The Gathering of Gods: Isis

By Derek E. Pearson

Is it murder, or a welcome release? After defeating the 'Anubis Killer' NYPD homicide detective Prentiss finds herself on the trail of the mysterious 'Dark Lady', a spectral woman who targets the aged and infirm. Her investigations lead her to the For-Life Foundation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: GB Publishing Org
• Release date: May 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781912576425

Derek E. Pearson

2016 FINALIST twice over at the Foreword Indies BOOK AWARDS, American Library Association Annual Conference, Chicago, 24 June 2017: • SCIENCE FICTION with Soul's Asylum - Star Weaver • FANTASY with GODS' Enemy THE SUN: "Soul's Asylum is a weird, vivid and creepy book, not for the faint hearted. But its originality and top writing make for a great read." In his Body Holiday adult sci-fi trilogy Pearson introduced readers to Milla Carter, a beautiful telepath and killer, whose adventures have continued in the Soul's Asylum trilogy. The last volume, The Swarm, was published 15 April 2017. With GODS' Enemy Pearson introduced readers to the enigmatic Preacher Spindrift, in a series that continues in 2017 with GODS' Fool and in 2018 with GODS' Warrior. Pearson lives on the London/Surrey borders where he spends most of his time at his keyboard imagineering new worlds or twisting existing worlds through the dark prism he uses instead of a brain. He says, "When someone dies it has to matter. You have to believe a life has been lost. An author learns to love the people he lives with in his mind. They become real."

Book preview

[1]

At first glance the landscape looked like a frozen grey sea under a pewter sky. A silent place stalked by ghosts and forlorn hopes. A tall, slender woman in a black dress gazed at the ground, which consisted of a fused and petrified litter of little bones and small, eyeless skulls that stretched from horizon to bleak horizon. She took a deep breath, drawing the limestone scent of ancient death deep into her lungs. And then, with a simple gesture, she was gone.

Some women’s body got charisma like a car crash. You know you shouldn’t look but you just can’t turn your eyes away, mused Benjamin Addams, who considered himself a practiced connoisseur of life. He had good reason, at ninety-two he had been living it longer than everyone else he knew. Damn, he thought, I’ve been on this street longer than most of the buildings.

Addams was seated in his doctor’s waiting room along with a group of patients he thought of as ‘old people’. All of them were younger than him; some by a few decades. They all had symptoms, most of which involved throaty coughs or oddly purple-coloured limbs – or both. They were ill. Addams was not. He was reluctantly attending his long-standing annual healthcare appointment with Dr Platell because his insurance people insisted on it. So, to Addams, that was different.

It was Dr Platell’s body Addams was thinking about. He briefly questioned whether a car crash was the correct analogy. Dr Platell was no car crash. She was one of those fine-looking women it was worth opening the blinds and letting more sunlight in for. Her skin was golden and smooth with barely visible peach fuzz on her cheeks and above her upper lip.

Addams’ wife Sarah had also been beautiful but in a more classical Jewish way. If she hadn’t bleached her upper lip for few a weeks she claimed she looked like Joe Stalin. The younger Stalin, sure, not the ‘uncle Joe’ of infamy, but hey, who wants to be married to a communist dictator’s look-a-like?

Sarah was no tyrant. She was a good loyal wife and a proud loving mother to Rebecca, their daughter. She was also a wonderful Geemo to Rebecca’s kids, little Benjie junior and Susan. It was Benjie junior who had called her Geemo when he was a toddler and couldn’t pronounce ‘Grandma’ properly. The name had stuck.

Yes, remembered Benjie, but when junior was short of cash at college, he could easily have renamed his Geemo the Valley National Bank! She funded him well enough. She did the same for Susan when it was time.

Sarah had died more than a decade before. Addams couldn’t believe so much time had passed since he’d last held her hand or heard her calm voice. People had said she had gone to sleep, but she hadn’t. She had floated to her grave on a river of painkillers, finally succumbing to the liver cancer that had sat in her belly like an evil imp for twelve years. First came the swollen tummy, then the itching and then the scratching. That was before it stuck its claws in real deep.

‘So, if she’s asleep,’ he told mourners at her interment and during the seven-day Shivah following the service. ‘If she’s asleep, like you say, get her the hell out of that casket. She hates enclosed spaces! She’s claustrophobic! That’s why she never even rode the subway or got on the bus. Benjie, she’d say, if God had wanted us all crammed together in a little box, he would have made us skinny like sardines and covered us in tomato sauce. And now there she is in that box like she’s been gift-wrapped for the grave. If she’s asleep, get her out of there, wake her up, and let me take her back home where she belongs.’

