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  He helped me drag Mrs. Hanson into the room, and by then I had arrived at the only decision I could come to. I helped him wash the blood from his hands, his body, his wings. This time he consented to a full bath, and it seemed to calm both of us.

  I packed several suitcases. I selected a sweat-shirt and some sweat-pants I thought would fit him until I could buy him some clothing of his own.

  From the generous tool box my father had lovingly equipped for me I raised a hacksaw. I showed it to the seraph. I moved it in the air to demonstrate its function. He sat on a chair and bowed his head in understanding, submitting to a cruelty worse even than those inflicted upon him by his captors. But we had no choice. In order to be free, both of us, I had to cut away the very symbols of his freedom…

  And while I sliced them away, awash in my angel’s blood, I shook hard with sobs just as he did, tears blurring my vision like the tears of blood on his beautiful face…agonized, as if it were my own wings I was severing.

  Mrs. Weekes

  Mrs. Ferrin rested a hand like a ginseng root atop the smooth young hand of Kelly Bonham, who was new at Eastborough Nursing Home. Kelly leaned over the elderly woman indulgently, though she knew she suffered Alzheimer’s Disease quite severely. “Yes, Mrs. Ferrin?”

  “She was here again, last night,” the emaciated creature whispered urgently in a creaky voice, as if autumn leaves rustled in her scarecrow’s throat. “I saw her come into the room…crawling on all fours. She stopped and looked over at me and, and hissed, then she went on again…she looked like a crab, scuttling…and she went over there, to poor Mrs. Carter’s bed.”

  Kelly glanced over at Mrs. Ferrin’s room-mate, Mrs. Carter. She had deteriorated badly in just the one week since Kelly had started on the third shift at this hospital. For the first couple of days, Mrs. Carter had actually been quite charming, talkative and lucid, had shown Kelly pictures of her grandchildren. Now, her eyes and mouth gaped emptily at the ceiling, and Kelly might easily have taken her for dead. It was very upsetting, and something she doubted she would ever grow used to no matter how many years she stayed in this work.

  Mrs. Ferrin went on, “Then she climbed up beside the bed, and put her mouth over Mrs. Carter’s mouth, as if she was…kissing her. Poor Mrs. Carter. I saw her legs move a little and I heard her moan, but she never woke up. And then that horrible woman crawled on all fours, out of the room again. Thank God she didn’t look at me again. Her eyes. Her terrible eyes…”

  “And who was this awful woman you thought you saw, Mrs. Ferrin?” Kelly asked soothingly, as if calming a child who’d had a bad dream.

  “It was Mrs. Weekes…that awful Mrs. Weekes…”

  Mrs. Weekes? Mrs. Weekes indeed. Mrs. Weekes was a vegetable, catatonic; Kelly had been wiping the drool from her chin since she’d begun here. Yes, her blankly staring eyes were unsettling—the whites were so alarmingly bloodshot that they appeared entirely red—but she was as harmless as a flower vase, and no more capable of movement. Kelly straightened up. “Mrs. Weekes won’t harm you or Mrs. Carter, Mrs Ferrin, don’t you worry.”

  “Watch her!” the old woman whispered. “Watch her!”

  * * *

  It was morning at last and Kelly would soon be leaving. Thank God. Third shift was a hard one to acclimate to. She craved coffee and breakfast in the cafeteria; she didn’t think she could wait long enough to eat at home. Her charges were beginning to awaken, and the first shift to trickle in. She finished up her final round…and out of some odd curiosity, poked her head into Mrs. Weekes’ room. She had peeked in on her twice during the night, but of course both times the elderly woman had lain there unmoving, a dark shape in the gloom. She was currently alone in her room; another nurse had told Kelly that Mrs. Weekes’ room-mate had passed away the week before Kelly started.

  Kelly expected to again see a prone, silent husk, if this time at least lit by the gilded sunlight slanting through the curtains. Instead, what she saw plucked her heart half from her chest. Mrs. Weekes sat upright in bed, her back propped against two pillows, and she was staring at the door as if she had been expecting Kelly or at least someone to enter just then. Her red eyes were dark against pallid wrinkled flesh. The old woman’s mouth spread into a toothless grin.

  “Hello, my dear,” she cooed softly in a British accent. “Would I be able to get a cup of tea?”

