Page 43 of Go First

Only silence answered, a silence thick enough to notice.

She frowned.The front of the building—usually blazing with the Sister’s particular brand of welcome, lamps burning from dawn to midnight—looked odd through the archway: dark.No neon from the gilt-framed sign above the main doors, no flicker from the rows of candles that normally threw warm honeyed light across the glass.

Beverly glanced at her watch.Ten past nine.Dorothy would usually be in full Monday routine by now—either in the sanctuary, meditating before the first healing service, or in her ‘sanctum of healing’, the cramped side room where she brewed the oils and unctions that carried the wisdom of ancient queens.

“Sister?”Beverly tried again, walking forward.

Her low heels tapped across the wooden floor of the prayer hall, each click echoing a fraction too long.She told herself not to be silly.The Sister often turned down the lights for meditation.Perhaps she was fasting again, or in one of those deep trances from which she brought back messages from the gods of the ancient world.

The shop area lay just ahead, its little boutique of spiritual quick-fixes.Beverly knew the entire inventory by heart: sticks of incense that “cleared bad auras,” candles promising to lure a straying lover home or silence gossip, jars of oil labeled with names—Prosperity, Victory, Health, Justice—that sounded like things on monuments.And everywhere, pyramids of glossy paperbacks: Sister Dorothy Kane’s autobiography,My Healing Journey, My Blessed Lives, the cover photo touched up until the Sister’s skin gleamed like polished copper.

Beverly passed the display without slowing.She’d unpacked those boxes herself last week, listening to Dorothy promise that the second edition would “sell like the loaves and fishes.”She’d smiled then, as always.But the quiet now pressed like a hand against her chest.

The sanctuary opened before her in a burst of color.

Even after years of working here, the room could still surprise her: a riot of symbols and banners from every corner of the world’s faiths—Egyptian ankhs stitched in gold thread, Mayan glyphs carved into dark wood, the sepia tints of Orthodox icons and the green-yellow-red of Ras Tafari sharing space with Madonnas and many-armed Hindu gods.The ceiling was a shallow dome, its blue surface scattered with tiny lights that imitated stars.

And there, at the foot of the altar, lay Sister Dorothy Kane.

Beverly’s mind refused the image at first, presenting a dozen other possibilities—Dorothy fainted, Dorothy sleeping, Dorothy in the midst of some extravagant new ritual.

But the body was wrong.

Dorothy lay sprawled on her side, her bright ceremonial robe—today a crimson silk shot through with sunbursts of gold—twisted and bunched like discarded laundry.Her head was tilted at an angle the human neck was never meant to find.And the mouth—

Beverly clapped a hand over her own lips.

The tongue was gone.Not hidden.Gone.A dark cavity gaped where the Sister’s vibrant voice—so famous for its rolling cadences and sly jokes—had once lived.A dark red, almost black stain was on her bottom lip, her chin and her neck.In her outstretched hand, a note with writing on it.

The first scream tore from Beverly’s throat before she even knew she’d opened her mouth.It rebounded off the painted dome and came back at her, the wail of a stranger.

She stumbled backward, the world tilting in jagged lurches.Her heel caught the edge of a woven mat and she went down hard, palms skidding across the polished wood.

“No, no, no…”

Her handbag lay where she’d dropped it, near the door to the sanctuary.Beverly half-crawled, half-stumbled toward it, fingers shaking so violently she could barely close them around the strap.The phone was buried deep inside, beneath receipts and the leather wallet she’d meant to clean out last night.

“God—oh God—”

The phone slipped once, twice, before she managed to bring the screen awake.Numbers blurred.Bees seemed to drone in her ears; she’d fainted the last time that happened, and of course, she could dang well remember when that was: first communion, 1977.Taking deep, purposeful breaths, she wiped her thumb across her skirt and tried again.

The digits finally glowed steady.

“911.Which service do you require?”

It felt like a relief to hear another human voice.A sign that there was a world out there, a world beyond this horror.

“Please—” Her own voice came to her ears in broken gasps.“Please—at the Healing Hands Ankh-em-Maat Center—oh God, it’s Sister Dorothy—her—her tongue—”

“Ma’am, can you explain what has happened?Is somebody hurt?”

The dispatcher’s calm questions barely registered.Beverly pressed the phone so tight to her that it hurt, her gaze being dragged inexorably back to the altar.

The banners of all those ancient faiths hung there in their bright array, serene and eternal.The tiny star-lights of the ceiling blinked their cold, indifferent light.

And in the center of it all, Sister Dorothy Kane lay silent at last, the preacher who had promised miracles, her voice forever cut away.

CHAPTER NINETEEN