He instantly regretted his fuss, it wasn’t right for that time or place. Sarah deserved more respect, especially from him. ‘I’m sorry, old girl,’ he whispered.

Addams turned his mind to more pleasant things – like Dr Platell. Now she looked Scandinavian, like the young Jane Fonda. Late thirties but didn’t show it, didn’t wear too much make-up, and her figure would make the dead sit up and take notice, never mind a red-blooded male with a pulse where it counts.

If she hadn’t become a physician Dr Platell could have appeared on the cover of a magazine wearing nothing but a smile and a swimsuit and sold a million copies. Maybe she had, who knew? She would sell more without the suit.

One of the other patients was on oxygen and his breathing had a harsh, wet, sucking sound that obviously took a lot of effort. He was a bulky guy on a mobility scooter who was lousy at reverse parking. Every time the scooter went into reverse it beeped annoyingly, and the man had gone back-and- forth, back-and-forth, back-and-freaking-forth to get into his position against the wall.

Beep, beep, beep, beep... Addams had fought down his frustration with the sick old kalike. This is a doctor’s surgery, he told himself, not a parking garage. People like him should be seen in a drive-through. And looking at the size of that belly he could get himself a king-size burger and fries on his way out, super-size the fries. Oh, and a diet cola, gotta watch the old waistline.

The light in the waiting room seemed to brighten a little when Dr Platell briefly emerged with her last patient, wished them well, and then bent to have a quick word with her receptionist. Addams groaned at the way the white coat tightened around the doctor’s hips. She was so fresh, like a juicy peach just waiting for the first bite. He swallowed a rush of saliva. The man on the mobility scooter’s breathing thickened.

Dr Platell looked around the waiting room and smiled at her audience. Addams was certain she looked glad to see him, and that she had saved her broadest smile for him. When the angel disappeared back into her surgery, there followed an audible exhalation of breath.

‘Man,’ said a plaintive female voice, ‘I think I spent most of my adult life sitting here waiting for that woman.’

‘Yeah,’ said a husky male, ‘but she’s worth it.’

Another male voice agreed, ‘You said a mouthful there, brother.’

The receptionist called out, ‘Mrs Carole Spencer? The doctor will see you now. Mrs Carole Spencer?’

A frail woman levered herself out of her chair and pattered towards the surgery door as if controlled by poorly operated strings. The receptionist looked up.

‘Mrs Carole Spencer?’

The patient looked confused. ‘Who?’

‘Are you Mrs Carole Spencer?’

‘Who?’

Louder, ‘Are you Mrs Carole Spencer?’

‘No, honey. I need the toilet, and at my age I don’t think I need to raise my hand and ask permission. That okay with you?’

Another voice joined in. ‘Who wants Carole Spencer?’

The receptionist sighed, ‘Mrs Carole Spencer? The doctor will see you now.’

‘Well, why didn’t you say so?’

‘I... never mind. And, lady, the toilets are over there. This door is the doctor’s surgery. You need to go over there.’

Like a cabaret of clowns, thought Addams with a sour grin, go weep for man – and women past a certain age. And then he noticed the woman in black. Hubba, Hubba, he thought. Hello, Cleopatra.

The woman was tall and slim with a creamy, caffè latte complexion; and her sable dress hugged the curves of her willowy figure like an over affectionate second skin. But it was her face that drew most of Addams’ attention.

This girl had hit beautiful like a steam train and then kept on going way beyond to achieve the kind of sensuous loveliness that caused Dr Platell to fade from his mind. After a minute he remembered to breathe. ‘She walks in beauty, like the night’, thought Addams. Byron must have dreamt of this magnificent creature when he wrote those lines. They had never seemed more apt.

The woman walked silently across to the man on the mobility scooter. Addams quickly glanced around the room to see if anyone else had been captured by her passage through the room. No, everyone else was watching the ongoing toilet debate by the reception desk. Are they blind? he wondered. Addams turned back. The woman he thought of as Cleopatra was whispering in mobility guy’s ear. He nodded in agreement. Then his face fell to his chest, settling heavily into a concertinaed cushion of plump neck folds. The woman straightened. Mobility guy just sat there, unmoving. The woman moved to another patient, a birdlike black man in an immaculate suit. He wore a smartly pressed shirt and tie; the collar seemed a mile too wide for his slender neck.