  “Tea?” Kelly hesitated, strangely, before stepping into the room. “Mrs. Weekes…I thought…this is…this is the first time I’ve heard you speak.”

  “Yes, well…I haven’t been well, I’m afraid, but I feel much better today. Might I also have two pieces of toast with marmalade? I’m dreadfully hungry, my dear!”

  “Oh, yes…sure…of course.” And Kelly darted from the room to see to her patient’s needs, her thoughts all aswirl.

  * * *

  Kelly knew better than to grow attached to her patients, but how could a human being not? She’d grow tougher with time, she was assured, but she was not certain she ever wanted to grow so tough that the death of someone like Mrs. Ferrin would not affect her.

  She’d only been at Eastborough Nursing Home three weeks, and already she had seen them take out Mrs. Carter and now poor Mrs. Ferrin. Kelly was so upset when she heard the news that she even cried in front of her boss, but she didn’t really care what the others thought of her. She found too many of them to be callous.

  If it was any consolation, however, some patients apparently improved at the same time others declined. Mrs. Weekes, for instance, seemed to be strengthening every day. She was amicable and charming in the way that Kelly remembered Mrs. Carter as having been in the beginning. But despite this charm, Kelly found herself avoiding the woman more and more, looking in on her only when absolutely necessary. And at night, not at all…because a few nights ago she could have sworn Mrs. Weekes lay awake in the dark, her red eyes open and gazing at Kelly under the cover of murk.

  But she couldn’t shirk her duties altogether, could she? So this morning she went to look in on the old woman’s needs.

  But the bed lay starkly empty, for the first time since Kelly had started here. Had Mrs. Weekes, too, passed away, then? With a guilty twinge, Kelly realized she was relieved at the possibility. She turned out of the room and began walking briskly down the hall to search out her supervisor so as to inquire into just what had transpired. She was in such a hurry, in fact, that she bumped elbows with a woman who was walking down the hallway in the opposite direction. It was a nurse with her winter coat on, no doubt a third shifter like herself on her way home, but Kelly couldn’t tell who it was because of the dark glasses the pretty young woman wore.

  “I’m so sorry,” Kelly apologized for their partial collision.

  “That’s quite all right, my dear,” the young woman said in a pleasant British accent, and then she walked smartly down the hall and turned a corner. Kelly stood there watching her until the young woman was out of sight. For several minutes she couldn’t move, as if she herself had suddenly become catatonic.

  Psychometric Idol

  It wasn’t until a plastic replica was cast, perfect right down to the clasped plate in the ponderous skull—and a computer-generated imaging system that would reconstruct his flesh from every angle was installed—that the Museum of the London Hospital Medical College surrendered and sold the skeletal remains of John Merrick to the pop star Ricky Concertina.

  Ricky was photographed at the opening of the new displays he had funded at the museum—was shown studying Merrick’s meticulous replica of St. Philip’s Church with an expression of reverence. But he was also photographed later with the gnarled, listing skeleton he had purchased, his arm slung around those jagged shoulders and a grin glittering from below his immense dark glasses.

  Ricky’s museum, to which the skeleton was to be consigned, was not open to the public.

  * * *

  Jimmy Tassone hated high-top sneakers, but not only were they the brand Ricky sponsored and always wore, they didn’t
scuff or scratch the marble floors of Ricky’s house or the heavy glass sheets of the conference room floor. Jimmy glanced down at the lions, black leopards and white tigers in their respective pens under the three glass floor sections as he squeaked across them on his way to the table. A leopard lifted its glossy night-black face to him and snarled silently. Jimmy expected one of these glass sections to slide back one day when he was summoned, and he wouldn’t realize it until he had tumbled in.

  Ricky was not alone. Ricky was never alone. To his right at the head of the table stood the towering, inscrutable Strappado. To his left: the short, overweight, affable—and more frightening to those who knew him—Bastinado. At one side of the long gothic table, seated on a high-backed bench, was the psychometrist, Kolosimo.

  “Well?” breathed Ricky, before Jimmy had even reached the table. Ricky seldom spoke above this airy whisper, but Jimmy had learned well to listen sharply for it. Ricky didn’t like to talk; liked even less to repeat.

