Interlude - 911

Sera

Late Thursday night, well after any of Pan's respectible parishioners have gone to sleep in their beds, narrow or otherwise, the priest receives yet another page.  This one is marked "911" by the service or the sender.  The number is a Colorado area code, one of the newer ones, unknown to the service, unidentified by caller ID.

Pan

 

With his voice as rough as it is normally, it's hard to tell if the page wakes him up or if he just sounds like he's been woken up. Either way late Thursday night, less than sixty seconds after the page comes through, a call comes back. The number is not restricted but neither does a name pop up on caller ID.

"This is Father Francisco Echeverría Sanchez," he says. He really has no idea who this is if he's using his entire name. "I just received a page from this number."

 

Sera

 

"Hey," a young woman's voice, thinned by the cheap microphone in the cheap phone.  Churning traffic provides the background chorus.  The sighing of some 18-wheeler's air brakes, muzack filtered through some outdoor speakers, the constant hum of the living nowhere of some outflung spoke of Denver's ring of exurban outposts. 

The greeting is familiar, like she expects him to know how this is.  Forgive her: she's not merely stoned, but actively beginning to hallucinate and these hallucinations tonight are not all kind.  He knows so many people it's not likely that he'll recognize her voice on first-word after a handful of meetings.  Particularly when it is strained like this; raw and sour from throwing up, from the harsh crackle-burn of the burning sugars in the clove cigarette she's lighting. 
Her muscles are stiffening from the strychnine in the blotter and tracers are beginning to pull apart the edges of her vision.  She's following them, forgetting the phone in her hand until oh, someone pushes by her and she remembers it. 

A phone in her hand.
In her hand, aphone. aPhone. 

"Father.  Right.  Francis.  Father.  Pandre.  Padre."  Then a new re-assertion, "Hey," like she's lining up the conversation all over again, with a deeper inflection this time, thick with familiarity, a rush of sudden affection.  "Hey.  Did I write - did I leave you a note?  Just say yes.  If you got it."

 

Pan

 

He also knows so many drug addicts that her addled fumbling through the purpose of the page doesn't help him identify her until he realizes she isn't speaking Spanish, that her English is not heavily suffused with the influence of Mexico or Cuba or Uruguay or any of the other places out of which people tend to crawl in hopes of a better life somewhere else. 

This isn't the first reaching-out from someone in the midst of a crisis he's received this month. When he takes a breath she can hear it, the deep sounding of it as he shifts whatever position he was in before.

A note.

Someone left him a note.

"Sera," he says when it dawns on him and then his voice becomes sharp and bright like a knife yanked up out of a drawer. Like he's now more awake than he's been all day. "Where are you?"

 

Sera

 

"No." - she throws back, firm.  To her name or the question about her location.  Both, really.  She presses the phone closer to her ear and leans back against some pillar in the gas station, closing her eyes against the tracers in her vision. 

"I'm fine." - is the first thing she says, her voice breathy with the insistence of it, even though it is not in the ordered list, not precisely, but because the sudden brightness of her voice makes her shiver, like someone had sliced a razor down the line of her spine and she was bleeding light.

"Shhh.  Listen.  Listen."  The repetition is for herself, not him.  She has things she has to say and she has to say them carefully.  She has to line them up in her mind and say them.

In a line. 

"That place in the note.  Don't go there." Her voice is low and tight now, her focus forced and immediate. Artificial and taut with the strain of focus.  Even with her eyes closed fireworks are going off in her periphery, and especially with her eyes closed, the vision starts to close in.   Sera's fear is palpable and raw, but she's pushing herself right through it now.  The next bit comes off like a laundry list. 

"What I dreamed was real.  We were walking through their ashes.  There were six of us there.  And six of them.  Enforcers, right?"  She's afraid of using the words she has on this fucking device.  "The girl in my dream?  They said she was Widderslainte.  Both sides were fighting.  Then she woke up. 

Just for a second. 
"And killed them all."

Her breath comes out harsh and raw after that.  The taut focus cannot stay taut for long, now with the hallucinogens in Sera's system beginning to play tricks with her senses. 

"Fuck.  I have to go."
 

Pan

 

"Okay. A--"

He cuts himself off. No point asking questions now: she's in a hurry, she's high, she's something. She has to go. No point saving this number. It's not one he recognizes and it's not one he's ever going to see again.

Cold sweat in the palms of his hands does not make it to the phone but he sighs anyway. Helpless and accepting of the helplessness. He cannot teleport so he's going to have to wait. Like another sign will come or another call will come to make this all make sense.

"Vaya con Dios."

He doesn't hang up first.

 

Sera

 

Background noise shifts around her.  Someone's speaking to her in person and the phone slips from her mouth as she responds.  It is all theoretical. 

 

The silence lingers as her mouth slides back against the hard plastic tucked between her ear and shoulder.  There's a breath out, like a constricted laugh, like she's just registering his blessing.  Maybe she's grateful for it. 

 

Another heartbeat or two.  She's hallucinating.  She's listening to the language of static, the breathing space that asserts itself on the line between them.  She thinks of rudders and anchors and tethers and ether and ash falling like snow across her face. 

 

"Que la paz esté contigo." 

 

(It is from the high mass.  Peace be with you.)

 

Click.