He didn’t even turn to look at the woman when she began whispering in his ear. He too began nodding his head. He smiled and opened his eyes to gaze at something far away; something above a horizon only he could see. He chuckled briefly, and then his eyes glazed over.

It was then that Addams suddenly realised how quiet the room was. Mobility guy had stopped breathing. The black man too was immobile, his unblinking eyes gazing towards infinity. The woman in black was already talking to her next victim. Who was she, wondered Addams, the Angel of Death?

The receptionist had finally steered the toilet lady in the right direction. She was studying something on her computer screen and took no notice as the woman, who Addams had mentally renamed ‘Typhoid Mary’, steadily worked her way through her audience in Dr Platell’s waiting room.

And then the woman in the black dress looked across at Benjamin Addams. She smiled warmly and moved in his direction.

Addams didn’t wait, he grabbed his tartan shopping bag on wheels and climbed to his feet. The woman was drawing closer, she smiled like a girl greeting her lover and held out her hand to him.

He hustled to the waiting room door and wrenched it open. He heard an old familiar voice whisper in his ear, ‘Benjie, wait...’

He ran as fast as his old legs would carry him.

[2]

News headlines had a field day. ‘Surgery of Death’, ‘Doctor Death will see you now’, and ‘God’s waiting room’. A total of seven elderly and infirm patients had died during a matter of minutes, one while she was still sitting on the toilet.

The receptionist had seen nothing suspicious, in fact she had been unaware of any problem until Dr Platell had shouted goodbye to the deaf Mrs Carole Spencer and asked to see her next patient.

‘Me? I’m thinking of seeing a different doctor. One who doesn’t employ vampires who take blood donations while you wait. You hear what I’m saying? Hey, you know something? That angel of death, Typhoid Mary, Cleopatra, whatever, she looked a lot like you! What do you look like in a tight black dress? It might suit you, think about it. You got good genes, and I don’t mean Levi Strauss.’

NYPD homicide detective Prentiss gave up her fight to keep the grin off her face. Benjamin Addams might be old, but he kept his wits honed and sharp, like a straight razor. And he was what Prentiss’ mother would describe as ‘sprightly’. She looked around his book-lined living room. There were precious few feminine touches.

‘Do you live alone, Mr Addams?’

‘Enough with the mister! Benjie, please, and what shall I call you?’

She smiled, ‘Prentiss, it’s my name. Do you live alone?’

‘Why? You looking to move in? You’d be welcome, give the place some class.’ He grinned, ‘Been alone more than ten years. My daughter comes around when she can, and sometimes the grandkids visit, but yeah, I’m alone. Got friends and acquaintances all over to say hi to if I want, but I like my own company.’

‘Comfortable in your own skin?’

He looked down at his shrunken frame and ran a hand through his shock of white hair as if inwardly debating the point.

‘I haven’t been comfortable in this wrinkled hide since it turned traitor and got old while I wasn’t looking. I tell you something? I unscrewed the full-length mirror in the bathroom a good while back. My body naked is not something I need to be reminded about, you understand me? Needs ironing.’

His eyes glittered and rested on hers, waiting.

‘No TV in the apartment?’

‘I can see why you became a cop, you notice things. You keep your eyes open and that’s rare. No, I’ve got no idiot box. Don’t need one since our girl grew up enough to be interesting. We used to stick the grandkids in front of the funnies to keep them outta mischief, you know? Don’t need it now, too damn miserable. Tries to sell me things I don’t need and give me advice I don’t listen to. So, no, no TV.’

‘This woman at the doctor’s, you say she just spoke to people? Are you sure she didn’t do anything else?’

‘Subtle. First make sure the old guy still got all his marbles then see which way they roll when he’s tilted. Nice. Hey, you remind me of me after too much coffee, of which I can’t now have too much because of reflux acid. So, yes, that’s all she did. And they smiled – and they died. They went gentle. It was as if she was telling them it was okay to go, telling them it was their time. Then it was my turn...’

‘You not ready to go yet, Benjie?’

‘Hey, you just reminded me, she called me Benjie too, just like that! And we hadn’t been formally introduced, not like you and me. I ask you, what’s wrong with Mr Addams? You inviting people to their grave you should be more formal! And she used Sarah’s voice.’

‘Sarah?’

‘My wife. She would have liked you, she liked the more inquiring mind. But, yeah, Typhoid Mary, she used Sarah’s voice. I didn’t stay to listen; I got myself a good book I need to finish before I shuffle off this mortal coil. In fact, I got a whole shelf of them. I ain’t going gently into that good night, not while I can still outrun Typhoid Mary.’