  “I have it,” Jimmy announced. He halted at the far end of the table until Ricky raised his arm languidly, inviting him to approach.

  To give Jimmy room, Strappado took a few steps back. Leaning over Ricky’s shoulder, Jimmy spread the cloth he’d kept folded in his pocket. He had removed it slowly from his pocket, so as not to alarm the looming Strappado.

  In the center of the cloth, a human eye gazed up at Ricky with a glassy expression. It was the newest acquisition: the last prosthetic eye used by the popular entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr.

  A tight smile formed on Ricky’s face. It was tight due to the extensive plastic surgery Ricky had employed over the years to further sculpt his ethnic Italian features into a delicate and glamorous amalgamation. To Jimmy’s thinking, in his attempt to incorporate all the characteristics deemed desirable by the public, Ricky had transformed his countenance into something utterly alien. The Roman busts in Ricky’s halls were lifelike by comparison.

  “It’s beautiful,” Ricky whispered, his voice breaking with emotion. “Hello, Sammy.” He lifted his strained grin to the heavyset man with disheveled gray hair who called himself Kolosimo. “Kol,” Ricky prompted.

  The older man reached out, plucked the eye into his fist, drew back his arm to clench the fist against his forehead. “Ohhh…” muttered Kolosimo, eyes scrunched tightly shut.

  “Is he there?”

  “Oh…oh yes, Ricky. Oh yes. Sammy saw so much. I can see Sinatra…”

  “Peter Lawford?”

  “No…no. He died before this eye. But he saw so much. Yes…Sammy is here. He is very much soaked in.”

  “You did well,” Ricky said, turning his grin up to Jimmy. He offered his slim waxen hand, the ultimate signal of praise, and Jimmy held it lightly before Ricky slid it out of his fingers, Ricky’s gem-encrusted rings scraping against his hand.

  “If I might ask, Rick,” Jimmy ventured, not having dared until he was praised, “how do you plan on taking this in? Not swallowing it whole…”

  A slight frown crept onto the contrived features. “You know better than that, Jim. It has to be melded with the other ingredients. It will be ground into a powder and mixed in the blender.”

  “Of course. Just please be sure to have it ground very fine, is all.”

  His shrewd show of concern worked on Ricky, restoring him to his good spirits. “Jim, see to it that the replica gets made by Friday, okay?”

  “See to it, huh?” Jimmy chuckled lightly. Ricky realized his own pun and giggled. Bastinado and Kolosimo laughed heartily. Maybe Strappado’s scowl shifted a few microbes.

  The glass eye would be duplicated and the duplicate displayed in the museum alongside the duplication of the Elephant Man’s skeleton—a replica surpassing even that which Ricky had presented to the London Hospital Medical College Museum. The actual skeleton had been ground to a fine powder—limb by limb, portion by portion—and ingested completely.

  Jimmy had arranged that purchase as well, though it had been Kolosimo who had acquired the very first one…one that hadn’t been publicized in the tabloids. That had been the severed portion of Vincent Van Gogh’s right ear, acquired from a Japanese collector who had come into possession of the piece through very mysterious sources. Jimmy hadn’t believed the ear to be authentic, despite Kolosimo’s rhapsodizing over it. But after the ear was ground and mixed in the blender with the rest of Kolosimo’s recipe, and Ricky had ingested the resultant chocolate-flavored shake, the pop idol was so overwhelmed by flaming colors and swirling vortexes of energy that he was inspired to create his best selling album to that date. He told Jimmy he had been seeing brighter shades of color and the seething energy of all things ever since.

  Between Jimmy, Kolosimo, and others, Ricky Concertina had ingested and absorbed the power locked in handwriting samples (usually from Christmas cards) of such figures as David Bowie and Ringo Starr, locks of hair from John Lennon and Brooke Shields, and a finger stolen from Jimi Hendrix. Subsequently, Ricky Concertina was the most popular and powerful celebrity in the world.

  But, of course, that was something which, once obtained, had to be carefully maintained.

  “Springsteen’s new album is due to hit the stores next month, Jimmy. I’d really like you to acquire that new item very soon.”

  “I will, Ricky. I’ve got my boys probing.”

  “You probe, Jim…now that you’ve finished collecting this wonderful piece.”

  “I will, Rick.”

