“I’m very happy to shake your hand,” the man said in a thick Eastern European accent. “You may call me Stepan if you like. Your uncle told me of your discoveries. He created a very good picture of you,” Stepan said with a smile that peeked out from under his mustache. “But I am very sorry about this,” he said as raised his hands toward Kevin’s cheeks and touched them lightly.

  “It’s not the first time,” Kevin said.

  “Stepan came over from Saint Sophia Ukrainian Orthodox Seminary to shed some light on your encounters,” Matthew said, and then gestured to the chairs. “Please sit. Make yourselves comfortable.”

  Kevin pulled out two more folding chairs and set up a triangle. “So, what do you teach at your seminary?” Kevin asked.

  “I don’t teach so much classes. I am what is called consultant. When a priest or bishop has problem, I make it better.”

  “Is that job like a fixer?” Kevin asked.

  “Fixer, eh? I don’t know,” Stepan smiled again. “This is a good job to have? Being a fixer?”

  “Sometimes yes, sometimes no,” Kevin said. “But making problems go away sounds like a fixer to me.”

  “Okay, among friends I will try calling my job fixer. We’ll see how it goes. If the archbishop says it’s okay, then it’s okay.” Kevin and Stepan laughed.

  “So have you seen this man-cat creature before?” Kevin asked.

  “In the old country I was in the Army. Three years and three hundred twenty-five days.” Sitting up stiffly and saluting he said, “I was brand new sergeant in a motor rifle company. It was a bad time, the Panjshir Offensive in Afghanistan. Some men live, some die. When sometimes they die, funny things happen. My comrades tell me they see the ghosts walking around at night, but I go look and all I see is cat. I tell them to put away the vodka. I did not know about these things then. I was just twenty years old!”

  “How did you go from the army to the church?” Father Matthew asked.

  “I was very confused after fighting, so I go to monastery after army. I put myself in time-out!” Stepan laughed. “I read every scripture I can find, in the original language. Greek, Latin, Hebrew. I learned so much. Who knew I was so good at these things! Now I’m a deacon for twenty-three-and-one-half years!”

  “So, if you know how to take care of these cat things, I can hand it off to you, right?” Kevin asked.

  “I am too old to make a fight with destructor animarum. The job of venator is for strong young man like you.”

  “That’s not exactly the answer I was hoping for, Stepan.”

  “The call comes in interesting ways and it is often not quite what you expect,” Stepan explained. “But we are not here to recruit you into the army. You are already there. We must now give you better ways to fight the enemy. Venator must fight with brain and not so much face, eh?”

  “You’ve got a way with words, comrade!” Kevin replied, “So what is a venator, and why do I feel a little hesitant about where this is going?”

  “Nothing to worry about,” Matthew said in reassurance, “except the disposition of untold numbers of souls that might never reach their destination.”

  62

  Sunday, September 9

  1:34 p.m.

  Brian and Kevin sat on the couch, with Johnston on the floor, leaning back between Kevin and Brian’s legs. Mark made himself comfortable on a green and white beanbag chair. The TV displayed the football season opener between the Eagles and Browns.

  “Good call bringing the beanbag. Maybe I’ll get one too. Especially since there don’t seem to be any gentlemen willing to share the couch,” Johnston joked.

  Brian laughed in response. “When you get tired of the floor you can come sit on my lap.”

  “I’d rather jump in the river with a creepy naked dude,” Johnston replied. Turning to Kevin, she asked, “By the way, what became of your meeting with Uncle Matthew?”

  “I’m not sure I care to talk about it,” Kevin said.

  “Why not?” Brian asked.

  “I was kinda hoping to have a normal day, you know? Watch the game, give each other a hard time, and have a little fun. It’s bad enough I still gotta look at this peeling skin in the mirror. I haven’t been able to shave properly in a week!”

  “Yeah, but inquiring minds want to know,” Mark chimed in. “Come on, at least the Reader’s Digest version.”

