Free Waking Hours by Lis Wiehl Page B

‘Lucifer, whose wings freeze the world.’ At least according to Dante. But what’s he written lately?”
    “So Abbie Gardener was ranting about Satan?”
    “I would say yes,” Carl said. “Which would be consistent with her lifelong fixation on all things ghoulish and dark. I’ve done a lot of work with old people. Most find peace and have no problem getting old, but for some . . . the demons come out. It may have something to do with atrophy of the frontal lobes that govern impulse control and morality. Sometimes old people lose their self-control and start whacking each other with their canes. It sounds silly, but it’s not funny when you see it.”
    “Saw it firsthand,” Tommy said, pulling down the turtleneck to show Carl the scratches on his throat. “She jumped me. Out of the blue. Unbelievably strong.”
    Carl leaned in to have a look.
    “One more question,” Tommy said. “She asked me if I believe in something I’d never heard of—I couldn’t even find it in the dictionary. Ecstaspizium?”
    “Extispicium,” Carl corrected him. “E-x-t-i-s-p-i-c-i-u-m.”
    “You know what it means?”
    “It refers to the practice of sacrificing an animal so that you can predict the future by interpreting the entrails,” Carl said. “A form of soothsaying practiced by the Roman haruspices.”
    “Haruspices?”
    “Fortune-tellers,” Carl said. “Or maybe prophets.”
    “That explains what she was doing with the frog,” Tommy said. “ ‘These are the first to go, you’ll be the last,’ she said.”
    “Last to what?”
    “Dissolve,” Tommy said. “And let me tell you about the doctor who looked at my throat.”
    He told Carl the whole story as best he could. When he was done speaking, Carl leaned back in his chair, thinking.
    “What do you make of it?” Tommy said. “Figment of my imagination?”
    “Maybe,” Carl said. “Or maybe you were visited by someone.”
    “By whom?”
    “By an angel,” Carl said. “Just a guess, but I’m biased in that direction.”
    “An angel dressed as a biker?” Tommy said. “As in Hell’s Angels?”
    “If you think about it,” Carl said, “if you’re an angel trying to be incognito, you could hardly pick a better disguise. Did he say anything?”
    “Anything angelic?” Tommy said. “He told me to put something on the scratches.”
    “So he was helpful. Are you going to tell Dani?” Carl asked.
    “She’d say I’m losing my mind,” Tommy said. “Which may very well be the case. My aunt used to know Abbie pretty well. I was thinking I might try to talk to her at High Ridge Manor.”
    “Good luck,” Carl said. “Let me know if you want me to go with you. As a bodyguard.”
    “Thanks,” Tommy said.
    “And, Tommy?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Just . . .” Carl paused. “Be careful. We can make jokes about a crazy old lady in the woods, but . . .”
    “But what?”
    “Satan is nothing to joke about. Allow for the possibility that evil is real.”
    “I know it’s real,” Tommy said. “I’ll be careful.”

SATURDAY,
OCTOBER 16
     

10 .
     
    “It’s so amazing,” said the woman standing next to Dani on the platform for the Metro North to Grand Central, fifty miles away. “I can’t believe there are all these woods and lakes so close to New York City.”
    Dani placed her accent as Midwestern. “They’re not all lakes,” she told her. “Most of them are reservoirs. This is where New York City gets its drinking water. They built the dams and aqueducts in the 1800s.”
    “What a good idea!” the woman exclaimed. “I’m from Minnesota. We have ten thousand lakes. Have you ever been there?”
    “No,” Dani said.
    “You probably wouldn’t like it,” the woman said, a comment that left Dani perplexed, but the woman moved down the platform before Dani could ask her to elaborate. Perhaps she’d mistaken Dani for a city girl, even though East Salem was a place where, for as long as anyone could remember, New York City captains of