vestments still, a smell of smoke and charcoal and spice. Father Dylan stood before the fountain, and Jimi and Nora were on his right and left, respectively.

  Father Dylan led them all in prayer. When the last amen faded, he poured holy water from a silver ewer into the fountain, filling the large bowl and soaking the items therein. He turned to Nora and exchanged the ewer for an aspergillum.

  “Heavenly Father we ask your blessing on Jimi. We pray that you watch over him and protect him from any spirits, benign or malevolent. We trust in your power, Oh Lord, and in your desire to keep your faithful children from harm. It is with this trust we humbly ask that Jimi Elba, your faithful son, be delivered on this day from Desiree de la Vega. We pray that you call her home that she may find peace at long last. We ask your blessing upon him now in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

  Jimi closed his eyes as the aspergillum spat its holy water on him. He waited for a sign, of lightness, of release, but he felt the same as he had all summer.

  Strange.

  His head felt full of her; he could imagine her in his brain, feet propped on his cerebral cortex, laughing at him, at all of them. But at least she wasn’t hurting his—

  Jimi’s eyes flew open as a sharp slice of pain burned down his shoulders.

  Everyone was watching, but Father Dylan and Grandy looked especially troubled.

  “What’s the problem?” Grandy called from her chair. “Why isn’t he drowning?”

  “What?” Jimi wasn’t the only one shocked.

  Grandy huffed. “Haven’t you people ever been to a deliverance?”

  “It’s ceremonial,” Father Dylan said, in a failed attempt to soothe away the horror on Jimi’s face. “I thought you understood. The pouring of the holy water over Dez’s belongings, the dousing, serves as an outward representation of what’s happening to her inside your body.”

  Jimi thought he had understood, imagining something like a house blessing: a few prayers, a little holy water, and abracadabra, it’s done. He hadn’t expected any corpses to be involved, least of all his own.

  “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You’re flooding her out?”

  “Basically. Because it’s happening in you, it happens to you.”

  “We’re both going to drown?”

  “Just a bit.”

  “The way my step-mom’s a bit pregnant?”

  “The drowning is how we know the connection has been severed.”

  “Metaphorical death, Jimi,” said Mr. de la Vega from the front row. “You love metaphors.”

  “It’s brief, Jimi, really, and then you simply vomit out the holy water and her spirit along with it, leaving the items in the fountain dry and sapped of their power.”

  “But I don’t want to die. Metaphorically or literally.” He couldn’t believe no one else was disturbed. Fascinated perhaps, entertained certainly, but Jimi was the only one in fear of his life. “I have to give a huge speech tomorrow in front of the whole school; who’s going to inspire the Portero High student body if I’m dead?”

  Father Dylan wasn’t fascinated or entertained; he was worried. “Jimi, the drowning isn’t even an issue at this point. It should have happened by now. Something’s wrong.”

  He stepped aside with Nora and whispered something to her, and after she ran out of the parish hall, Father Dylan addressed the audience, “If you’ll give us a few moments, I’d like to speak with Jimi in private.”

  While the crowd murmured, Father Dylan whispered, “Do you feel her still?”

  “Yes. She doesn’t want to be delivered. I don’t really have to die, do I?”

  “Why not?” When Jimi gaped, Father Dylan elaborated, “Why doesn’t she want to be delivered?”

  “Because my back hurts. She hurts me when she’s mad. She never used to. She never used to hurt other people either.” He told Father Dylan what happened during the rite of summer. “She ripped his eyes out of his face and gave them to me. Like a cat leaving a dead rat at its owner’s feet.”

  Jimi thought about describing how everyone had disappeared only not really, but he could barely describe it to himself. It probably had nothing to do with Dez. He’d seen all those other places, after all—that desert and that mountain. Doors opened up in Portero all the time. Cross a street upsquare and end up miles away in Luna Swamp. Or cross a street and simply disappear. Forever. It was just like that. The sun rose in the east, in space no one could hear you scream, and Portero was full of doors to other worlds.

  Father Dylan looked unsettled enough, even without full disclosure. “Come with me,” he said.

  They left the others in the parish room and crossed the church proper. When they went past the administrative offices, Jimi’s nervousness increased. He’d never been in this part of St. Teresa’s before.

  “Where’re we going?”

  “The Carmona Sanctuary.”

  Nora passed them in the short hall.

  “Is it safe?” asked Father Dylan.

  “You can go in,” she called over her shoulder. “They’re just cleaning up
the blood.”

  So of course when they reached the door at the end of the hall, Father Dylan waved Jimi in first.