  “Damn it, you’re ruining my normal day. Fine,” Kevin sighed. “I’ll tell you about it, but then no more until at least Wednesday. Got it?” Kevin demanded.

  “No questions until Wednesday,” Johnston said in a definitive voice.

  “Wait, before Kevin tells us about his meeting, how’s Officer Church doing?” Brian asked Johnston.

  “They gave him a unit of blood when the wound wouldn’t quit bleeding, and he’s covered in bandages, but they did finally send him home.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Mark said. “Looking at Kevin, I can only imagine what his wound is like.”

  “Thanks man, I love you too,” Kevin replied. “Anyway, do you want to hear about this, or not?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Go ahead, Mister Touchy,” Brian relented.

  “So, Uncle Matthew brought in this protodeacon from a Ukrainian Orthodox seminary over in Jersey,” Kevin started.

  “What’s a protodeacon?” Mark interrupted.

  “Shush!” Johnston said with a finger to her lips.

  “Thanks,” Kevin said to Johnston and continued, “So, he’s this big bear of a guy from the old country and has a thick accent. But he’s funny as hell and he’s basically the fixer for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in America. It’s like he’s a mobster in a cassock!” Everybody laughed and Kevin continued describing the meeting. “It turns out this thing we’ve been chasing goes way back. Even before Christ. It doesn’t really have a name, but Stefan called it destructor animarum, whatever that means in Latin.”

  “Destroyer of souls?” Mark interjected. Kevin looked at him and grinned.

  “You were always better in Latin than anybody else. Anyway, a lot of what we figured out was right on. He said it probably takes the soul, or life force, and uses it for energy to live. Like food. Any time it encounters an unattended recently dead body, it sucks the soul out, shriveling up what’s left. Then it takes the form of the last body it sucked dry and moves on to find the next corpse. Like we figured, it normally runs two to three weeks at a time. It can be a cat or a human, but get this. The human is basically a clone of the donor corpse. It looks exactly the same as the original, but without any of the aftermarket modifications.”

  “Like if the deceased had a spray tan, the clone won’t have it?” Brian asked.

  “That’s right. Stuff like piercings, braces on the teeth, surgery, or anything not natural to the body won’t be there.”

  “So all the folks who saw Jerome’s clone without earrings were right to be suspicious. It wasn’t a ghost, but it wasn’t really him either,” Mark added. Kevin nodded and Mark asked another question. “What constitutes recently dead?”

  “Nobody really knows the exact time frame. What you’re really asking is how long does the soul remain with the body after the heart stops and the brain has no detectable activity.”

  “Well, okay, since you put it that way,” Mark shrugged.

  “Not long. That’s why the cat likes to hang around. It’s waiting for the right moment to spring into action.”

  “You’re making me reconsider having a cat in the house,” Mark groaned.

  “The other part we got right, by accident of course,” Kevin added with a grin, “was the water. These things don’t like water or oil. If you submerge them in either, they get squishy real fast and then dissolve in a cloud of bubbles, never to be seen again.”

  “As dad said, I’d rather be lucky than good any day! But what about the possum thing?” Brian asked. “The eyes just close and it stops moving, then a couple minutes later, boing! It’s up and fighting again.”

  “It has a couple of known weaknesses, and that’s one. Whenever the sun is rising or setting, and passing through the horizon, it just drops off like it’s dead. Then it comes right back once the sun is clear of the horizon. The other weakness is subterranean spaces. It can’t go underground. When you knocked it down the steps, it blanked out. Just like at sunrise. Stepan said this is probably why many religions require dead bodies to be buried quickly. Once a body is underground, it’s safe from the creature.”

  All three sat in silence as Kevin described what he learned from his meeting. “If you think about it, you’ll quickly recognize that there are a countless traditions we do, but forgot why. These things were largely eradicated because of careful attendance to formalities partly or entirely designed to keep them away. Anything involving washing or holy water for example. These critters won’t go near it.”

  “So why did we have one of these cat-man things cruising around the city, if they are supposed to be eradicated?” Mark asked.