  “The Boss is our biggest threat, Ricky,” Bastinado chimed in. “Maybe we should have ourselves a little plane wreck.”

  Ricky whipped around in his chair, twisting his mouth into a grimace that must have required great exertion. “You stupid shit,” he hissed. “Don’t you ever think? If Bruce got killed he’d be the biggest thing since Elvis! I’d rather pay to have him brought back from the dead than to kill him, you moron!”

  Bastinado had gone white, and lowered his sheepish gaze. “Sorry, Ricky…I wasn’t thinkin’.”

  “So what else is new?” Ricky waved impatiently at Jimmy to dismiss him. “Okay, Jimmy…go. Take the rest of the day off. But tomorrow, go look for that piece. Understand? That’s my biggest weapon against Springsteen this year.”

  “Yes, Ricky.” Jimmy turned and walked over the heads of the pacing giant cats again on his way out.

  * * *

  During the next few weeks, Ricky Concertina went back into the studio to continue work on his latest album, to be boldly titled Psychometrix. The public was aware Ricky was into esoteric subject matter, but he knew they’d never suspect the truth to his success.

  Meanwhile, Jimmy Tassone was having success in getting close to the object Ricky currently coveted. Jimmy had also begun organizing an effort to acquire the object Ricky desired above all others: some fibers from the Shroud of Turin that had been removed for carbon dating, if any had survived those tests. But Ricky wasn’t pressuring for this right now…he knew he couldn’t have everything immediately. Save that for the next album. Right now he was obsessed with the idea of acquiring a strange idol Kolosimo’s sources told him a cult had been worshiping somewhere right here in Southern California.

  Jimmy spoke with his inside man, Joey Cacciola, on the phone. Joey had infiltrated the cult—People of the Hand—and had to speak in a low voice. “They’re both pretty wacked, huh?” Joey said of their boss and his “spiritual mentor”, Kolosimo.

  “Ricky’s wacked. Kolosimo is brilliant. You think he believes any of this voodoo crap? Psychometrics? Psychosomatics is more like it. These drinks don’t give Ricky power, they only inspire him ‘cause he thinks they’re giving him power.”

  “I dunno, man. I seen a thing on Kolosimo in a book Ricky has. The police used him once to find a sex murderer. He held this dead chick’s panties and he could tell the cops where she was killed, where they could find the body and what the killer looked like, y’know?”

  “Stage magic,” Jimmy muttered, but he dropped the topic of doubt after that. They returned to the sub
ject at hand.

  The object of the group’s worship was supposedly the mummified hand of a UFO alien, its craft having come down and exploded in a field in Mexico. The hand was recovered from the site by a farmer, but the story had it that the rest of the blackened rubble was simply carted away by him and dumped. Soon after, the old farmer died, presumably of radiation poisoning, but not before the leader of this cult found out about the hand and came to the farmer to purchase it.

  And then, somehow, Kolosimo had learned of the hand, and it wasn’t long before Ricky had become fixated on it.

  Well, tonight Jimmy was sure he’d be driving back to the house with good news and a present. Maybe this would save Springsteen from some misfortune, after all. God knew that Jimmy Tassone preferred the Boss’s music over the music of his own boss any day.

  * * *

  The others were sleeping in the house; the adjacent garage had been made into a temple, locked and very difficult to break into from outside. But Joey had a key, and he let Jimmy into the house to creep into the garage-shrine also.

  The walls had been painted black, and odd geometric patterns had been painted across the surfaces. Ricky would be drawn to these people, Jimmy thought.

  Joey called his attention to a table in the center of the room. A black cloth covered the table, and a smaller cloth shrouded the object atop it.

  “Here it is,” whispered Joey, drawing away the veil.

  Unconsciously, Jimmy kept several paces distant, as if what he expected to see in the big jar was one of those hand-like crab creatures from Aliens, which would fling itself out to seize his face.

  Well, it was a hand, but not very lethal-looking. It lay on its stump at the bottom of a jar filled with formaldehyde, despite the fact that the thing was clearly mummified. Its bones were delicate and small; it might have been the hand of a child. The fingers were rather elongated, but maybe just because the flesh had withered. And that black glistening color could be paint or even a natural occurrence. All in all, Jimmy was less than awed by the idol.