  It wasn’t much of a sanctuary. The gray vaulted ceilings and emaciated gothic windows looked cold and penal. Old-fashioned student desks were strewn haphazardly across the stone floor as though someone had been playing jacks with them. An American flag stood on a pole near a green chalkboard, and the teacher’s desk, a huge oaken thing, had been cracked in two. A thick layer of dust hung over all; whatever calamity had occurred in the room was in the distant past. Except for the blood spray.

  That was recent.

  When Jimi felt wetness against his cheek, he looked up. Blood dripped from the ceiling onto his nose.

  In the midst of the carnage were two nuns with mops.

  Father Dylan greeted them, “Sister Judith, Sister Maggie, I hope I’m not bothering you.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Sister Judith was an older woman with eyes the same smoky blue of her habit; those habits were the reason Porterenes called them Blue Sisters. “We were about finished anyway.”

  “Why’s it raining blood in here?” Jimi asked, seeking out a dry bit of ceiling to stand beneath.

  “One of our parishioners exploded about an hour ago,” Sister Maggie said, her smile a sharp contrast to the blood staining her habit. Sister Maggie would probably smile at her own funeral. “He literally flew to pieces. Can you imagine?”

  Jimi looked at all the blood. “Vividly. Why’d he explode?”

  “Imp.” Sister Judith tsked. “Such an easy fix if it’s caught early, but people will wait until the last minute.”

  “You did an exorcism?” Jimi asked.

  “The Fathers do that,” said Sister Maggie, patting Father Dylan’s arm in passing. “But imps aren’t demonic. The one that burst free certainly wasn’t. Just sad and cold.”

  “Where is it?” Father Dylan asked, searching the shadowy corners.

  Sister Judith said, “The deacons took it down to the furnace already—imps don’t last long without a host. They also scooped up as much of this poor soul as they could.” She gestured with the bloody mop. “Wasn’t much, but enough for a proper burial at least.”

  “Is that Jimi’s problem, Father?” Sister Maggie asked. “Has he an imp?”

  “I’m not sure.” As Father Dylan moved closer to the sisters, he slipped in the blood their mops hadn’t yet reached and then tried to play it off. “I was hoping you could tell me. This is supposed to be a simple haunting, but it’s not adding up.” Father Dylan repeated what Jimi had told him in the parish hall.

  “Jimi,” said Sister Judith, “will you remove your jacket and shirt, please? I’d like to see what Dez has done to your back.”

  Jimi did as he was told, handing the clothes to Sister Maggie and then turning his back and crossing his arms against the room’s unpleasant chill.

  “It’s slightly red,” said Father Dylan. “A rash? Do you itch, Jimi?”

  “No, sir.” He hissed in pain when one of them touched his back.

  “Is it sore all the time?” Sister Judith asked.

  “Here lately, yeah, but Dad says it’s growing pains.”

  “It may be in part.” Sister Judith spun him around. “You have grown taller over the summer. A huge growth spurt in a short amount of time can be painful.”

  Sister Maggie gave his clothes back, and he was glad. The air in the sanctuary was clammy, and Jimi had begun to feel as though he’d been licked. But not in a good way.

  Sister Maggie said, “Has Desiree ever spoken to you? Become visible?”

  “I saw her in a dream last night.”

  “How did she look?”

  “Like she always did, except she was wearing her Blue Fairy costume. We were in a tree. It was hot. I don’t remember what we talked about, but when I woke up, I felt bad.”

  “Bad how?” asked Father Dylan. “Did your back hurt?”

  “Not just that. I can feel her sometimes, this pressure. Like she’s moving through my head. Like she knows what I’m thinking. So I try to think about happy things, but I’m always failing. Happiness is for other people.”

  “Oh, the suffering,” Sister Maggie said, and used the clean part of her billowy sleeve to scrub away the blood that had fallen into his hair. “Do you feel any pressure now?”

  “No.”

  A black leather bag, like a doctor’s bag, sat atop one of the dusty student desks. Father Dylan was grabbing little steel instruments from the bag and handing them to Sister Judith.

  “What’s all that for?”

  Sister Judith moved in on him. “We’re ruling out different possibilities. It’s standard procedure, Jimi. Have you been in the dark park recently?”

  “No, ma’am.” But his tone said, “What am I, stupid?”

  They sat him down in one of the filthy chairs, perfectly willing to befoul his best Sunday suit. Sister Maggie checked his ears and eyes and mouth while Sister Judith explained that sometimes creatures, imps for example, took root inside humans like parasites. “In such cases,” she continued, “the transfer is made through physical contact. When is the last time you had sexual intercourse?”