  “Stepan said it is like vaccinations. The disease is still out there, but nobody gets sick anymore. Then people stop with the vaccines, and the disease comes back. He thinks it showed up here because Americans are losing their old-time religion. The traditions are getting tossed by the wayside because they aren’t cool anymore. Things like the anointing of the sick by a priest. Holy oil is like a repellent to these things, but the modern nondenominational folks don’t do sacramental stuff. The one he was really baffled by was companionship cats in nursing homes. Just like the proverbial fox in the henhouse.”

  “So why doesn’t anybody know about these cat creatures?” Johnston asked.

  “I don’t know,” Kevin said flatly. “The Roman Catholic Church doesn’t seem to have any corporate knowledge, and the Orthodox is only slightly better. I guess it’s been a non-issue so long that people quit paying attention.”

  “Did he tell you if or how they reproduce?” Brian asked.

  “That remains a mystery. In fact, that’s Stepan’s main focus. He said if anybody ever knew, they didn’t write it down, or he hasn’t found it.”

  “Well, that kinda sucks,” Brian responded.

  “Yeah, it does. Especially since he identified a probable second creature in the information Uncle Matthew collected.”

  “You’re kidding me. There’s another one?” Johnston asked.

  “The Temple University kid was probably a second cat. It was out of sequence with the one we just drowned. He wasn’t a hundred percent, but he seemed pretty sure about it. The other bit he was really interested in was the third hand on the train tracks.”

  “Oh, yeah? What’s the theory?” Brian asked.

  “These critters aren’t fazed by gunshot wounds, getting stabbed, or even general dismemberment. Stepan is certain about that because he’s seen them get hit by machine guns and a rocket-propelled grenade and keep going. In our case, the Jerome look-alike probably lost a hand to the train, but it didn’t care. It got a fresh meal and switched bodies.”

  “That’s pretty heavy-duty stuff,” Mark sighed.

  “If Protodeacon Stepan is the expert, will he be hunting down the second cat? I mean, I’m kinda over this thing,” Brian declared.

  “He’s fifty-seven years old, and was quite adamant that he shouldn’t be chasing cats down dark alleys.”

  “He’s going to bring in the Orthodox SWAT team, right?” Mark laughed.

  “Doubt it,” Kevin said. “But this isn’t a new problem, and people have been dealing with it, or not dealing with it for years. We aren’t going to fix it today, so I propose we turn our attention back to this football game.”

  “Fair enough,” Brian agreed, closing off discussion of the topic. “I got money on this game, so it definitely requires my attention, but Wednesday, we’re going to talk some more!”

  63

  Wednesday, September 12

  10:15 p.m.

  A plain blue Ford sedan splashed through a large puddle and into the circular driveway in front of the hospital. The windshield wipers kept the steady rain at bay but left an arc shaped smear on every pass. Under the long portico at the front door, Johnston brought the car to a stop and watched the trickle of people emerging from a set of automatic doors. She glanced at the dashboard clock. “I’m on time . . . where are you?” she asked herself.

  Johnston turned off the engine and then scanned the radio dial, finally settling on a Top 40 country station. A catchy song was already playing, the singer crooning “There’s a little bit of devil in her angel eyes . . . ” When the song ended, the DJ’s voice filled in the silence of the car, “It’s ten twenty on a rainy night in Philly and that was last week’s number one hit song, Love and Theft’s “Angel Eyes”. The new number one hit this week comes from Blake Shelton . . .” The radio cut off as she opened the door at the sight of Kevin emerging from the building. They met halfway, and Johnston wrapped him up in her arms and kissed him on the lips.

  “Very nice to see you, too,” he said after catching his breath. “That’s an unusual public display. What’s gotten into you?”

  “I’ve been looking forward to a normal date all week, and that must mean something.”

  “You’re saying you like me for more than my sweet bike?” Kevin asked, and got an immediate punch in the shoulder. “What did you do that for? That hurt.”

  “Really, that hurt?” she asked.

