Lost Souls

chapter 12

In her Ford Explorer, she drove slowly into town as the gold and rose fingers of the dawn reached toward fading stars that eluded them. The journey was only four miles, but by the time she arrived at her destination, the eastern half of the sky became a celebration of color exceeding any fireworks display, while the western half brightened from black to sapphire to an enchanting peacock-blue.

Erika Five loved the world. She was charmed by winter snow, each flake a tiny frosted flower, the white vistas, the scalloped drifts, and she thrilled to the early green shoots in spring meadows, to the summer fields blazing with balsam-root flowers like fallen petals of the sun. The mountains in the distance inspired her: massive faces of sheer rock thrusting skyward and more gentle slopes mantled in evergreens. The forest that reached down the foothills and across half her property was her cathedral, with countless vaulted ceilings and colonnades, where she often gave thanks for the gift of the world, for Montana, and for her existence.

She had been designated Erika Five because she was the fifth Erika, all as alike as identical quintuplets, that Victor had grown in his creation tanks at the Hands of Mercy in New Orleans. As his ideal of grace and beauty and erotic allure, the five had served as his wife, one by one, without benefit of marriage.

The first four displeased him in one way or another and were terminated with brutal violence. Erika Five, Erika Helios-in truth Erika Frankenstein-displeased him, too, during the brief time that she had been his to use, but he never had the chance to terminate her.

On this October morning, as she had for more than two years, she lived under the name Erika Swedenborg. Her continued existence, following Victor’s death, was nothing less than miraculous.

The two main thoroughfares of Rainbow Falls – Beartooth Avenue and Cody Street -formed a crossroads at the center of town. The commercial blocks were, for the most part, lined with quaint two-and three-story buildings, mostly nineteenth-century but some early twentieth-century, with double-thick brick walls that kept out the bitter cold in winter.

On Cody, half a block east of Beartooth, Erika pulled to the curb and parked near the Jim James Bakery, which opened before dawn for the early-bird breakfast crowd. Once every week, she drove into town to buy a dozen rich, buttery cinnamon rolls packed full of pecans and glistening with white icing, the best of their kind that she had ever tasted.

Jim James baked them himself, using a recipe developed by his mother, Belinda. Jim’s half-brother, Andy Andrews, owned the Andy Andrews Café two blocks north on Beartooth, serving delicious lunches and dinners from a menu based on his mom’s recipes. Unimaginative when naming her children, Belinda was a totally wicked cook who taught her sons well.

Switching off the engine, before she opened the driver’s door, Erika saw someone she knew. He approached along the sidewalk. A man in hand-tooled black cowboy boots, jeans, and a black leather jacket too consciously and fussily stylish to have been sold at any store in rustic Rainbow Falls. Tall. Fit. Handsome in a severe way.

Victor.

Victor Helios, alias Frankenstein. Her husband-by-decree, her tormentor, her master whom she must obey, her maker.

She believed him to be dead. Or if not dead, not anywhere near Montana.

He walked as if lost in thought, hands in his jacket pockets, head down, eyes on the sidewalk in front of him. Vaporous plumes of his warm breath blossomed and dissipated in the cold morning air.

Erika should have averted her face against the possibility that he would glance up and discover her sitting behind the wheel of the SUV. But the sight of him paralyzed her. She could not look away.

He passed within arm’s reach of the Explorer without becoming aware of her. On his left temple was a familiar small golden-brown mole no bigger than a pencil eraser, which confirmed that he was not just someone who resembled Victor.

After he passed Erika, she watched him in the side mirror. Near the end of the block, he opened the door of some kind of truck and stepped out of sight. The intervening parked vehicles denied her a clear view of his transportation.

In the rearview mirror, she saw him pull away from the curb. She bent over, as if studying something on the passenger seat, in case he glanced toward her as he drove past.

When the sound of his engine peaked and receded, she raised her head and saw that he was driving a silver Mercedes GL550 with Montana license plates. At the end of the block, he stopped for a red traffic light.

After escaping Victor’s sphere of control, she had driven over eighteen hundred miles to start a new life in a place as different from Louisiana as she could find. The fact that Victor remained alive after the disaster in New Orleans was barely credible, but that he should have taken refuge in this same town, of all places he might have gone, seemed impossible.

Erika started the Explorer, swung into the street, and pulled behind the GL550 as the traffic light changed to green. Fearful but determined not to succumb to fear, she followed her maker through the intersection. As they drew near the end of town, she fell back, so her pursuit would not become obvious to him, and she allowed a van to slip between them.

Acutely aware that there were no coincidences and that the meaning of her life was not hers to determine but only hers to discover, she nevertheless decided one thing: Whatever happened, she would not cease to be Erika Swedenborg and would never become again Erika Five.