  “Nothing since Dez,” Jimi admitted easily, used to confessing things in St. Teresa Cathedral.

  “That’s good.”

  “Is it?” he asked a bit forcefully.

  Sister Judith patted his knee. “Well, it narrows things down quite a bit.”

  “Have you kissed anyone recently?” asked Sister Maggie. “With your mouth open?”

  “Yeah,” Jimi said. “During the rite of summer. But only because I was in desperate need of comfort.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Sister Judith. “Are you on drugs? Do you take medications?”

  “Busy bees during the school year to stay awake and focused during exam time. Beer sometimes. Weed at the rite, but it wasn’t exactly kryptonite.”

  “Have you been ill recently?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have a medical condition? Something hereditary?”

  “My heart is weird. It races sometimes. So fast you can see my chest thrumming. It’s been like that since I was a baby.”

  Sister Maggie put the stethoscope back in the bag. “It sounded fine to me.”

  “Only sometimes that happens,” Jimi clarified. “I haven’t died yet, so the doctors can’t be bothered figuring out reasons.”

  Sister Judith asked, “Do you have a history of mental illness?”

  “No...”

  “You seem unsure.”

  “Well, Dad thought a kid going through a divorce should talk to a shrink, so I did. But that was a long time ago.”

  “Father,” she said, “I think you should perform the rite. Just in case.”

  “Really?” Father Dylan’s voice actually cracked.

  “We can always run to the rectory for help if things get dicey. I doubt it will come to that, though. Go on.”

  Father Dylan, with the sisters’ help, had to make a fresh batch of holy water, which involved praying over it and salting it and checking it for demons, all so he could make Jimi drink some and then pray to St. Michael. Jimi barely remembered all the words, but no one held it against him.

  Then they made Jimi lie on the cold floor, still damp from the mop—RIP Sunday suit—and Father Dylan stood at his head and the Blue Sisters at his feet. They spent several minutes praying over him, and not all of it was in English; their voices mingled and whorled like creepy music. Father Dylan sprinkled so much holy water on Jimi that he hoped part of the ritual involved wringing him dry.

  After all that, nothing happened. That is, nothing burst from Jimi’s chest, which is what he’d half been expecting. Father Dylan too, judging from the relief on his face as he helped Jimi off the floor.

  Father Dylan said, “Well that’s it, then. I’ll take him back to his family and let them know the good news.”

  “Father?”

  Nora the altar girl stood in the doorway. “Bis
hop Romero says they’re waiting for you.”

  Sister Judith said, “Go on. I’ll take care of him, Father.”

  Moments later, Jimi was on the move with Sister Judith.

  “What did Father Dylan mean by ‘good news’? Did y’all figure out how to deliver Dez without drowning me? I hope?”

  “Better than that.” Sister Judith led the way into the parish hall.

  Everyone was still seated, except a handful of kids tunneling between the chair legs.

  “Is everything okay?” Grandy asked, as Sister Judith and Jimi came to a stop at the fountain in the front of the room.

  “More than okay,” said Sister Judith.

  “Desiree’s gone?” said Mr. de la Vega.

  “She was never here.”

  “I knew it,” said Mr. de la Vega over the clamor. “Why would my baby girl haunt some boy and ignore her own family? Haven’t I said it all along?”

  “What do you mean she’s not here?” Jimi’s tone silenced everyone.

  “There’s no ghost,” Sister Judith explained gently. “Or parasite. Or demon. Or insanity. Dez isn’t haunting you. From what you’ve told us, I don’t think she ever was.”

  “You’re wrong. She’s here right now. I feel her.”

  “Jimi, ghosts don’t behave the way you described. I saw one once. It looked like a floating cloud, blobby and misshapen. Certainly not like a human. Or a fairy. Or a bird.”

  “Then what’s happening to me?”

  “Perhaps your father was right,” said Sister Judith. “Perhaps it is growing pains.” She reached to touch his shoulder, but Jimi slid away from her.

  Such a strange, inexplicable sensation. Skidding across ice was as close as he could get to describing it. His skin felt raw, his palms, his chin, his knees, like he’d tripped, but he was on his feet in the parish hall. The wrong parish hall.

  The light slanting though the walls was harsh and white and ruinous. It burned his eyes and stripped the color from everything. His own skin hadn’t survived the whitewashing—his hands looked like bleached bone. The only color that had survived was in the fountain in front of him. His Dez figurines had been replaced with blood of such an intense red it was screaming. The blood moved in the fountain, spinning itself into a whirlpool, hypnotizing him.