  “No, not really, because you punch like a girl.” Kevin laughed and got another punch in the same spot. He winced at the second impact. “Okay, that one hurt. You can stop now.”

  “Get in the car already,” she commanded as she pushed off from him and walked to the driver’s door. When both were seated in the car, Kevin leaned into the center of the cabin and guided her face toward his for another kiss. “Hey buddy, knock it off. We’re in a city vehicle now. No PDA allowed.”

  “Sorry,” Kevin said while raising both hands to shoulder height. “Please don’t arrest me officer.”

  “I should cuff you and toss your butt in the back seat just to teach you a lesson.” Johnston dropped the car in gear and smoothly pulled away from the curb and out into the rainy night.

  “So, where are you taking me?” Kevin asked.

  “Jailhouse or Little Pete’s. I haven’t really decided, but they are both that way,” Johnston pointed with her hand in the general direction the car was traveling.

  “Very nice. Two local favorites. Can’t go wrong either way,” Kevin joked. After she gave him a sideways glance, he sat quietly for a moment and then half turned toward Johnston.

  “You look like you have something important to say,” Johnston remarked.

  “I have something to tell you,” Kevin said. “But on second thought, let’s get some food first. I’m starving.”

  64

  Wednesday, September 12

  10:46 p.m.

  A teenage hostess seated them at a tiny table wedged into a corner of Little Peat’s Diner and handed them menus. Unable to stop looking at Kevin’s pale and peeling face, the hostess squeaked, “Sandy will be with you in just a moment,” then hustled away. Kevin and Johnston looked at each other with knowing grins and turned their attention to the menu. After a moment, Kevin glanced at Johnston over the top of the card. She lowered her menu and caught Kevin looking at her.

  “What sounds good?” Kevin asked.

  “I think something with a touch of sweetness. A Monte Cristo sandwich,” Johnston declared and then smiled softly. She set her menu down and took Kevin’s hand in hers. “Something big, huh?” Johnston said. Kevin nodded and started to speak but was interrupted by a waitress.

  “I’m Tyra. It looks like I’m going to be your waitress tonight.” Kevin and Johnston both looked up and smiled. Kevin ordered for both of them, and the waitress disappeared as fast as she had appeared.

  “My meeting with Uncle Matthew this morning was kind of life changing,” Kevin said. “I mean more than just learning about the thing.”

  “I kind of sensed that on Sunday,” she observed. “So, what was it about?”

  “Matthew and Stepan needed a few days to work out the details. I haven’t said yes yet, but they think I should go into the venator business.”

  “Venator?

  “The Latin word for hunter.”

  “Wait—you’d be chasing these things full time? You can’t make a living doing that,” Johnston objected.

  “They think I can. Like Stepan does his fixer job. He lives in church facilities wherever he travels, and they compensate him as a professor in the seminary,” Kevin explained.

  “But he’s a deacon. That’s what deacons do. They live in rectories and monasteries or whatever, and are supported by the church. How’s that going to work for you?” Johnston asked. Then her mouth fell open in a gasp. “Oh, wait a minute . . . this is just my luck.” Johnston paused a moment and her eyes misted over. “Please tell me you are not about to swear off the opposite sex for the rest of your life!”

  “No, absolutely not! No, no, not a chance on earth,” Kevin replied just as a tear was breaking loose from the corner of Johnston’s eye. “Come on, it’s okay. I’m not taking vows or anything like that. If I took the job, it would be much simpler.”

  “How? How is this supposed to work?” Johnston asked, while taking her napkin and wiping the moisture from the corner of her eye.

  “To start, the seminary here would hire me as part of the staff. Probably something like a groundskeeper, and they’d give me one of the empty apartments on the campus. I’d do the job, coming and going as needed.”

  That’s a relief,” Johnston sighed, “but how many of these things are out there that they are going to put somebody on the task full time?”

  “I don’t know. I doubt there are that many, but as Stepan said, the knowledge and skills will be lost if somebody doesn’t keep them alive.”

 

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