Prentiss remembered watching Addams run past the morticians where he had his funeral plan. He had once explained to her late best friend and partner, Sam Bolat, that they might have his money, but they didn’t have him yet. The memory brought a smile to her face, and a touch of sadness. Sam’s tragic death was still too recent, too raw.

Addams noted the change in her expression, ‘That’s a sad face. You lost someone close? Young girl like you? Who was it? Your mom, or your pop? I know that look, wore it myself long enough. Still do some days. Still do.’

‘No, she was a friend. A good friend.’

‘That can be tough. I’m real sorry for your loss, Prentiss. We’re saddled with our family, but we choose our friends. That must be hard. Was it recent?’

‘Six months, just over.’

‘That wound won’t heal until enough air gets at it. Takes time. I know, I still think of Sarah most days. Yeah, sometimes the skin peels off the wound and it hurts. You want a coffee?’

‘What about your reflux?’

‘I got tablets for that. I’ll take a burn for a new friend.’

Addams made good coffee in an old-fashioned, stove top espresso maker. They drank it in his kitchen, which had a view of the red brick wall of the neighbouring building. He pointed out the window.

‘Got a lady friend who lives on the floor above me. She likes my coffee enough to put up with my company. One day she asked me if the view depressed me, I told her no. I said, on a good day I got my very own Edward Hopper to look at.’ He chuckled.

‘And on a bad day?’

‘On a bad day who needs the view? On a bad day I got memories to look at.’

They sipped good coffee in companiable silence for a while, then Addams looked sharply at Prentiss.

‘If I tell you something you promise not to think I’ve slipped a cog. You promise me that? Okay?’

‘I think I know which way your marbles are rolling, Benjie. Okay, I promise, cross my heart. So, tell me, what is it?’

He leaned forward conspiratorially and tapped his nose. ‘That woman, Typhoid Mary, I think I was the only person in that room who could see her.’

‘Say, what? Why? What makes you think that?’

‘The others in that room, the old folks, they didn’t look at her. None of them, not once! And she was worth a look. The doctor’s gorgeous, Dr Platell, she’s a looker, but this woman, Mary, well! She was a goddess. You know they say a pretty girl’s like a melody? For Typhoid Mary you’d strike up the band and then some! Mary was the New York Philharmonic playing Mozart, and I mean the good stuff.’

He tilted his head, ‘You doing a recount on my marbles? Knocking a few off the tally? I don’t blame you, but I know what I saw. I trust my eyes even if these days I do have to wear glasses thicker than my fingers. I know what I saw. Even the people she was talking to didn’t see her, at least, they didn’t look at her.

‘They just listened, they smiled, and then they were gone like they just left their bodies the way I left the room. And that’s emes, thems the facts, that’s what I saw...’ He paused, ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

Prentiss took a deep breath, ‘Benjie, look, I believe you believe what you saw, okay? And, off the record, forensics found no suspicious causes of death. You can’t quote me on this, promise me, but the only reason I’ve been put on this case is that the chances of a roomful of people dropping dead all at the same time without some traceable cause are somewhere between zero and nada.’

‘So, you do believe me?’

‘What? That you saw an invisible beautiful woman talking people to death in your doctor’s waiting room? That the only reason you’re not in the morgue right now is because you ran away? Tell me, you ever watch the X-Files?’

‘Gillian Anderson and some guy? Yeah, I saw a few back in the day. Gillian, she’s a pretty girl. Blonde and pretty, what’s not to like? So, what?’

‘That show never came close to some of the things I’ve seen. I’ve experienced things that would turn your hair white! Sorry, I mean...’

‘Too late for that,’ Addams grinned ruefully. ‘That’s another reason I moved that mirror out of the bathroom. I think seeing me naked is what turned my hair white in the first place. No wonder nature chooses to steal our sight as we get older, it’s a kindness. So, you and me, we got things in common. Good, we can talk more in the future, yes? You’ll let me know about Mary if you find anything?’

‘Benjie, when’s your birthday?’

‘August sixteenth, why?’

‘I’d like to celebrate it with you.’

‘Honey, at my age every day’s a birthday. Anytime you want to share good coffee and better conversation you know where I am. Don’t be a stranger, hear?’

‘I hear.’ Prentiss leaned across the table and kissed his cheek. ‘I hear real good.’

