Free House Haunted by Al Sarrantonio Page A

lightly traced the words of the message etched deep into the countertop:

    SOON
    LOVE, M&P

7. EAST
    Â 
    Today, Jan didn't faint when the door opened onto the room of pain. The woman with hair on her chin helped to strap him to the table, tenderly, almost, and put the needle into him, searching for an unused vain, trying to spare him some of the hurt. There was no unused place on his arm, and she ended up utilizing a raw, swollen spot anyway. “There, there,” she said, her dark eyes below her dark hair looking truly sad. She patted his arm below the vein bulge, which only added to the sharp, tearing agony spreading through his body and mind.
    â€œTell me about the day they took you,” she whispered. She was a mother soothing a troubled, sleepless child. He began to hear his own screams then and went to the place the drugs took him, where he told them everything they asked of him . . .

    The day they took him was like any other day. The sky over the Vistula was fat with billowy gray clouds, “thick puffs from God's pipe,” as Tadeusz had once said of such clouds. He stood on the bank of the river with Tadeusz and with Karol, leaning on the thin rope bridge, the three of them sharing one cigarette. Jozef did not smoke, and did not approve of it, so they took the opportunity to smoke while they waited for him. It was late September, cool but muggy. Tadeusz had his cap pushed back on his head, which always forecast the weather, because Tadeusz would pull it down tight over his ears in cold or wet weather. He did not like the cold and complained bitterly when it rained, calling it a punishment from God for some great sinner in the city. “In Warsaw,” he once told Jan, as they sat hunched over the smallest table by the smallest window in their tavern, so close together their pints of beer were pressed into their coats. The noise in the cafe was nearly unbearable. They looked out at the rain pelting the tiny window, at the thick wash it sent across the four panes intermittently, because it was either look at that or into each other's close faces, or into the coats of the standing patrons surrounding them—damp wool that would suffocate their conversation. “In Warsaw, when a great man, some member of the Party, commits a great sin, there is rejoicing in heaven. They laugh loud and long, because another Communist has proved himself weak and human, not equal in purity and character with God himself. You know,” Tadeusz continued, poking Jan's nose lightly with his thick finger, an annoying habit, “that this is the great fault of Communism. In seeking to abolish God, it merely replaces him with man. That is why it's doomed to failure. And God knows this. So, when a party official commits a great sin, one of greed or lust, God and his angels laugh until they can no longer contain themselves, and God allows his angels to relieve themselves on the city of Warsaw. It is a just and mighty retribution—as well as a great relief for the angels. Unfortunately,” he said shivering at the rain outside, “it's a pain in the ass for those of us who live in Warsaw.”
    â€œWhat about God?” Jan asked him, gently warding off Tadeusz's finger, heading toward his nose to make another point. “Doesn't God ever piss?”
    â€œOf course he does,” Tadeusz answered, offended. “But he is God, and his bladder is vast. It's as large as the Milky Way Galaxy. And if you're going to ask me if he'll ever use it, the answer is yes. He's saving it, though, for a very special occasion.” Tadeusz leaned close, pushing Jan's head around so that only his ear would hear his next words. Jan smelled the sourness of Tadeusz's breath, the odor of sausage and beer and stale tobacco before he felt the rough stubble of Tadeusz's mustache at his ear. “God is waiting until the biggest man of all, the Big Man himself, the one in Moscow, commits the biggest of all sins.” He