[3]

Wolf biologist Tabaqui Howlett looked from his fiancée Prentiss to his best friend Rex Chappell and back again. Chappell – who worked as a very successful illustrator under the ludicrous pseudonym Rex T. O’Saurus – pulled a face. Howlett almost mirrored his expression. Prentiss sat between them in Chappell’s loft kitchen and sipped a very good Sauvignon Blanc. She waited.

‘How old is this guy Addams again?’

‘Ninety-two.’

Chappell sucked at his teeth, ‘Ninety-two? Okay, and you trust his eyesight?’

‘He does, and that’s good enough for me.’

‘And he told you he watched an invisible woman talking a bunch of elderly people to death?’

Howlett butted in, ‘In Prentiss’ defence I’ve heard politicians and priests who nearly did the same to me after a few minutes. Polling booth or tub-thumping pulpit, I felt my mind slipping away. It was awful, like drowning in verbal quicksand.’

Chappell ignored him. ‘On the weirdometer this is in the same league as your twenty-foot wolf/jackal hybrid, Egyptian god creature. Come on, Prentiss, you must attract this shit like a magnet. You ever thought of changing your brand of perfume? It might help.’

Prentiss sighed, ‘Look, I told you guys about this because I want serious input and out of the box thinking. Benjie described her as beautiful, uber gorgeous, a goddess. He said she was dark, like me, he even said she looked like me, but I think he was just being an old flirt.

‘When I was leaving, he told me the dark lady – Typhoid Mary – made him think of how he imagined the real Cleopatra would look, and he didn’t mean Elizabeth Taylor past her prime. He meant the vixen who captivated some of the most powerful Roman politicians two thousand years ago, and back then that meant the most powerful men in the known world.’

Chappell pursed his lips. ‘Okay, we trust Benjie’s eyes. Do we trust his brain? How do we know he’s not gone a little fruit loop over the years? People do, you know. Time takes its toll, he wouldn’t be the first.’

Prentiss frowned, ‘Okay, let’s look at the facts. It was lunchtime in that clinic. Dr Platell and her receptionist were working through lunch to make up some appointments that had slipped when Platell had had to close her surgery because of a family situation. You know the sort of thing, one of her kids was sick. In total there were eleven people in that clinic, nine patients, one receptionist, and a physician.

‘Then the situation takes place, whatever it was. Just a few busy minutes later Benjie was hightailing it out of there. The receptionist was blissfully unaware there was a problem, and the doctor was behind closed doors in her surgery talking with the only other surviving patient.

‘Everyone else was dead, apparently from natural causes; but our only eyewitness tells me he watched an otherwise invisible woman whisper in those people’s ears just before they died. Explain that for me, please!’

She held her hands out to her sides, palms upwards, and her eyes widened.

She continued, ‘Guys, come on, I’ve spoken with the man. Benjie’s smart as a whip, sharp as a knife. I value his testimony the same way I would yours. He knows what he saw, and he has no doubts about it, none at all. He says he saw the angel of death come into that room. She welcomed people into the afterlife, and they smiled when they died. What does it mean? Help me out here.’

Howlett spoke, ‘Seriously, Prentiss, your survivor, this Benjie guy, might he be the killer? I can’t see how, but he’s the only survivor. I’m probably being stupid I know...’

‘No, you’re thinking like a cop. Maybe you’re spending too much time with me. I thought the exact same thing.’ She fetched a disc from her purse. ‘Check this out. Rex, you got a DVD player?’

Chappell stood up. ‘What is it?’

‘CCTV footage of the waiting room taken at the time.’

‘This I’ve got to see.’

Chappell had a seventy-five-inch Samsung ‘Ultra HD’ TV in his lounge. He didn’t watch it much and they had to turn a couch to face the screen. He fed the disc into a discreet wireless box and palmed the remote.

‘Ready?’

Howlett said, ‘I find popcorn always enhances the movie experience.’

‘Live without it. Be good and drink your wine, wolf boy.’

The screen came alive, flickered and then resolved into an image with crystal clarity. The POV was above and to one side of the doctor’s waiting room. Prentiss acted as guide.

‘See that guy with all the white hair with his back to us? He’s Benjamin Addams, my witness, Benjie. The big guy on the mobility scooter with an oxygen unit by the wall is Parks, black man in the suit is Melby. Next to him is Mrs Case. Woman talking to the receptionist is Hannah Smikle. The other three from left to right are Susie Coogan, Melissa Rose, and Chastity Blake. You can see that most of the people in the room are watching Hannah talking with the receptionist.’

She pointed, ‘Watch Parks now.’ They saw